Forum Upgrade - Some Details

[Former Member]

Hello all,

the forums have been upgraded to a newer version (Jive Forums 5.5.6).

If you should find any issues, please report them either here or send an email to our support address sdn@sap.com.

After the upgrade, the search indexes must be rebuilt. This means, that the search is not working at present and will come back later today.

There are a few changes towards the old version:

1. New editor

By clicking the „Save Now“ button (or automatically every 30 seconds), the current state of your message is saved in the database. So after navigating away from the editor, the message is not gone but can be used at a later stage.

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. The draft gets deleted from the database then. 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 valid 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”).

Another nice feature is that you can resize the editor: When you look at the bottom right corner of the editor, you see some small diagonal lines (under the editor's scroll bar). When you move the mouse over it, the mouse pointer changes - at this point just hold down the mouse key and drag it down until the editor fits your needs.

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.

Furthermore, Jive offers “macros” that automatically format your message when using tags like these:

- &#123;quote&#125;Hallo&#123;quote&#125; -> marks the text “Hallo” in italics and with a special background

- &#123;code&#125;System.out.println(“Hallo”);&#123;code&#125; -> marks the line as programming code

- &#123;size:12&#125;Hallo&#123;size&#125; -> sets font size

- &#123;color:green&#125;Hallo&#123;color&#125; -> sets font color

- &#123;font:Courier&#125;Hallo&#123;font&#125; -> sets font face

There are similar tags where you can use something like &#123;forum:id=40&#125;, 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:

- &#123;{forum:id=123&#125; -> renders a link to the forum with the forum name as link text.

- The same is valid for &#123;thread:id=328477&#125; and &#123;message:id=123456&#125; (message subject is link text)

- &#123;user:id=867&#125; -> renders a link to the user’s profile (with the display 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 &#123;code&#125; 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

With the new Jive version there is a new icon that allows users to report what they consider as „abuse“. It is a black exclamation point in a yellow rectangle in a post's button bar. Clicking this report icon brings the user to a screen where he has to classify the abuse (General Abuse, Profanity etc.) and is asked to comment on his decision. The report can then be reviewed by our community team.

Regards,

Michael Goeck

[former_member583013 · Accepted solution]

Hello Michael,

Very useful enhancements to the Forum Interface.

This is what I found. After editing an existing message, the Edit Message button does not change its label. Though clicking the button saves the changes to the message I though it would be more intuitive if it said Post Message as you are is already in Edit mode.

Just a thought !!

Suda

[former_member396676]

Can we have SAP help in arabic language?

Thanks,

Vrajesh

[rodrigo_paisante3]

Hi all.

The new layout is very good! Very nice, SDN "wearing" SAP colors is very good.

I suggest one thing. Is there a link in SAP site for SDN, and one from SDN to SAP?

SDN has 1.5 milion developers, doesnt have? I think it is important to show this support in SAP site, and make it visible to SAP clients.

Regards

[Former Member]

Hi Rodrigo,

at least from the service market place you can directly jump to scn. Another link can be found [here|http://www.sap.com/ecosystem/communities/index.epx].

best regards

Siggi

[stefan_grube]

Hi Folks,

due to the grey frames, it is not possible to enlarge the thread content. The vertical scroll bar is hidden, so I have to scroll down first to get the scroll bar.

See this thread:

Regards

Stefan

[Jelena]

I have the same issue. Not sure if my wide-screen monitor or IE might be to blame...

The message text seems to be wider than the allocated frame width. Horizontal scroll-bar is at the very bottom, so every time I have to scroll all the way down, then reposition the scroll-bar so that the full text fits on my screen and then I can read the messages. Have to do this for almost every post, unfortunately.

Is there anything that could be done to wrap the text lines better?

[former_member181995]

Temporary solution:You just keep press the mouse and move right with the selecting text,In this way you need not to go down each time for scroll right.

This way could be for the time solution.

[GauthamV]

One more option is just keep your cursor at tht point and press right arrow ( --> )in your keyboard.

[former_member396676]

Hi,

It is really nice look of SDN.

I suggest following

1) Can we wiki for Solution Manager ?

2) Option for questioner/Thread owner to chnage forum

Many questions are posted wrongly in forums because thread owner does not know the answer.

