the communication could really be better ....
No wiki update, no blog for the new delivered functions and fixes.
So what have you seen beside of the fix with the activities for mobile devices which caused some trouble yesterday for the desktop users?
I found:
- reduced white space above the activities:
list / filter of my followed tags in Questions and Answers - very nice function - applause!!
and select tags from my followed tags when posting questions
Apologies on the delay in updating the release notes - they should be updated now. IT was in a development workshop to address Community development and did not get them up same-day. I'll share your comments with them.
Hmmm, 4 views for your post in 1 hour. Perhaps one of the other three was encouraged to complete and post the latest updates in the wiki page (I'm watching it so I receive email notifs): https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/x/IpvHGg
Seems like you've found the more significant updates already in your post ^^. Personally I don't necessarily agree with how some of the changes were implemented, or the level of completeness, simply because the silo effect is still too prevalent and tags are treated far to individually. The 'My Followed Tags' filter should be in all places: activity feed, blogs, answers, search results, etc. and not obscured only in answers. It should also be a multi-select checkbox list for establishing an SQL IN clause.We have a problem with view counts on Answers, where it only counts views from unique logged in user. Working on it to harmonize with Blogs.
Actually I think the notion of 'views' was debated a few times during beta as well - should it be unique visitors or every page refresh? I remember having a discussion with Veselina on this one.
We are harmonizing it with how it was working in old SCN and how it works currently in Blogs, to count every single page view.
On the positive side: the activity stream/notifications are back... thank you!
I have somewhat mixed feelings about the latest improvements...
The activity stream/notifications look slightly more visually pleasing, I agree. Bold text and an obvious link for the primary tag? OK, makes sense and looks better.
But why do we need to see an additional secondary tag or a user tag there? In the case of blogs you can't show all of them (please, don't try to do that), so what is the point? Just get rid of this additional line, if I can't figure out what what a question/blog is about from the title, 2 lines of content and a primary tag, then a secondary tag and a user will not help. Not much of an improvement of getting a more compact Activity Stream, I am afraid.
And still, most of the horizontal screen estate is wasted for no logical reason. Can't you increase the width of the list, get rid of the useless secondary tag line, move the primary tag at the top - at the same level as the activity type ('posted an answer to question') is shown, change the relative time to an exact time-stamp (dd.mm hh:mm)? If you increase the maximum width to a reasonable value, the same content text can fit into a single line.
As a result, in total you can save 3 lines (initially 6), which results in almost 2 times less scrolling.
The filter for Activity type is taking too much space and is always collapsed. This is not very useful. I guess, it can be moved up and instead of the current form, to use something like the activity menu.
Here is an example how the site for my utility bills handles a similar scenario:
I am slightly disappointed, that I won't be able to take an advantage from the new filtering options for questions: I don't follow any tags and I am not planning to (thank you, I get enough updates already), but I wish to have an easy way to filter by tag (multiple select for tags, ad hoc). Why should navigation improvements be tied only to followed tags?
Thanks for amazing detailed feedback Veselina. Your suggestions are always appreciated. I will share all your concerns and suggestions you posted here in our future refinement calls. Following are some comments on your suggestions:
-Showing user tag in Activities: I will share this suggestion with IT. Currently I believe if a secondary tag does not exist for the content and a user tag does, then the user tags are shown in that position.
-Move primary tags to first line of activity: May be confusing when read together with the activity type line.
-Exact time-stamp: I agree and think this will be very helpful
-Move filter to top: I have already discussed this internally in our past refinement calls. I am afraid UI has not made any changes to their decision on this Veselina. I am happy to raise this again. However, I think these are according to 1DX guidelines. The space underneath the filter can also be used for future implementations of new features (such as primary tag filters and people filters). I am sure this also helps with the website being responsive. For instance, the Filter does appear on top when viewed from a mobile device:
Again, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. And I am very glad to learn that you appreciated some of the changes that we are rolling out. More are on the way and I will share updates as they become available.
Best,
Sajid
Release notes blog published today by Jerry:
https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/25/release-highlights-as-of-january-23-2017/
Hello Juergen,
I am sure the release notes will be updated and there will be further announcements made. Glad you like the new features that were rolled out! I believe the feature of automatically marking a notification as read when a link in the notification is clicked was also rolled out. In addition to the white space removal from the activities and Notifications, there were a couple of other minor adjustments to the UI: the text description for each activity was decreased to two sentences. The primary tag text was brought up to right under the content title in activities as well for UI consistency.
I also think there was a new feature added to discussions in the archive that allows users to "view more" on the given topic.
Still no fix for a major bug reported in November?! You gotta be kidding me...
I have not noticed any changes. Never go to the whole Q&A list, so would not see the filter if it wasn't for this post. And I agree that this would be more meaningful if the same functionality existed across the whole site.
"Support Services" tag has already been available for a while, not sure why this is just being announced.
"Header navigation update (SOC-4681)" - no idea what it means.
Change in the activity stream is barely noticeable. It just became 5% less atrocious.
Don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but with so many bugs reported and so many ideas posted I believe the community deserves more significant improvements. People will start dropping like flies if the pace of changes continues.
Hi, Jelena:
You're right about the "support services" tag, and "header navigation update" is more of a behind-the-scenes thing.
Since the release notes may sometimes contain things of little or no interest to the community at large, we've been publishing highlights within the community itself. These posts also include examples and additional descriptions of what has changed.
The most recent post is https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/25/release-highlights-as-of-january-23-2017/ , which doesn't contain the two items above (i.e., "support services" tag, header navigation).
We need to do a better job of sharing prioritization for both features and bugs...so that people don't feel like we're ignoring them. We posted some of the priorities in https://blogs.sap.com/2016/12/12/2016-wrap-up-looking-forward-to-the-new-year/, but it was only for this month, and we obviously need to share a more long-term vision (or at least give some indication of where energies are being focused in development in the foreseeable future).
We also need to do a better job of tying the release notes back to feedback from the community itself. I believe you and I discussed this elsewhere. I tried to incorporate this via links in https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/25/release-highlights-as-of-january-23-2017/ (wherever I could connect to a community discussion or Idea Place suggestion).
All that being said...I know I said nothing to address your overall concern about significant improvements, and even with these efforts to communicate, it doesn't mean we'll always have good news. For example, that major bug from November is the source of major consternation behind the scenes too. There is no solution to report at this time.
Best regards,
--Jerry
To my mind using "My Followed Tag" filter I will be able to see questions with multiple followed tags on the same page... Unfortunately not, it's just a collection of followed tags links.
Small bug with tag filter: on page refresh for a half of second I can see:
And then correct picture:
Hi Vadim,
Thanks for letting us know about the filter visibility bug. I will share with IT.
Re: the consolidated content for your followed tags (your initial post), we are looking into offering this on the next version of the home page. I will share your comment with Catherine, our home page owner.
Best,
Jamie
If there is some delay it's better to show nothing then this incorrect information.
Looks like it's solved now: No message "We are sorry...", just the empty list for a second, then correct list of followed tags! Good!
I have the same issue. Was hoping for questions across multiple tags but still using Activities for now.
--Bill