Forum Upgrade - Some Details

[Former Member]

Hello all,

the forums have been upgraded to a newer version (Jive Forums 5.5.6).

If you should find any issues, please report them either here or send an email to our support address sdn@sap.com.

After the upgrade, the search indexes must be rebuilt. This means, that the search is not working at present and will come back later today.

There are a few changes towards the old version:

1. New editor

By clicking the „Save Now“ button (or automatically every 30 seconds), the current state of your message is saved in the database. So after navigating away from the editor, the message is not gone but can be used at a later stage.

Once such a "draft" is available, you will see its data displayed in a brown box on top of the editor, with two options: “Use Draft” and “Delete Draft”. After clicking “Use Draft”, the text and subject are transferred into the editor and the brown box vanishes. The draft gets deleted from the database then. This also happens when you hit the “Delete Draft” button. A draft is also deleted when you actually post the message for which the draft was created for.

This feature is forum/thread/message dependent. That means that if you create a draft while creating a new message in forum “XYZ”, you will have this draft available only when you try to create a new message in the same forum again. The same is valid if you create a draft during a reply: This draft can only be used when you reply to the exact same message again – it can’t be used when you reply to a different message in the same thread.

If you never use the draft and also don’t post the respective message, the draft stays in the database. As a user you have the possibility to delete your own drafts (by navigating to “Your Control Panel” -> “Your Drafts”).

Another nice feature is that you can resize the editor: When you look at the bottom right corner of the editor, you see some small diagonal lines (under the editor's scroll bar). When you move the mouse over it, the mouse pointer changes - at this point just hold down the mouse key and drag it down until the editor fits your needs.

2. New Markup Possibilities

Besides the usual bulletin board markup possibilities like <b></b>, <i></i> etc., the new Jive version offers more tools. First, there are the “tags” illustrated in the legend next to the editor.

Furthermore, Jive offers “macros” that automatically format your message when using tags like these:

- &#123;quote&#125;Hallo&#123;quote&#125; -> marks the text “Hallo” in italics and with a special background

- &#123;code&#125;System.out.println(“Hallo”);&#123;code&#125; -> marks the line as programming code

- &#123;size:12&#125;Hallo&#123;size&#125; -> sets font size

- &#123;color:green&#125;Hallo&#123;color&#125; -> sets font color

- &#123;font:Courier&#125;Hallo&#123;font&#125; -> sets font face

There are similar tags where you can use something like &#123;forum:id=40&#125;, which render a complete HTML link to the respective object (with a neat little icon next to it). The object with the given ID must exist. Here are the possibilities:

- &#123;{forum:id=123&#125; -> renders a link to the forum with the forum name as link text.

- The same is valid for &#123;thread:id=328477&#125; and &#123;message:id=123456&#125; (message subject is link text)

- &#123;user:id=867&#125; -> renders a link to the user’s profile (with the display name as link text)

Often the combination of several markup tags doesn’t lead to the desired result, but one of the tags is ignored and displayed as-is, e.g. font formatting within &#123;code&#125; blocks (still) doesn’t work.

The filtering of these tags only works in message views, not in search result abstracts and watch emails.

3. Abuse Reporting

With the new Jive version there is a new icon that allows users to report what they consider as „abuse“. It is a black exclamation point in a yellow rectangle in a post's button bar. Clicking this report icon brings the user to a screen where he has to classify the abuse (General Abuse, Profanity etc.) and is asked to comment on his decision. The report can then be reviewed by our community team.

Regards,

Michael Goeck

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Michael,

Very useful enhancements to the Forum Interface.

This is what I found. After editing an existing message, the Edit Message button does not change its label. Though clicking the button saves the changes to the message I though it would be more intuitive if it said Post Message as you are is already in Edit mode.

Just a thought !!

Suda