For example - a question in SD forum may require solution from FICO or MM experts or thread owner gets the answer that " Take help of MM consultant". In this case Thread owner should have option to shift the question to MM forum in the thread itself.

This will help quick answers and reduce database of unanswered or open questions.

Thanks

Vrajesh

[Former Member]

would it be possible to have all the downloads as torrent files , i've tried downloading the CE a couple of times now and right around the 1.5 GBs mark they always fail . I've had a couple of users also complain of this and there is even a bloger recently that also complained about this . I'm just thinking if we torrent the files and use the power of p2p to our benefit ( like the guys at novell and a couple of other linux distro ) we would get great feedback from the tech community in our favor .

[michael_goeck]

Hi,<br />

<br />

today we have released three small changes to the forums:<br />

- Code button: The code button doesn't frame every line of a selected multi-line text, but only the whole selection.<br />

- Search: A search result should open correclty when you choose to open it in a new browser window.<br />

- Insert Link: The link should be correctly inserted into the message editor.<br />

<br />

Regards,<br />

<br />

Michael

[JozsefSzikszai]

hi Michael,

Since 1-2 hours I am not able to open some threads, I get: 500 Internal Server Error

SAP J2EE Engine/6.40

null

Details: No details available

Looks like I am not able to open that threads, I've ever replied to. With threads, I've never replied to, have no problem.

thanks

ec

[michael_goeck]

Hi Eric,

I got the same impression, but it seemed that the threads were affected that I read this morning.

Anyway, now the issue suddenly seems to be gone. There was a NullPointerException deep in some framework classes, at a spot in the code where I would not have expected one...

Regards,

Michael

[former_member204514]

Hi,

Can we have the auto refresh in forum??

Like the new threads or replies updated without clicking refresh button.

Foe example livescore update in cricinfo.com.

Page up and Down still annoys me as i dont have access to Firefox in office.

Regards,

anil

[Former Member]

The "insert a link" seems to position it in a random place, neither where the cursor was before opening the tool, nor where it is when you hit the insert link button. What's even more annoying, it overwrites whatever's there.

Just checked, it seems it places it at the end. Only ones of over a screen seem to suffer the problem. So maybe instead of random, someone has hardcoded the place on the assumption that it was the maximum.

When you quote an original the closing quote brace appears immediately after the opening one, not enclosing the quoted text. I have to question the wisdom of not using proper end tags (i.e. with a / ) - anyone using this site should understand them. One particular (and it should have been obvious) side effect is that you can't nest them. The workaround for combining multiple quote levels with the usenet style > notation is unintuitive and inelegant doesn't even begin to describe it.

Looking on the bright side, it makes bbCode look good...

[michael_goeck]

Hi,

I could reproduce both issues and they will be looked into.

Regards,

Michael

[former_member396676]

Good job done Mr.Michael,

I have a suggestion.If you can change this feature,it would minimize response time for answer and lower storage on SMP server.

We have search option for threads and it is quiet useful.If you can have this search option in 'Post a question" box...It means the user have to post question in search option and if he is not satisfied with answers he gets through search engine he can post question to forum.

In my opinion,It would help user a lot, he does not have to wait for answer and do not get repetitive replies later

2)Members should be discouraged to copy/paste library material,because it takes space on some server and duplication of storage facility instead of that copy/paste help link would be easier.

Regards,

Vrajesh

Edited by: Vrajesh Nayak on Jan 1, 2008 3:58 PM

[Former Member]

vivek

[Former Member]

Obviously the forum update has destroyed all code-formatting sections of existing posts. This is not acceptable and must be fixed.

Armin

[Former Member]

Thank to windows, you can run more programs at the same time, even an IE and a Firefox

My problem is the following - when I'm browsing the forums at the second level ( f.e.: Expert Forums » ABAP Development ) in the thread list all sticky threads appear. In the old version the sticky ones were not in the list, only the newest posts. Is it possible to remove them again from there?

Thanx

Tamá

[Former Member]

The new tags are nice. We can link to forums, threads and users, but what about other objects? Blogs for example?

Rob

[Former Member]

Hi Michel,

just a suggestion. For me, it's not that simple to remember the following "macros":

, , , . Moreover, I was not able to see these macros at the right side of the message, together with bold, italics, underline, headings and so on.

