Forum Structure

[Gerry]

All,

In response to comments we had at yesterdays INSIGHTS 2018 event, I wanted to start a conversation.   A number of people ( @nasimg, @Darren Rose, @Keith, @Lyonel and others) had suggested the layout of the forum topics could be improved.  I am very interested to start a discussion here and get to the details of these thoughts. 

From my point of view, the Hornbill related top-level topics are broadly organized into "job to be done" type areas, but not a huge amount of thought has been put into this since its initial setup. I want our on-line community to work for everyone so lets please open the discussion and see where we can get to. 

Gerry

[Dan Munns]

@Gerry

As per this post, an enhancement request section would make life a lot easier when it comes to seeing what other people want / requests I have raised. 

I would also make looking through the requests and adding my +1 (if I am busy) or my full 10 cents to ones which would be useful / relevant to us.

This in turn I am sure would give you a more accurate picture with regard to what people would like to prioritise. The amount of requests currently which aren't tagged as such or are tagged differently makes it difficult to find them and means that some very good ideas get missed by the majority or the user base.  

As for looks / structure maybe something like this? (apologies for the bad paint skills) 

[Gerry]

@Dan Munns

Playing devil's advocate here just a little, I am not sure the forum constructs are right for "tracking/voting" on product enhancements.  This requirement I would suggest is more aligned with a solution that would allow us to publish changes/enhancements and then allow customers to up-vote these, I would suggest that forum software is primarily good for the initial conversation, the bit that happens *before* a more formal enhancement is raised to be tracked through development.  Does that make any sense?

I like the images concept, not sure the current forum software we use is even capable of being configured like that though. 

One of my "out there" ambitions for Hornbill platform is to support the notion of "community workspaces", these would be workspaces that are *public* across instances, in other words, you could interact with them from within Hornbill just like any other workspace, this way our community could be made up of a number of community workspaces, each focused on a product or specific topic. We have some way to go before we get that working but that could be a very nice alternative to the forum software its self.  Not sure that solves the tracking/voting point though...


Gerry

[nasimg]

@Gerry

Great event yesterday - always good hearing what is on the road map. My favourite bit is the Q/A's.

Yes it is hard seeing new things (eg. I missed the Insight discussion you started in March, and Hornbill Academy around Change Management in Hornbill). I tend to stay in the Service Manager forum most of the time.

I'll have a think about this and post if I have any useful ideas

Nasim

[Dan Munns]

23 minutes ago, Gerry said:

Playing devil's advocate here just a little, I am not sure the forum constructs are right for "tracking/voting" on product enhancements.  This requirement I would suggest is more aligned with a solution that would allow us to publish changes/enhancements and then allow customers to up-vote these, I would suggest that forum software is primarily good for the initial conversation, the bit that happens *before* a more formal enhancement is raised to be tracked through development.  Does that make any sense?

Hi @Gerry I was thinking that in the enhancement request section would have two parts. the first being an 'ideas' section and the second a 'Raised changes' section that each new post would effectively be made a poll so that other users could add and remove their votes as required. This will allow everyone to see how much weight a particular post has gotten so far. It might be that you votes are limited to 'x' per month to stop everyone voting up everything. This voting limit was mentioned yesterday during a discussion we were having at the end of the day and make sense. 

26 minutes ago, Gerry said:

One of my "out there" ambitions for Hornbill platform is to support the notion of "community workspaces", these would be workspaces that are *public* across instances, in other words, you could interact with them from within Hornbill just like any other workspace, this way our community could be made up of a number of community workspaces, each focused on a product or specific topic.

I do like this idea. Maybe a role will allow access from our end. If the workspaces were dynamic and changed based on what screen you are currently using (like the search bar) I can see this being a good option. Maybe a 'Me too' button for the voting (but again needing a way to limit the votes)

[Gerry]

31 minutes ago, nasimg said:

@Gerry

Great event yesterday - always good hearing what is on the road map. My favourite bit is the Q/A's.

Yes it is hard seeing new things (eg. I missed the Insight discussion you started in March, and Hornbill Academy around Change Management in Hornbill). I tend to stay in the Service Manager forum most of the time.

