Exploder vs. PTC Community Summary?

[A.DelNegro]

So, I’ve been hearing all the chatter about PTC Community and getting rid of the Exploder etc. but since I don’t attend the conferences or spend much time at PTC community can someone in the know summarize the changes we can expect regarding this?

My assumption at this point is that the Exploder will disappear someday (without notice) and I will need to go to PTC Community and try to somehow recreate the best software support system I have come to know.

I don’t want to start a new diatribe about the merits/issues of each system, I think we have beaten that horse to death (to no avail). I just want to know what the path forward is supposed to be.

Thanx
Tony

[iceblink1]

Tony,

You should have received 2 emails already from Dan Glenn
<-> about the upcoming migration.
The first message said migration would happen in April.
The first migration tests are being done as we speak.
So if all goes well the migration may be next week. If all is not well,
we may have a month more to go.

The main change is that everything is now forum based with option to
have emails sent, instead of the other way around. With all pros and
cons as have been discussed in the past.

Best regards,
Patrick

[davehaigh]

I sent this out some time ago. I’ve updated it to remove some misconceptions I had. This should at least get you started.

I’m reconsidering how I’m doing my mail filtering because the amount of mail from the community is overwhelming.
As of this morning I have 831 emails in my PTC Creo folder that I haven’t looked at and 399 in the Windchill folder.

I’m still asking questions on the mail exploder because even with the reduced participation, I get quick answers. I’ll likely use this until they pull the plug.

David Haigh

[dgschaefer]

Tony,

Go to the Community, create an account (you can use your tech support account) and make sure the email on that account matches the one at PTC user. Then, after the merge, your two accounts should merge too. Read through Dan’s emails and look for emails from Ryan at PTC too for details on that.

David,

I sort my “PTC Community” email folder by subject which helps a lot in weeding through the volume. If it’s not a topic I’m interested in, I can delete all of those emails quickly.

I’ve been posting in both places too, but I’m not finding one consistently faster than the other. Answers from the Community come fast too.

--

[StephenW]

I agree with Doug. The speed of the exploder is usually matched by the speed of PTC community (not to be confused with the speed of PTC support).
The traffic on the community is now significantly higher than here at the exploder. There are very knowledgeable participants there, some of which came from the exploder and some of which have never heard of or used the exploder.

I was dead set against the transition at first but I don’t want to completely lose the user type support so I am 100% supporting the move to the community, mostly since there is no other reasonable alternative.

I was very specific on which communities I follow over there because the mail volume would quickly become overwhelming if you subscribed many of them, which is the sign of a thriving community.

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NOV Rig Systems
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[lsrutkowski]

I know a lot of people are used to the old tried-and-true email method of getting notifications and updates, but don't overlook the power of the RSS feed.

[lsrutkowski]

The RSS feeds on the PTC User Community are located under the ACTIONS menu (the option is called View Feeds). Under there, you can see the feed links for the various topics for that category. Be aware that the feeds for the Creo top-level community are different than the feeds under the modeling sub-community under Creo which are different than the fees for the Manufacturing sub-community, etc.

As for handling the RSS feeds, there are several programs out there than can do this for you. Most non-simplified email applications can manage RSS feeds (Outlook, Thunderbird), as can Internet Explorer (version 8 is the earliest I have installed and it can manage them) and FireFox (called “live bookmarks”). Here is the Wiki page for RSS Feed aggregators: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators.

Remember: access to RSS feeds may or may not be regulated by your company’s IT department or policy.

For me, I use Outlook to manage my RSS feeds. When a new topic is posted to one of the forums I am following, or a new post is added, it appears as a "New Message". However, the only information I have in the message in Outlook is the original post. To view the rest of the thread, I need to go to the PTC User Community directly. Thankfully, the end of each post in the RSS feed includes a direct link to that thread.

From: Paul Adams
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 9:24 AM
To: Srutkowski, Lawrence
Subject: RE: [proecad] - RE: Exploder vs. PTC Community Summary?

How do you get use of it?

From: Lawrence Srutkowski [mailto:-]
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 8:25 AM
To: -
Subject: [proecad] - RE: Exploder vs. PTC Community Summary?

I know a lot of people are used to the old tried-and-true email method of getting notifications and updates, but don't overlook the power of the RSS feed.

[ryankelley]

Just wanted to say thanks to all who chimed in on this discussion to helpAnthony and the other PTC/USER members become more familiar with PTC Community. We're putting the final touches on our migration as I type this and will be rolling out the changes Wednesday evening into Thursday morning and I really hope you all join us at our new, collective destination for customer knowledge sharing.

I'm really pleased to read that a number of the members here who previously considered themselves to be skeptics have had positive experiences within the community with not only the speed at which they recieve repsonses but also the quality of those responses. When I had the chance to sit down with the Technical Committee chairs this past January I assured them that what makes up a great community isn't the tools, but rather the members that choose to offer their time and commitment to helping us build a great destination for their peers.