FAQ Product Updates

Quick question on this topic.

Without giving full Admin Control rights (which are limited by license), how can we enable our internal users to create Product Updates directly?

Use Case here is that we have documentation team members who produce lists of new features when we have product updates.  It seems that they can’t create these posts themselves, but I would have to do it for them (but that means all replies are sent to me, not the actual author).

Thanks!

Hello @mstruening. Currently, it is not possible for end-users to create Product updates. Like articles, they are really meant to be created by your team to inform about news on the product. 

About the notification issue you are mentioning, this idea could help solve that. I would encourage you to vote on it:

For our company, we have dozens of different Product Managers who might want to make Product Announcements.  Having the ability to assign that right to a selected User Role would be very helpful.

I’ll post an Idea on this (and vote on the linked one).

Thanks!

Is there a way to upload documents to a new product update?

Hello @naveen1209 , no it is not possible yet we are planning to add it soon!

Hey @Marion Frecaut, is there a possibility of pinning a topic within the Product Feature module? 

@Emma Muldoon one the Product Updates page, you can feature topics as tiles when in the Customize mode. You do that on the front end, not in Control. 

@Marion Frecaut is there any update on the ability to add attachments for Product Updates? We really need to be able to attach a documentation PDF to our Product Updates.

Hi @Chelsea Roberts! Unfortunately, we don’t have short-term plans or possibility to add attachments for product updates, but it is definitely a functionality gap we want to bridge, alongside others related to content types, which is going to be our goal for early next year. We are currently undergoing significant technical improvements that will enable us to achieve this as planned. 

We've recently implemented Product Updates on our forum. And we're running in to a few usability limitations.

We allow our end-users to reply to each product update so they can give us feedback or report issues with said update. However, some of our users are less forum-savvy and will accidentally start a new topic with a message that should be a reply to a product update. 

Today we noticed that we cannot move such a separate topic/reaction to an existing product update. Is there a particular reason why this is not possible? And can this be changed?

Also, is there a specific reason why a product update cannot be assigned to a moderator? Because we allow our users to reply to product updates we also need to keep an eye on them so we can reply to those replies. This is easier to do when a product update can be assigned to a moderator.

Or, if that is not possible, can (one or more) additional columns be added to the Product Updates back end page so we can filter that overview on replies and/or last activity

Hi @Erik_! Moving a reply to another topic or start a new thread with it are functionalities we did not get around to implementing yet, but it is our goal to fill in these gaps. The same is valid for assigning a moderator to a product update topic. I don’t have yet anything concrete planned, but I will keep you posted about these developments.  

Excellent, thank you!

@Cristina, two more things we noticed :)

• It seems you can't link to specific replies in a product update. This leads to users getting notification emails about a new reply, but them not actually getting to that reply when they click the topiclink in the mail. They just end up on the topic page at the top.
• Display of users is different from the rest of the forum. It's not showing the colours/titles/logos and so on that the rest of the forum does. This is confusing for users as they cannot easily differentiate between moderators and other community members when reading replies.

Hi @Erik_! Thank you for sharing these findings! For the first one I would recommend raising a ticket with our support team as the expected behaviour is to open the topic and take the user to the exact reply. 

For the second point, we need to implement the same user gamification elements on the replies of ideas and product updates and we have this open idea for it, if you would like to vote on it as well:

• Rank icon in Ideation and Product Updates modules Released
• 25 Votes

Thanks, @Cristina! I've upvoted the existing idea and will raise a ticket for the first point.

@Cristina 

PU have been very successful since we’ve implemented it. The views on those topics are always on top, so that's very cool. We advise customers to subscribe to PU so they get e-mails when a new one arrives.

Question time: Is there a way to see how many subscribers there are? And whom? Can't find it.

Hi @Paul_ ! We don’t have yet a way to see the list of subscribers to categories or modules, but it is something we would like to look into adding. I’m looping in my colleague @Aleksandra who is also looking into this improvement. 

Hi @Paul_ 

As Cristina mentioned, we are looking into how to give you more insights about subscriptions. You can find more details here

We recently launched our Community, and I am preparing to turn on Product Updates & Ideation.  One huge issue, that I am reading about above has been going on for awhile.  I do NOT have a staff, our company is structured by Product and each Product owner creates their own content.  My choices here are:

1. I have to create a private area where they can post conversations then, I have turn them into articles and post them myself in Product updates. Definitely not something I have the bandwidth for.
2. Give our Product Owners Permissions to create articles. Doing this puts me over my team number by16 people. 

If there are other suggestions, I am open to them!

Based on the replies and feedback above I’d say this is a top issue and feature request, I submitted an idea here. Please Upvote it!

Hi @Cristina, is there an update regarding this? It's still relevant for us. It's also not possible for users to edit their messages within the alloted time for that, I imagine that might be related to the other mentioned things.

Hi @Jasper ! Thanks for following up on this. Regarding:

1/ Moving a reply to another topic or start a new thread with it: you can now move replies on Articles, Questions and Conversation to an existing topic or to a new topic. Starting a new thread with it is not available yet, but still planning for it!

2/ Assigning a moderator to a product update is now possible 🎉 You can also select multiple product updates and assign moderators to it. 

Do you still have challenges around editing messages within the allocated time? 

Thanks!

Is there another update to give on this? It's been a year and we still cannot split replies from a Product Update, or merge replies/topics into it. 
This is critical functionality for us. Our users are questioning the professionalism of our platform when we have to tell them “Sorry, I can't move your reply, please retype it yourself in the proper place”

Hi @Erik_ ! Unfortunately, there is no update on this. We are still considering the functionality considering our current roadmap. Would you mind jumping on a quick call with me where I can give you an update on functionalities, such as increased hierarchy in community categories, we are working on and get some more insights into splitting/merging replies for product updates?

Please use this link to schedule a call with me if you are interested.

We've already, fairly recently, met with you (virtually) about the increased hierarchy (which is something we're looking forward to!) 😊 I don't think I have much more to say about the splitting and merging than I did above. It seems like such a basic functionality for a community to have in all its modules.