The forums have been upgraded to Jive Forums 5.5.6 version. This upgrade comes of course, with cool new features including...
1. New editor
You'll notice when you create a new post now that there is a button "Save Now" which when clicked (or every 30 seconds automatically), the current state of your message is saved in the database. So after navigating away from the editor, the message is not lost but can be used later. It even lets you know the draft was saved (see below).
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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. Then the draft gets deleted from the database. 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 true 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").
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.
In addition, Jive offers "macros" that automatically format your message when using tags like these:
- {quote} Hallo {quote} -> marks the text "Hallo" in italics and with a special background
- {code}System.out.println("Hallo"){code} -> marks the line as programming code
- {color:green}Hallo{color} -> sets font color
There are similar tags where you can use something like {forum:id=40} 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:
- {forum:id=123} -> renders a link to the forum with the forum 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 {code} 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
Many of you will be happy to learn that in the new version there is a new icon that allows users to report "abuse". It is a black exclamation point in a yellow rectangle (see image below - 1st icon) in a post's button bar. Clicking this report icon brings the user to a screen where he/she has to classify the abuse (General Abuse, Profanity etc.) and is asked to comment on his decision. The report can then be reviewed by the community team.
If you should find any forum upgrade issues, please report them either in Michael Goeck's forum Forum Upgrade - Some Detailsor send an email to sdn@sap.com.
Kudos to the platform team and special thanks to Michael Goeck , for his documentation, implementation and all around cheery disposition (even when he has to come in on a weekend)!
We hope you all enjoy the new Jive version!
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