Ryan had sent me the link to 6702. It got me started but I still had issues figuring it out.
The problem with both of those docs is there are no graphics, and they are not really designed for the mail exploder user trying to understand this new website and set up email notifications.
After getting notifications for a couple days, I find they are really hard to follow. There is no context for the comments. With the mail exploder most of the time I can scroll down to see the context from previous emails. It would be nice to see at least the original post in the email notification.
I dove into the community in earnest when the first announcement was made and had the same reaction to the email notices initially. However, what I found over time was that it was in part due to my expectations based on what I was used to the exploder delivering. The passage of time gave me some distance from those expectations and the community system is pretty good, but different.
I have my community emails sorted into a folder by rule in Outlook and I sort that folder by subject. That puts things roughly into a conversation as they come in. If a topic looks interesting to me, I click through to the website. That’s the primary way I visit, I never go there just to browse. I’ve subscribed to the areas I’m interested in and rely on the emails to be aware of the discussion. In that way it works for me a lot like the exploder, information comes to me and I choose whether to interact with it or not. That interaction has to be done over the web is the primary difference.
It’s a very active space (7 community emails arrived while I was typing this) and I think it is set up to serve the users well. Those who have written it off and choose not to try it will miss out.
I just got one myself and followed it and it took me to my community “inbox” and the latest thing there was someone requesting to be a connection. So, I’m guessing the email means I have a new thing to act on in the community, in this case saying yes or no to “connecting” with them on the forum. That’s speculation, however, based on what following the link leads to.
I have no idea what connecting means (I’ve just asked here:
That sounds like a very efficient way to handle these emails. I wish they still carried the post thread within the email instead of just the most recent post. And I really hope they trim down their email formatting overhead to make it as lean as possible. Waiting and watching the “PTC Community” image and link to finally display, even if it’s only a fraction of a second. The boarders are nice but are plain waste of screen space as are the vertical spacing over/under and in between the banner and subject lines – it all needs to be condensed and simplified. Get rid of the images and replace them with hyperlink text. If you want to highlight something highlight the message. And what’s the 2” of gray field at the bottom for? It has 3 lines of text in it and there all an inch apart – condense and simplify! Please. Change is good sometimes – weekly rant is over.
I'm seeing very few posts that are using the "reply with quote" function that is typical for most forums. That could be a cause of post threads not carrying the context forward.
Following the handy-dandy guide, I followed several forums. I just made a reply to one of the topics in modeling so I could test it out and see what the emails looked like. I'm still waiting for the email. I'm sure I didn't miss any steps from this guide and I've been getting emails from Ryan all along. Anyone else tried it yet with better results?
In Reply to Scott Rockwell:
I wish they still carried the post thread within the email instead of just the most recent post.
