XF 1.2 Conversation Management Improvements

While the conversation concept in XenForo works well, there have been some challenges managing your conversations, particularly if you have a lot. XenForo 1.2 makes some changes to improve this.

Most of the changes can be seen in this one screen shot:

ss-2013-05-30_12-45-58.webp


So the first thing to note is that conversations now have their own tab, which allows us to give a few additional navigation links to specific lists.

From there, you'll note that conversations can be starred. You can see the conversation listed there is starred. Starring works like you're probably used to in emails; it's mostly to allow filtering.

You can also bulk manage your conversations (over multiple pages) using the inline moderation-style check box. You can star/unstar conversations, mark conversations as read/unread, or leave conversations with this.

Finally, you'll note that all participants are listed on the conversation list. They are also listed on the conversation popup. (Note that to enable this for existing conversations, you will need to use the conversation cache rebuild option after upgrading.)

Oh, and it's been there for a long time, but did you know that you can filter conversations by starter or participant? Click the "conversation display options" button. Go ahead, try it here now. :)

This is by no means the end of the line for conversations and we still have plenty of ideas to look into for future versions.
 
Any change to conversations when a user's access has been taken away? Are they still able to receive and reply?
 
like the idea... but confused about the starred conversations and conversations you starred... can imagine the members reaction in my community... i prefer a left panel with a menu and a right panel with the conversations...call me old fashionned....
 
I see a search box on the Conversations page. Do we finally get the opportunity to search Conversations? That was a major annoyance in every other forum system I've used--not being able to search through hundreds or thousands of PMs.

The starred feature will be handy--I have my Gmail / Google Apps inboxes all set up to with a "starred" inbox on top of my normal inbox. That way I can flag the important mail and not lose it during the flow of other mail coming in.
 
I see a search box on the Conversations page. Do we finally get the opportunity to search Conversations? That was a major annoyance in every other forum system I've used--not being able to search through hundreds or thousands of PMs.

The starred feature will be handy--I have my Gmail / Google Apps inboxes all set up to with a "starred" inbox on top of my normal inbox. That way I can flag the important mail and not lose it during the flow of other mail coming in.

There's an add-on here for search:
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/conversation-search-by-waindigo.1721/
 
Yes, it does. It will likely increase your search index quite considerably though -- just bear that in mind.

We have the room for it, so that's not an issue. We do have some members active in our "marketplace" who would really welcome the ability to search their messages. Especially those that were PMs imported from vB. (That is one reason I prefer conversations: the whole thing is threaded, whereas vB had you clicking perhaps a dozen replies to an initial message to find the one message containing the needed information...think of a situation where you're selling an item and have to hunt for the buyer's shipping address, and not remembering which PM it was posted in.)
 
It would be nice if the recipient username would be shown in the conversation list even when you are the recipient.
 
While the conversation concept in XenForo works well, there have been some challenges managing your conversations, particularly if you have a lot. XenForo 1.2 makes some changes to improve this.

Most of the changes can be seen in this one screen shot:

View attachment 47155

So the first thing to note is that conversations now have their own tab, which allows us to give a few additional navigation links to specific lists.

From there, you'll note that conversations can be starred. You can see the conversation listed there is starred. Starring works like you're probably used to in emails; it's mostly to allow filtering.

You can also bulk manage your conversations (over multiple pages) using the inline moderation-style check box. You can star/unstar conversations, mark conversations as read/unread, or leave conversations with this.

Finally, you'll note that all participants are listed on the conversation list. They are also listed on the conversation popup. (Note that to enable this for existing conversations, you will need to use the conversation cache rebuild option after upgrading.)

Oh, and it's been there for a long time, but did you know that you can filter conversations by starter or participant? Click the "conversation display options" button. Go ahead, try it here now. :)

This is by no means the end of the line for conversations and we still have plenty of ideas to look into for future versions.
Very happy about this update.
 
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