Offline access is the biggest feature I would want too. I prefer to let my device do its work (download, sort, filter and whatever else that an interface like email or an app would do), so I can view I and interact with it whenever and wherever I am at even if not online.
I do not really care about the digest either as even when it is and was available, I barely ever used it. Features I would have personally liked for a forum in no particular order of weight or preference are: * Offline Access * Notifications of messages * Ability to create a Personal Archive to a set of folders for easy access in future so searches for something specific could be restricted to those particular folders * Ability to correspond offline to an individual whenever need be (such as replying to job postings etc) - nice to have but not that important. * Ability to sort messages off keywords into a folder like mechanism like we do on ARS List emails using subject line prefixes.. * Delete irrelevant content (quite important) using individual perspective rather than just having moderators do it at a admin level.. Without this it means any search performed would display all results including irrelevant content from a users perspective. These are only some of the things I can think from the top of my head.. Some of this you can already do with Communities - while all of this is possible through an email delivery system or maybe an app if it is designed to allow all this. Joe _____ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Rick Westbrock Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 5:12 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: ARSList traction vs Communities... I suppose it's a matter of personal preference but I have found it is actually easier for me to quickly scan the subject line and first few lines of a Communities post in my Inbox there than wade through e-mails in Outlook lately, so much so that I didn't even see these e-mail vs. Communities threads until two weeks late! I would be more than happy to help other users who prefer the e-mail interface by explaining how I use Communities myself (for whatever dubious value that might provide). So far after reading all the comments here the only two things features that I see lacking in Communities are offline access and a digest e-mail. In today's world how often are we really without Internet access (outside of air travel) though? To Dan's point a digest e-mail isn't nearly so useful now as it was ten years ago. The only downside of the Jive platform for me right now is that I do most of my reading in my Inbox which unfortunately does not mark a topic as read so when I go to that forum I see a ton of topics marked unread which I have in actuality read via the Inbox. After attending the Remedy 9.5 beta webinar today I feel like the transition of the ARSList to a new platform this year is very poetic in its timing. I already miss a lot of the great people here when I am reading Communities and I think it would be a huge benefit to the greater Remedy audience to have you all participate there, especially in light of BMC's new focus on custom development in the upcoming new version of the platform. -Rick From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Joe D'Souza Sent: Monday, June 13, 2016 5:12 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: ARSList traction vs Communities... ** And this has been my point all along too. If there are 10 or 20 plus emails a day a day and a plain and simple email client can receive this silently, and you have it all there when you need it irrespective of whether or not you are online at that moment, it is a simpler, less cumbersome way. On communities however simple they may make it, its still means you need to load those 10 or 20 pages separately. I had given communities a try when Mathew had sold the idea to me at the RUG 3 years ago and I did create a couple of accounts and lurked around the communities for a short time but did not find it to be less time consuming - on the contrary more time consuming than receiving emails and seeing all the info you need right there and replying if you need to there.. Gradually without even me realizing I kind of slowly drifted away from using Communities although I should still have my user accounts there. Joe _____ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Rick Cook Sent: Friday, June 10, 2016 11:09 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: ARSList traction vs Communities... ** For me, it looks revolves around the end user experience. It doesn't matter what the format or hosting system is, what matters is ease of use and positive experience with that usage. The ARSlist has delivered both in spades. No clunky, over developed Web page that makes me sign in every 5 minutes, no poorly designed search algorithms, just a simple yet configurable search engine requiring only the UI I already have on every device I own. Isn't that simplicity what the BMC "visionaries" have been telling us that customers want? How about eating your own dog food here, BMC? Build a better mousetrap - one with the simplicity of an email interface and the power of the BMC data stores behind it. Rick On Jun 10, 2016 08:01, "JD Hood" <hood...@gmail.com> wrote: ** My personal opinion of Communities (and opinions will vary) is that it is has some very good info in it -- but more often than not when I search, the results are *mostly* useless. There's a lot of chaff to winnow through before you can get to the good grain. And it could just be my bad luck looking for oddball stuff; however, more often than not, Communities seems like an extension of support and I'm always spending more time trying to get around the initial contact (the outsourced call-center script-reader over in Puna) so I can reach someone who is somewhat familiar with developing in whatever area my issue is in. Contrast that with the ARSList where someone can pose a development question and have multiple, valid options from other experienced devs *almost* before their finger is fully lifted off the mouse key from asking their question. That may be an exaggeration, but the ARSList can be spooky fast compared to BMC Support. Also, consider this comparison: How many times have you stumped the ARSList vs. How many times have you stumped BMC