Community enhancements

[AndrewB]

Hi everyone, 

Thanks to all of you who have given constructive feedback on how to improve this community site. I've put together a list of items that are currently being worked on and I'll continue to modify this post as things progress or get added. 

Title	Description	Status
Visual indicator of Read vs. Unread messages	Unread message titles are bold, Read messages are not bold	Delivered
Increase default # of visible home page	Increase default number of posts on home page from 5 to 10	Delivered
Reduce whitespace padding	Eliminate unnecessary whitespace on forum pages like Q&A and Feature Ideas	Delivered
Feed enhancement	Clickable "Latest post", to bring you straight to the latest comment	Delivered
Mobile "Accepted Solution"	Create a green border around the post with an accepted solution to make it more obvious which post has one.	Delivered
Relative dates everywhere	Today, relative dates are shown for the original post, going forward it will be included on all comments as well	Delivered
Show username of latest poster	The feed will show the username of the latest poster	In progress
Home page feed inconsistencies	The home page feed is sometimes missing or duplicating posts	Delivered
Cannot Like comment on mobile	"Share this topic" is covering the Like button	In progress
Dedicated notification bell	View latest notifications from your current page without a full page reload	Planned
Increased feed density	Show post titles only; condense all other elements of the feed like labels	Planned
Post preview is showing as "solved"	When viewing preview on a comment, you see the Solved green banner (even though its not applied to the post)	Delivered
Mobile start a topic shows boards from all GCC	When creating a new post on mobile, all boards from GCC is showing in the selector. It should filter to Appsheet boards only	Planned
Copying HTML	When pasting into the editor and there is some html, the page will reload and strip the html. We are researching enabling full html for trusted members.	Researching
Highlight to quote	Use your cursor to highlight text from a post on the page and insert that text as a quote in the editor	Planned
Home page feed does not include Feature Ideas	Home page feed does not include feature ideas or feature ideas comments	Delivered
Linear format	Move all Appsheet forums to linear format instead of threaded by default	Researching
Smart compose	Use smart compose in the editor	Not feasible
Community statistics	Statistics are global; update to include only those for Appsheet	Planned
Mobile editor	Support for the same options as desktop editor including emojis, numbered list. Increase the size of the editing box.	Partially delivered (the editor box size has been increased)
Fixed position editing box	Float the editor to follow as you scroll on the page	Researching

[Joseph_Seddik]

Thank you Andrew!

It is important that this list includes all issues that the community members positively made effort to signal to the team, not just a selected set the team had decided to work on. All signalled issues should be in the list even for the ones that are not currently in the plan or will never be, and just be transparent about it.

This is the least to be done. I always try to look forward and be positive despite the setbacks, but comparing the list of issues from members' feedback with the team's list , I do feel disappointed. 

Thank you!

[Marc_Dillon]

Thanks Andrew!

------

@Joseph_Seddik 

"All signalled issues should be in the list ... but comparing the list of issues from members' feedback with the team's list , I do feel disappointed."

So what's missing then?

[Joseph_Seddik]

Wow!

I won't speak for others, though from the top of my head I can list others' feedback, but I'll only list the issues I myself reported or was involved in discussion about them. 

- Text formatting in mobile view.

- Small unresizable edit box in mobile view.

- Fixed position edit box.

- Equivalent to <details> </details> as we had in the old forum.

- Emojis don't work unless you click on the emoji button in the edit box and choose from them. In mobile view you do not even have this button. 

- and you can not write a numbered list in mobile view. 

- scrambled formatting look with changing line spacing that in some parts of the posts you see two paragraphs almost touching each other while lines belonging to the same paragraph have larger vertical space in between, and you cannot do anything about it. A paragraph later you can have two blank lines of empty space then some almost touching lines, then a large interspace again, and you cannot do anything about it.

These are what I remember from the top of my head, since I don't have time unfortunately to go through old posts. 

[SkrOYC]

About the last thing:

This is another paragraph
This is another line on the same paragraph

This is another paragraph.

Here a new line is Shift+Enter/return
Discourse was Enter/Return

Here a new paragraph is Enter/Return
Discourse was Enter/Return twice

I'm not saying it works great here, I'm just used to it on Thunderbird

[AndrewB]

Thanks for showing it. We will reduce the line height from 28px to 24px on Thursday. This will help clarify the spacing between lines and a new paragraph. Example below:

 

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @AndrewB ,

Looking forward to first releases of 10th Feb. "Linear Format" is also very crucial. It really gets confusing when the replies are not in linear format. becomes difficult to know who has replied when and hwich is the latest reply in the thread. Thank you for all your help.