Could it be possible to add these macros to the right-side? Or to the toolbar above the message?

Thanks for your time. Best regards,

Alvaro

[Former Member]

Forum search not working.

Its giving an error as follows :

The specified thread [0] was not found.

This is happening since yesterday.

[michael_goeck]

Hello,

it seems that the respective thread is no longer available, e.g. deleted.

For the future, please provide some details, e.g. thread URL/ID, otherwise it is quite hard to follow up on the reported issue.

Regards,

Michael

[Former Member]

>

> Forum search not working.

>

> Its giving an error as follows :

>

>

> The specified thread [0] was not found.

>

> This is happening since yesterday.

This also happens to me a lot, and I think it happens when I try to open a thread from the search result list in a new window, not by simply clickin on the link with the left mouse button.

Example:

The link that is presented in the list has the URL

https://forums.sdn.sap.com/click.jspa?searchID=7999960&messageID=4419048

When you open that in a new window, it gets redirected to

And then it immediately gets redirected again, to

?

And that page produces the error. If you simply remove the last "?" in the URL it loads the whole thread correctly - I guess there is some bug in the redirecting code.

Regards

Thomas

[michael_goeck]

Hi,

today we have released three small changes to the forums:

- Code button: You may have already noticed the small "&lt;&gt;" button in the editor toolbar. Use this one to format selected message text as code.

- Sort order in Category view: Sticky Threads don't appear on top of the category's thread list anymore, unlike in the forum's thread list.

- Enhanced markup legend: In the box "Further Markup Possibilities" next to the editor you find a list of all new ways to format your message.

Regards,

Michael

[Former Member]

Wahoo!

Rob

[former_member583013]

That's Great! news -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

[michael_goeck]

Hi,

another update: The search is enabled again. The real problem seem to be certain filters that are responsible for escaping old Wiki style syntax and for displaying code that is formatted with the old way, using square brackets. Both have produced endless loops. We already disabled the first filter that I have mentioned, and if we are having problems again, we have to say good-bye to the old Java code filter, too. This does not affect the new code syntax using the curly braces.

The huge amount of display filters seems to slow down the thread view and the search result view.

Let's see how the forums run tomorrow during peak times.

Regards,

Michael Goeck

[Former Member]

Hi!

I hope not only I feel using the forums is as slow as a racing turtle... No-no, that's too fast, it's closer to a wounded snail. I see the trees growing, while waiting to the result of the next click.

Please do something

Thank you

Tamá

[Former Member]

putting away the 'search'-possibility is not a good idea this should be fixed very soon, because it is (for me) the most powerful function in SDN. and thanks god that it is there

[Former Member]

how do i search for my queries .... previously there was a field to search now i dont see it. please help.

[Former Member]

it nice to see and get data.

[michael_goeck]

Hello,

a short update on the upgrade: The built-in Jive Forum search causes severe problems. Once it is running and used for a while, the the application becomes unresponsive, because all application threads are fully used and the CPUs are hanging on 100% usage. If we turn off the search, the situation gets better immediately.

So unfortunately we have to turn it off every now and then if we see problems, and this is almost every 30 minutes. Please use the SDN search in the meantime.

Sorry for any inconvenience. We are working on this issue with high priority to bring back the forum search as soon as possible.

Regards,

Michael Goeck

[pokrakam]

Great stuff! Especially like the abuse button, but I suspect you may regret putting that there

What I would like to see is a markup button for posting code. Yes I'm quite capable of writing the tags myself but it doesn't encourage the majority of folks who still post code in regular text.

Also, an option to hide the "plain text help" window as it does significantly reduce message box real estate. The sidebar can be collapsed which helps, but as I'd previously reported [over here|; this is still not very useable.

Oh, and the new format of entering urls without the default "http://" prefix is most welcome.

Otherwise a big thumbs up from me.

Cheers,

Mike

[matt]

I concur about a CODE markup button. Perhaps with a big label next to it saying "Highlight any code in your text then PRESS ME".

Otherwise, not bad. Seems faster too.

[Former Member]

Agreed. Would be very useful to select our code we paste and then press a simple button to turn it automaticly into ...{/code} the / is intentional so it doesn't turn into a real code snipet

Also the idea of adding screenshot to the message would be great.

