I find that my superusers are tripping over one-another to answer a question on the boards. Within minutes of an initial post, there are 3-4 replies from superusers and others. I've often heard that if there were a way for them to see if anyone else was replied to the post, they would wait until the first user has replied.

IDEA: User A and User B are superusers. User A sees a thread and begins replying to it. User B sees the same thread moments later, and clicks Reply. At the bottom of the Editor for User B, it shows "users replying to same post: User A, LiquidSasquatch" and this list is dynamically updated as users reply to a thread.

My users would like to see a better way to see new idea comments.  On the category page, you see how many ideas there are and how many things are new.  If you read all of the new ideas then you are left with the comments in the new column.  You then go to the Idea exchange itself and the number of new comments per idea are hard to see because they are just a small link below the idea itself.

I have a number of users that basically read every message.  On a forum board, they come back each day and the messages they have not read are at the top of the board and are indicated by a bold thread title.  On the idea exchange there is no equivalent.  One suggestion they had for this problem is a single RSS feed that includes comments to all Ideas but there is probably a better way to do this from the UI.  Perhaps the subject-only view of ideas makes the number of new comments apparent in the UI but I have not seen it yet.

Perhaps there is a good way to do this already and I have not seen it.

We need a feature that allows us to report on the Ideas that have been posted and their number of Kudos.  It should also include the label and status of each idea. 

This will help us make sure that each idea is being followed-up by the appropriate group in our company.  Right now, there is no way to see a list of all of the ideas and export that list for tracking purposes.  We're worried that things will fall through the cracks as we already have 141 ideas posted in just one week.  I have been able to use the advanced message search in conjunction with the "import from web" feature in Excel but the table it exports is very ugly and not that useful and is missing idea status and labels.

I apologize if I submitted something like this before - I tried searching to see if I did but I can't find it.

Hi,

As a system-admin on our instance, I get regular PM's from customers asking me detailed product questions that should be posted to the forums and not asked of me.

I'd like to ask that the PM function be enhanced to provide some basic e-mail functionality that would add things like auto-reply, out-of-office, and other basic features that would assist in setting expectations of the customers.

Thanks,

I'd like to have the ability as an admin to send out announcements via the private message tool to the entire community population or groups of members.  I realize I can make use of the announcements module, but it'd be much more effective to message the entire community from time to time.

I'm sure some within the Lithosphere will be view this as spamming members.  But I'm just referring to sending instructional messages to take advantage of certain features or to select an avatar or to participate in a brand new forum. 

It seems like this is a rather common feature in other communities and would be a great tool to help engage the member base.

Background:  Often when I see some new members who join and I recognize them as employees and wish to add a specific role (and resulting rank) to them, I have to remember the name, navigate to the admin panel and to the permissions, find the role and add the name.  Likewise, other times, I might see a member name in the course of reading a discussion and wish to click directly on that member's name and take action of affecting roles, or perhaps in the course of reading a PM.

Idea:  Add a link in the member profile that would only be seen by those with permissions to manage users.  Clicking the link would pop a new window with the content of editing permissions for that member, it would have the list of all roles which could be clicked to add or remove the particular role for the user, and below that panel is the list of of the individual permissions in case one wanted to (not recommended) make specific adjustments for a particular permission for just that user.  This alternate navigation path could simplify user management efforts.

With the new image upload, you can conveniently resize your original image to be smaller so that it fits in your post.  However, this sometimes can render larger images too small to be adequately seen.  Many sites handle this by allowing you to click on the image and have it open the original size either in a new window or inline on that page. 

The image gallery already does this - it displays a small version of the image and then when you click on it, you go to a new page where you can see the original size.  It would be great if this could be done for images embedded in posts as well.  The users of our forums have requested a feature like this many times over the last few years.

Suggestion:

Provide a function for "Invisible Ink" in the toolbar of the public post editor.   A user could highlight sections of text and click this function which would change the color of the text for visual confirmation that it was now hidden.   When published, text published in "invisible ink" would only visible to the posting member (if logged in) and to the moderators and admins, (or perhaps other special role that might have a permission enabled to view "invisible messages").

Intended Use Case:

In support forums, when discussing issues, it could be very helpful to allow members to fill out a template and include in their post, or otherwise include key information in their post like sales order numbers, hardware model and serial numbers, service tag numbers,  or other unique identifiers that would help employee support staff easily gather information without having to resort to PM or email exchanges with members and then re-associate that data back with original post content to form a more complete picture of the situation.

This could eliminate steps for support or sales agents, and speed up the response time for the member to receive a solution.   It could also allow techs or engineers who are following discussions to recognize and isolate certain issues to particular families of products.

Disclaimer:

I realize this may be a niche idea, but thought I would pose it to see if this, or some variation might have value for others.....

Problem: when I receive a new PM while logged into the forum, it will take until a refresh to see that I've received a new PM.

Suggestion: alert the user dynamically on the UI that a new PM has arrived, like a flashing box or a popup that a new PM has arrived. Or possibly an alert in the bottom right corner that a new PM has arrived.

Lithium provides great possibilities for RSS feeds. With Advanced Search, anyone can create custom feeds with practically no limitations.

However, many users never find the feeds as they are hidden in the Options or Search Options dropdowns.

How about making the RSS logo prominently visible in every place where you can create a feed?

These should include feeds from

- community level (new topics / new posts)

- board level (new topics / new posts)

- post level (replies)

- search options (custom feed based on search terms)

We have identified that allowing users to actively share their own content or that of other members could help grow the community and add value for our members.  Having seen the social bookmarking icons in the Ideas tool, how can we utilize this within all threads, or better yet, all posts? 

I envision this as either part of the signature, i.e., check box "Add Social Bookmarking Bar to my Signature," or embedded in the User sidebar of each post (again, maybe an opt-in feature).   Alternately, if not available on a post level, add the bar automatically to the title-bar area (on right?) of the first post in a thread. This perhaps would be a community-level auto-opt-in setting with an opt-out checkbox for the message composer.

This is about choices on how to share content - both at the community level and the thread/post level.  

I just wanted to put this out there... putting the image gallery as a tab within the my profile.

I was only able to access my image gallery by selecting my name at the top left,

then at the bottom right view my image gallery,

then was able to upload

I think being a tab within the my profile seems more logical...

both would be nice!

1. I would like the ability to be able to filter by label and tags. 
2. We should also be able to have an email sent, by label, so the specific groups that are resposible for that label can receive notification that they have a new idea to responsd to.