A couple of threads I was participating in were already answered by someone else and somehow it was not evident.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

It sounds that currently the post thread summary shows if there is any like for the first post, unless I missed a relevant setting.

It will be great if the cumulative likes received for that entire post thread are shown in the summary. Numbers of likes is one indicator , if not the entire indicator of usefulness of a post and solution.

[Lynn]

Also will be good to fix the inability to  "like" relies to posts on mobile. It is damaging to my reputation 😁😉

[AndrewB]

Yes, this is coming! ❤️❤️❤️

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @AndrewB 

> Home page feed does not include Feature Ideas
> Home page feed does not include feature ideas or feature ideas comments
> Researching

This is something that I would like to see reflected as soon as possible.
Currently, we have the following situation, and I feel that the useful suggestions from App Creator are being wasted.

* If we don't actively check Feature Ideas, we won't know what kind of ideas have been posted.
* The status of ideas is unclear (ideas posted after a community change are only marked as Open).

###Appendix
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Community-Feedback/Please-update-the-status-of-the-feature-r...

[Marc_Dillon]

---

@takuya_miyai wrote:

> Home page feed does not include Feature Ideas

---

I actually just posted a similar thing yesterday!

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Community-Feedback/Release-notes-don-t-show-up-in-the-main-q...

[takuya_miyai]

Thanks @Marc_Dillon 

You commented ahead of time!😁

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Community-Feedback/Release-notes-don-t-show-up-in-the-main-q...

They have started to respond, so I will wait patiently.🙂

[Joseph_Seddik]

@AndrewB 

Hello Andrew, 

I haven't had the chance to check this post recently, somehow I missed the updates for the past 10 days. Anyway I just wanted to thank you for having included all the reported issues in your table, much appreciated!!

Also, thanks much for increasing the size for the edit box in mobile view, this has been greatly helpful for me. Most of the time I'm using mobile view to access the community, so the more options and facilities to be added to mobile view the more my experience will easier. 

I would like to ask you one more thing please:

Please reconsider the last item "Fixed position edit box" you marked as not feasible. I'm specifically asking for this, not only because of the huge benefit to community members but also because I know it should be easy to implement. In fact you wouldn't even need a script, it is just a matter of adding a CSS class with something like: (position: sticky). 

I'm not a web developer at all, I might know few things, and I'm sure Google's experts know much more and would find an even easier way to do it. Thanks in advance!

[AndrewB]

Noted on the edit box. I appreciate your insight here and I'll take this back to the team. 

[Joseph_Seddik]

Thank you @AndrewB !

[Lynn]

👍

[Steve]

What progress?

Why is this post still pinned?

[AndrewB]

Tomorrow we are releasing the next round of enhancements which include:

• Home page feed to include feature ideas and announcements
• Fix for any home page feed inconsistencies
• On posts: relative dates fixed 
• Topic page load performance improvements 

[Marc_Dillon]

Relative dates look good, thanks!

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Yes, relative dates make it easier to understand the post replies' timings.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @AndrewB ,

Request you to consider below mentioned points.

It will be great if we can merge the two search options on the pages as they seem to have almost identical functionality after couple of clicks. Highlighted in orange below.  The slim search at the top seems to be good if made little more prominent.

Also it will be great if the whitespace highlighted in blue can be reduced further.

[Joseph_Seddik]

Hello @AndrewB 

Here is a new one please. Thanks.

Ordered list starting number and the useless HTML ... - Google Cloud Community

[Joseph_Seddik]

A new one. Thanks. 

Emojis in Code Snippets - Google Cloud Community  

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @AndrewB 

Can I just check this thread for updates?
If so, it would be great if you could pin it in the Community Feedback category.
I have not been able to check for a while and I was not aware of any item status updates or new additions being made.

[AndrewB]

We have our next round of small enhancements coming this Thursday 4/28 and again in early May so I will those as they come. 

[takuya_miyai]

Thanks@AndrewB 
I am looking forward to community update.😄

[SkrOYC]

We need some updates here @AndrewB