support? I don't know about you, but I eventually solve my own issue before BMC can figure it out about half the time. Now, there is nothing stopping Communities from evolving into an "ARSList-like" culture and for some things, it may be close. But in general, I only go to Communities after I have exhausted all other possibilities and before I completely give up and contact Puna to start that exercise in frustration (You know the drill -- it begins with them asking for logs that you had already attached to the ticket when you submitted it...). At this point, moving the ARSList to Communities makes me *VERY* nervous for the future of the ARSList. I understand that it's looking for a home and/or funding. WE SHOULD ALSO RECOGNIZE THAT DAN HAS DONE AN ADMIRABLE JOB WITH IT AND SHOULD BE REWARDED FOR HIS CONSIDERABLE EFFORTS SOMEHOW. I just hope that -- due to some BMC corporate anti-ARSList bias (and to be clear, I have NO IDEA if that bias even exists) -- they don't try to herd folks away from it by wadding it up and throwing into an obscure, throttled, low-bandwidth, BMC controlled corner where it's not indexed and stuffed under some intentionally-crippled search engine so it's difficult to use. That would be a *damn* shame. What my paranoia prefers is a fully autonomous ARSList. Personally, I would not mind if you added a paypal account (or whatever) so the ARSList subscribers can contribute towards it's maintenance and hosting, along with a fund drive a few times a year as needed. Now all that hot air is likely just a product of my fevered, corporate-paranoia fueled imagination and everything will actually be peaches & cream if the ARSList is absorbed into the BMC Communities "hive-mind". At least, I certainly hope so. Either way, I am positive life will go on no matter where the ARSList winds up, either for better or worse. And please don't make fun of me if I cover my eyes and grimmace until after whatever is going to happen has happened. Best of luck! I hope it all works out! -JDHood On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Joe D'Souza <jdso...@shyle.net> wrote: And that is my point about an app. I think if BMC built a mobile communities app and had that available to the community, there might have been a lot more hits than just the high teens.. Not everyone hitting the article from the app might have actually read the whole article, but at least there would probably be more hits.. There is no way of knowing for sure if all the 19 that actually hit that article actually did read the whole thing anyway unless they responded to it. If I were to sport a guess, maybe only 40 to 50% of users opening any web page read the significant part of a web page anyways before their attention goes else where on another tab on their browser or another link. On a messaging system however, I would assume that a higher percentage of users hitting that message would actually read a significant part of that message before discarding it if they do not wish to reply to it. I may have a somewhat negative view of the communities but I see it more like Facebook. I created an account just because my peers would have liked me to be on it. But I very rarely ever actively use it unless someone specifically sends me a message or somehow something actually did manage to catch my attention there.. Email however feels a lot more personal to me so I tend to respond to emails anyone sends me even though it's a 20+ year old system.. That apart from the ability to access it when offline is my pro stand for email rather than a web community. Joe -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Misi Mladoniczky Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2016 4:11 AM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: ARSList traction vs Communities... Hi, 24 hours since the original post to ARSList. 19 pages views referred via ARSList and 16 from BMC Communities. But this is a 30 day old post from Communities and it has a total of 211 referrals during these 30 days. I got one personal email regarding this out of ARSList and no public response. On communities we have 44 comments, but I note that 95% of these were made by the usual suspects (LJ Longwing, Jason Miller, Matthieu Laurenceau, Rick Westbrock and myself). These people are all quite active on ARSList as well, and if the post started here we might have received a lively interaction here instead. All in all I think that BMC Communities has some great features for interacting and pinging friends that you think may have something to add to a conversation. The total volume of content in BMC Communities is too great to read, but it has features to filter and get notification emails. Best Regards - Misi, RRR AB, http://www.rrr.se (ARSList MVP 2011) Ask the Remedy Licensing Experts (Best R.O.I. Award at WWRUG10/11/12/13): * RRR|License - Not enough Remedy licenses? Save money by optimizing. * RRR|Log - Performance issues or elusive bugs? Analyze your Remedy logs. Find these products, and many free tools and utilities, at http://rrr.se. > Hi, > > Let us put the ARSList to the test in terms of traction/conversion. > > One month ago I published the "BMC Engage Bubble Agenda" in Communities, and > we now have 195 hits on that page. > > The Engage Bubble Agenda in itself is a test to create a better, more fun and > more interesting user experience of browsing Engage topics. Useful before you > decide to go as well as when you are planning which sessions to actually > attend. > > Access the Bubbel Agenda using this link to verify the traction of the > ARSList: > https://rrr.se/cgi/index?pg=engage2016 <https://rrr.se/cgi/index?pg=engage2016&arslist> &arslist > > If you like it and want to boost the corresponding Communities document go > here and click LIKE: https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-42206 > > Best Regards - Misi, RRR AB, http://www.rrr.se (ARSList MVP 2011) > > Ask the Remedy Licensing Experts (Best R.O.I. Award at WWRUG10/11/12/13): > * RRR|License - Not enough Remedy licenses? Save money by optimizing. > * RRR|Log - Performance issues or elusive bugs? Analyze your Remedy logs. > Find these products, and many free tools and utilities, at http://rrr.se. > > ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" > ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"