I'll have a think about this and post if I have any useful ideas

Nasim

Hi @nasimg

Thanks for the feedback, I really enjoy your contribution to our discussions, always enlightening and constructive.  Any thoughts/suggestions on this topic are always welcome. 

Gerry

[Gerry]

@Dan Munns

Quote

I was thinking that in the enhancement request section would have two parts. the first being an 'ideas' section and the second a 'Raised changes' section that each new post would effectively be made a poll so that other users could add and remove their votes as required

We notionally have this.... customers that have taken a success plan have access to our customer portal, and one of the things we provide is a view on problems and changes, we don't have voting in there so its not the entire solution but at least notionally that is the principle difference between community support (the standard that everyone gets) and a more formal Success Plan where we provide a more formal, structured, SLA-driven support service.  You possibly heard me mention at INSIGHTS yesterday that one of the apps we are working on is Product Manager, this falls into the roadmap category of "for companies like us", this application will also include a customer portal component which is exactly what you describe, the ability for us to publish changes/fixes, provide voting, managing voting quota, managing releases and so on.  When we have built this application I envisage we would be using this to do exactly what we are describing through our customer portal as part of our premier success support program.

The problem with tracking and publishing formal change requests is it sets an expectation of prioritization which does not fit well with our current definition of community support. 

In terms of Community Workspaces, yes security, visibility and permissions are a big part of that implementation requirement.  The contextual idea is an interesting concept, although that might be something more akin to in-app feature requests


Gerry

[Lyonel]

Thanks @Gerry for INSIGHTS event! That was a great opportunity to meet up with the rest of the community and Hornbill staff

Like @Dan Munns , @nasimg, @Keith and many others, I struggle with  the current structure of the forum for tracking / following up on changes, new features, enhancements suggested. The primary reason is that there is no standard use of tags across all members. And no search feature related to these tags either (e.g. tag cloud). And the structure is too "complex" (too many sections). I really love the mock-up from @Dan Munns! Pictures are a nice to have if the current tool you use for the forums cannot cope with this. But a simpler structure such as what was suggested would be much better.

If there is one section that works for everybody, it's the "Announcements" section. Because no matter what app you use, you know that the latest update / patch notes will be in this section.

As for enhancements, features and change requests, I think what we would like (certainly true for me) is to have all of them under a single section of the forums. The search would then be much easier. The proper use of tags (even if retrospective, done by admins) would considerably help too. It could be as simple as "Considered", "Backlog", "Need more input", "90 days window". Simple tags mixed with a single location would already be much better than what we have today and should not take too long to setup (I hope).

Coming back on the "tag" concept, having a simpler structure would kind of "force" us to use tags a lot more. For instance, if I post something around widgets for Service Manager, then I could just drop a post under the Service Manager section and add the tags "analytics" and/or "widget".

I don't think any of us has a problem with the way you work. It's just about being able to find forum posts related to changes or enhancements that were posted a while back, having that visibility and knowing where it's at (is it considered? is it in the backlog?).

I hope this makes sense... Anyway, thank you very much for raising this topic on the forum. I think it is a healthy discussion, even if not easy 

[SJEaton]

Hi All! Good to meet you all in person at INSIGHTS, it was a great day and I'm looking forward to all the new and improved functionality that's coming soon

59 minutes ago, Lyonel said:

I struggle with  the current structure of the forum for tracking / following up on changes, new features, enhancements suggested.

I agree with @Lyonel , I get a bit lost in trying to find out what's new, which I think goes hand in hand with the discussion that was had at the event about clearer details provided of all new functionality/fixes in updates and having this easily/clearly accessible.

 

20 hours ago, Dan Munns said:

an enhancement request section would make life a lot easier when it comes to seeing what other people want / requests I have raised

I also agree with @Dan Munns !

Sam 

[Keith]

See also.

 

[samwoo]

Hello,

How about something that is very similar to Stackoverflow or even Quorra? It could be split into multiple parts / buttons

1. Start a Discussion
2. Share Ideas
3. Ask a question

Based on what button was pressed from the above list, followed by the options provided on what the post relates to, will determine where the post will go and pre-tag / group them accordingly.
 

