Skip to main content

Hey there!

We’re trying something a little off the beaten path in our Community where we’ll be hosting a sort of “happy hour” where members can comment on topics and we answer things live. Not quite an AMA but sort of. 

Question (I feel like it’s a no): do topics auto-refresh to show new replies, or would people have to reload the page in order to see new replies? If it’s the latter, that will feel a little cumbersome. And if it IS the latter, is there some script that can be used to enable an auto-refresh of all topics, or certain topics, or topics within a specific category?

Thanks!

Hey @nicksimard 👋,

Unfortunately the functionality for this doesn’t exist at the moment. It sounds like a use case that will be solved when we build the Notification Center later this year. Our engineering team responsible for this will be working on it right after the release of Email Campaigns and some Event module improvements.

There are definitely methods to enable an auto-refresh on a particular category but I’m not sure how elegant the solution would be. I think it would be a bad experience if a user is reading replies or is halfway through writing a reply for the page to refresh (even if you implemented an alert to confirm if the user wants to refresh). As cumbersome as having to refresh the page is, at least the user is still in control here. Let me know what your thoughts are for this, I’m happy to continue thinking along with you for alternative workarounds!


Atleast the ‘Newest first’ view for all content (Discussions, Ideas, Blog post replies, etc) should be available for the CMgr to enable

  


@nicksimard I’m starting this exact same thing in my community, and I am concerned about how this will work if people don’t think to refresh. Would love to hear how it goes for you and if you have any tips!


Thanks @olimarrio!

We’ve decided against using inSided for this and will be trying a different solution instead. If there was a way for replies to automatically appear without affecting anyone writing a response, this would help us to avoid collisions when moderating as well.

Several times I’ve started responding to something and by the time I submit it (because it requires some time to explore, get screenshots, etc), someone else has already responded. If replies auto-loaded I might have caught that and not continued with my own.

So I think it could help in multiple ways if replies loaded automatically without affecting anyone in the process of creating their own reply :) 


I think we need to distinguish between an “instant messing service” and an online community.

inSided provide a Community Hub experience for users to gather information and expand their knowledge. While I too am in the habit of looking for a response. I also appreciate that when dealing with “technical” answers it can take some time, I ma sure at Zapier it is often not a simple answer.

 

@nicksimard it sounds very AMA like. Even for us, holding AMAs is via Zoom and any unanswered questions are addressed via the community. Probably the best bet right now.


Reply