Oh and thank you for these enhencement. Its apreciated...

[pokrakam]

No screenshots please!

(sorry, had to test the new tags ... like it!)

1. SDN forums aren't the fastest-loading pages as is.

2. Some of us are on roaming/mobile networks. It increases bandwith.

3. It makes people even lazier in describing their problem. If you need attachments, put it somewhere - e.g. wiki, homepage - and post a link to it. That way we have a choice whether to open it(see point 2.)

See [this discussion|; for more info.

Cheers,

Mike

PS: could we have tags for different colours?

[Former Member]

Screenshot YES !!!!!

'Bandwith' is nor argument in these days. A screenshot is something very fine, because it enables you to describe a problem more exactly.

so it would be very nice to have screenshots.

b. regards, Martin

[pokrakam]

> 'Bandwith' is nor argument in these days.

Huh? It takes minimum 5 seconds to load a forum thread at the site I'm sitting right now. Granted, some sites are better than others.

Aside from that, I think it's more of an issue than ever with global/remote working becoming increasingly popular. Time on the road is prime time for perusing SDN, usually done on a mobile phone connection (and for self-employed folks that means paying by the MB - worse still when in different countries).

> A screenshot is something very fine, because it enables you > to describe a problem more exactly.

>

For some of us, yes. But not for the majority posting in the ABAP forums.

To make matters worse, the windoze default is BMP. Thus when the WUG mailing list enabled attachments, folks started posting .bmp files over 10MB in size.

Nothing against pictures where applicable. BUT, it's only one extra step to upload it somewhere else and post a link. At least it gives me the choice of downloading it.

Cheers,

Mike

[martin_nooteboom]

I agree with Mike on the screen shots, I can see the posts in the Workflow forum now; one sentence 'Workflow in error' and a screen shot of the log (probably not even the technical log). That would increase the noise even further.

Regards,

Martin

[Former Member]

Mike,

while it's true that people tend to attach oversized images to postings if they have the opportunity to do so, it's no rocket science nowadays to resize and/or convert the uploaded images to some suitable format on the fly. This way only the careless uploader is affected by a long time to upload but the other participants might well benefit from a link to a screenshot (no inline images!).

my 2 cents,

anton

[pokrakam]

...only slightly more rocket science than to mark code as code, and we all know how many people can cope with that one

BTW, I have one more gripe about the forums:

Cannot use up/dn or pageup/pgdown keys to move through thread. This is with Firefox and Internet Exploder. Personally I can't stand being mousebound.

Cheers,

Mike

[Former Member]

>

> ...only slightly more rocket science than to mark code as code, and we all know how many people can cope with that one

>

> BTW, I have one more gripe about the forums:

> Cannot use up/dn or pageup/pgdown keys to move through thread. This is with Firefox and Internet Exploder. Personally I can't stand being mousebound.

>

> Cheers,

> Mike

I hate that too. Clicking somewhere inside the forum page fixes this though: After that you can use the keyboard...

[pokrakam]

Actually you're partly right: tested at home and this works with Firefox. Doesn't with Internet Exploder.

Unfortunately many sites (including my two current projects) force me to use IE

[Former Member]

You must be one of our end-users. A screenshot alone is of very little help without the steps leading up to it.

And you might be on an ultra-fast connection, not everybody is so lucky.

[Former Member]

Hi Michael,

The new forum looks quite good. What really I think is a lifesaver is that report abuse button. Finally the "noise" factor in the forums will be reduced (I hope) to a great degree..

Sameer

[Former Member]

Michael - very nice look and feel. It may take a bit of getting used to, but I like the new features.

Except one:

I notice that all of the sub-forum links to wikis and FAQs also appear at the top of the ABAP Development forum. It would be nice if they would only appear in their resepecive sub-forum; otherwise, fewer new messages will be on the individual pages.

Rob

[Former Member]

I do not see any abusive stuff on SDN.

Do we really need this feature?

Search filter are also good.

I think, there should be new feature about screen shot, so that we can describe our error messages more graphically, and upload those screen shot with message.

Edited by: Knowledge Seeker on Dec 16, 2007 11:10 PM

[Former Member]

Thank you Michael & Co. for the changes and new features!

The "Report Abuse" button is an excellent idea!

Kind regards,

Julius