Start a Discussion
- Select Discussion types (which will certain features to be enabled) ie. Events, General, Important, Notice, Hornbill Update
- Allow there to be voting / poll capabilities
- Also include an option to invite users to events via the discussion
- Can link back to Ideas or Questions
 

Share Ideas
- People can upvote on the most popular answers.
- For any changes raised or those already raised at Hornbill to somehow link them straight to the relevant Change Request on your side.
- Ideas can be rejected / accepted by Hornbill (with reasons where applicable)
- If approved then maybe some form of progress can be highlighted against the Idea (or it could be as simple as Raised / Submitted / Accepted / In Progress / Completed / Released / Rejected)
- Can link back to Questions or Discussions
 

Ask a question
- People can upvote on the most popular answers.
- Can link back to Ideas or Discussions

 

Just throwing an idea around that's all.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Michael Sharp]

On 6/28/2018 at 1:46 PM, Gerry said:

Hi @nasimg

Thanks for the feedback, I really enjoy your contribution to our discussions, always enlightening and constructive.  Any thoughts/suggestions on this topic are always welcome. 

Gerry

Did he get his 50p a user in the end...?  xD

[Michael Sharp]

I might be being blind, but is there a menu I can see a list of posts I have raised rather than a list of updates?

Would also be good if I could archive my own posts in the event a query has been dealt with and is no longer required on the forum.  Might also give your guys more focus on the outstanding posts?

Regards,

Mike.

[samwoo]

11 minutes ago, Michael Sharp said:

I might be being blind, but is there a menu I can see a list of posts I have raised rather than a list of updates?

Would also be good if I could archive my own posts in the event a query has been dealt with and is no longer required on the forum.  Might also give your guys more focus on the outstanding posts?

Regards,

Mike.

At the top of the forums, highlight Activity -> Click "Content I started"

[Michael Sharp]

49 minutes ago, samwoo said:

At the top of the forums, highlight Activity -> Click "Content I started"

Excellent, thanks Sam!

[samwoo]

2 minutes ago, Michael Sharp said:

Excellent, thanks Sam!

Any time Michael, also there are some other options there in the activities tab too if it helps, such as finding the topics you posted in etc. 

ta

[Gerry]

1 hour ago, Michael Sharp said:

Did he get his 50p a user in the end...?  xD

No lol  If someone can help me how to hire people for half the cost then I would be most delighted to reflect this in our pricing policy   We did mull over the idea of variable billing but have concluded that currently this is unworkable as most of our customers (especially larger ones and public sector) simply cannot pay a bill unless there is a matching purchase order number - so variable billing is just not possible. 

[Gerry]

2 hours ago, samwoo said:

Hello,

How about something that is very similar to Stackoverflow or even Quorra? It could be split into multiple parts / buttons

1. Start a Discussion
2. Share Ideas
3. Ask a question

Based on what button was pressed from the above list, followed by the options provided on what the post relates to, will determine where the post will go and pre-tag / group them accordingly.
 

Start a Discussion
- Select Discussion types (which will certain features to be enabled) ie. Events, General, Important, Notice, Hornbill Update
- Allow there to be voting / poll capabilities
- Also include an option to invite users to events via the discussion
- Can link back to Ideas or Questions
 

Share Ideas
- People can upvote on the most popular answers.
- For any changes raised or those already raised at Hornbill to somehow link them straight to the relevant Change Request on your side.
- Ideas can be rejected / accepted by Hornbill (with reasons where applicable)
- If approved then maybe some form of progress can be highlighted against the Idea (or it could be as simple as Raised / Submitted / Accepted / In Progress / Completed / Released / Rejected)
- Can link back to Questions or Discussions
 

Ask a question
- People can upvote on the most popular answers.
- Can link back to Ideas or Discussions

 

Just throwing an idea around that's all.

Thanks,

Samuel

Samuel,

For now at least we are constrained by the Forum software we use - its fairly limited as to what we can do with it. 

In terms of the tracking of enhancements we do actually do this, they are available to customers via our service portal, but access to that portal is only available to customers who have taken out a Success plan. 

Implementing something like voting, or publishing our roadmap in a public forum is always a challenge because we not only get a lot of false votes, but we also expose our forward roadmap to our competitors.  This is why we have them behind a secure site (our service portal)

Gerry

 

 

 

Gerry