What is the difference between "Overview" and "Discussions" in the Communities?

Overview doesn't give you the bold titles of discussions in when there are new discussions which you haven't read or the (Updated) notation for discussions which you have read but have new content since you last visited. Discussions does these things, and also allows you to click on the elapsed time since the last post in a discussion, which takes you to that last post in that discussion (as long as it is a single-page discussion; in a multiple-page discussion, that link doesn't work as it's supposed to work).

I don't find Overview useful, so I rarely look at it.

Maybe others can say why they find Overview useful? It hasn't been useful to me.

I don't find Overview useful, so I rarely look at it.

Agree completely. Maybe we are missing something?

Barry

TommieJ wrote:

What is the difference between "Overview" and "Discussions" in the Communities?

There's no significant difference.

Ditto what Barry said.

I don't find Overview useful, so I rarely look at it.

The overview has a search box at the top. You can do a search then if you do not find what you want, you can create a post. I think adding the search box & allow a post is an improvement over the prior forum software.

Perhaps the search box could be put at the top of the discussions page & the overview gotten rid of. Two similar pages adds confusion. On the downside, I do not really want to waste the space on the discussion page. I'd be for some perferences to configuring the discussions page.

Robert

You think not? I disagree, for the reasons I stated earlier.

rccharles wrote:

The overview has a search box at the top. You can do a search then if you do not find what you want, you can create a post. I think adding the search box & allow a post is an improvement over the prior forum software.

Perhaps the search box could be put at the top of the discussions page & the overview gotten rid of. Two similar pages adds confusion. On the downside, I do not really want to waste the space on the discussion page. I'd be for some perferences to configuring the discussions page.

Robert

You can use the search box that exists on the Discussions page and restrict the search to that community (but I will agree that it's not as convenient as the Overview search; it takes more fiddling to do that). Now that you've pointed that (which should have been obvious) out, I may use Overview more (so thank you for that).

I guess the reason I'd never really grasped that is that I'm usually here to answer questions, not ask them, so that flew right by me.

Overview adds yet another level of navigation obfuscation to this blasted forum software although I haven't tried it with the Search function yet.

Searching the forums has become so confusing that many, many new and old users in the Pro Apps section don't even bother to search anymore, asking the same questions week after week after week. I could probably say "day after day after day" but this new forum design has completely turned me off to any participation of the frequency that I used to.

From the new user perspective, two similar list facilities have got to be confusing. Considering that both have search boxes in them, these two list facilities seem redundant. On the overview search is too prominent for daily use. The discussion's search is too obscure. One should move the discussion search to the left on the screen. There is no need to spend all the real-estate as the search does on the overview window.

At first blush, to emphasize a thing you make them bigger & bolder. This gets over used. A more elegant approach relies an arrangement of the elements and flow between the elements. There is a real art-form to this stuff. You need a pro however.

The current set of list forum headers was thrown together. Get a 'real' GUI graphics designer. This can be tightened up. Several things are mentioned twice. Elements are miss positioned.

There is a whole screen before you get to the actual list of elements you are looking for.

Was a GUI review done on this? This is far from any Apple GUI standards.

Robert

It is an adaption of generic software which has been clumsily adapted for Apple's use. Perhaps this was the best they could do at the time. They are still tweaking it.

The underpinning of ASC is a Jive commercial product, and presumably Apple just customized it. I don't know which Jive product they picked, but I looked at the Jive 4.5 documentation here:

http://docs.jivesoftware.com/jive_sbs/4.5/index.jsp

and then I drilled down from the left "Contents" pane to

Jive 4.5>Using the Application>Quick Tour>Find Content.

That section includes this screenshot:

So it looks as if the content of a Jive community could have included not only Discussions, but also Documents, Blogs. Polls, etc, in which case having a separate Overview tab would make sense. Apparently in Apple's customized implementation the only allowed content in most places is Discussions, so there's not much point in retaining an additional Overview tab.

jsd2 --

Apparently in Apple's customized implementation the only allowed content in most places is Discussions, so there's not much point in retaining an additional Overview tab.

It could very well be that Apple has more plans for the ASC.

Maybe like adding Documents, etc.? They've said they're going to be refining it . . .

Some further "refinement" would certainly be welcome!

The Jive software seems to be primarily aimed at promoting communication and collaboration within a large company, and Apple's use of it as a public forum host is not a great fit.

With respect to "Documents," the "Create Content" section of the Jive 4.5 Quick Tour describes a Jive Document as follows:

-----------------------

Create a document to preserve team thoughts. Documents and uploaded files give you a way to get content into the community. With documents, you edit the content right in Jive. You and others can work on the same document and it's searchable. As you'll see later, you can also specify that other people should review or approve the content. By uploading a file, on the other hand, you can add something that was created outside Jive. Uploading the file makes it available to other people; you can tag the uploaded file to make sure it gets found.

A document is for capturing information that others on the team would be interested in (or might just need) — things like agendas, plans, meeting notes, equipment lists, and the like. They're team documents and they tend to be more long-lived than a blog post.

---------------------------

The "User Tips" section here seems to already contain "Documents", though the tab for them is not labeled as such. See

https://discussions.apple.com/community/user_tips_library_documents?view=documen ts

As for other possible uses, we'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Maybe, or the Jive software requires the presence of an overview tab and Apple is stuck with it though it is just confusing in this context (and however caring and understanding Apple is about the criticism levelled at the new forums, if it cannot do anything about this, they can also not admit that they cannot do anything about, which in the end makes them look as not really caring or bothering).

Well, since most of us have NO idea as to what their plans are,

it would seem to me that it might be more productive if you just took the tack to wait and see,

instead of making pronouncements based on the phases of the moon, or whatnot.