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:

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.

 

[erich37]

I remember another nice thing from "Conversation Essentials" add-on that instead of using names of participants use small size avatar thumbnails. It makes the look-up of the participants easy and width used per participant will be fixed as opposed to the text names where names may vary in size.

seeing the "small Avatars" of all Conversation-participants directly at the "Conversation-list" would certainly help to find a certain Conversation quicker.....
Those "small Avatars" could have the same size as the "Mini-Me Avatars" or the same size as the Avatars which we already have for "People You Follow" (Members Online Now) in the sidebar.

 

[Paul B]

Only useful if you know the avatar or they have actually changed it from the default.

A list of user names is far quicker to read and fail safe.

It also allows for CTRL+F browser searching.

 

[erich37]

Only useful if you know the avatar or they have actually changed it from the default.

A list of user names is far quicker to read and fail safe.

It also allows for CTRL+F browser searching.

yeah, but if you hover over the Avatar, you will see the username anyway via the "tooltip".
Same as we already have for "People You Follow" at the "Members Online Now" in the sidebar of the Homepage. You hover over the Avatar-images and see the username.

 

[Luxus]

Alternatively, display the name below the mini-me avatar.

 

[swatme]

They're not mutually exclusive.

mike i highly suggest the ff

SEARCH FUNCTION
#1 SEARCH function for conversations, its hard to look one by one for particular conversation that you are searching for

CONFUSION
#2 With the newly improve conversation, Change the CONVERSATION color templates to differentiate it from regular forum posting theme layout.
confusions will happen if they have the same theme color layout with public forum
users might think at first they post in public forum, after searching they cannot find it in public while lately realizing its posted over conversation,
to prevent confusions, change the LAYOUT and COLOR THEMES for conversation
just to "instinctly" differentiate it.

FB STYLE CONVERSATION/CHAT
#3 Make Facebook chat style for conversation popup if someone send conversation to you while your still online.
that way users will use the xf conversation than facebook message

 

[ibnesayeed]

Only useful if you know the avatar or they have actually changed it from the default.

Are we really often engaged in the conversations with people whom we can't recognize avatars? In rare cases when we do, can't we have name in tooltips help us? Every approach has some pros and cons, we need to look into real use cases and decide our trade off.

Alternatively, display the name below the mini-me avatar.

This will look ugly because of the varying sizes of names under fixed size avatars. It will force uneven spacing between the avatars. Name on tooltip is good enough.

 

[Shelley]

Alternatively, display the name below the mini-me avatar.

Wouldn't there be a conflict/ alignment issues if say the usernames were long, had many characters so to speak?

edit: Ninja'd by ibnesayeed.

 

[Paul B]

Are we really often engaged in the conversations with people whom we can't recognize avatars?

Every single day.

Name on tooltip is good enough.

Clearly displayed text beats name on hover.

 

[Bapun Raz]

Will be there any option to delete conversation?

 

[erich37]

Clearly displayed text beats name on hover.

if this is true, then why not just remove all tooltips in XenForo ?

 

[Paul B]

if this is true, then why not just remove all tooltips in XenForo ?

You have your preference erich, I have mine.
There is no need to get defensive or silly about it.

 

[Luxus]

Wouldn't there be a conflict/ alignment issues if say the usernames were long, had many characters so to speak?

Yeah I was thinking the same. The solution would perhaps be using some sort of a table layout where everything is aligned equally by force. Then again this might be overkill and it's better to stick with names only.

 

[Martok]

FB STYLE CONVERSATION/CHAT
#3 Make Facebook chat style for conversation popup if someone send conversation to you while your still online.
that way users will use the xf conversation than facebook message

Please no! I dislike the new Facebook chat style conversation popup and I know others do too. On my site we use Arrowchat which provides instant personal messaging as well as the chatroom. Folk use the chatroom but the personal messaging is virtually unused. They much prefer the non-live conversations in xf.

 

[DRE]

Where does it show the list of participants? I'm browsing from my phone and I only see one screenshot wtf...

 

[Shelley]

if this is true, then why not just remove all tooltips in XenForo ?

The tooltips I believe is for glance type less important info which is implemented throughout xenforo. Take the forum_view tooltip for example (the info is in the thread) but the tooltip serves as a courtesy glance what is within the thread/post. Knowing the username off the bat imo is vital without enforcing a unneeded action where you would have to hover. Also, you have people like me that change their avatars practically every week.

Not slating your suggestion, I'm just putting over the arguments that text usernames there in the viewers/participants eye is vital in knowing who's who without having to hover, heck I suspect alot of users wouldn't think of hovering to view a username they would think it opens up the membercard or directs them to the profile.

 

[Martok]

Clearly displayed text beats name on hover.

I agree.

What folk need to remember when it comes to hover is that it doesn't work on tablets or smartphones! These are becoming increasingly prevalent and with responsive design coming in 1.2 there will likely be more using the 'full' website rather than always relying on the likes of Tapatalk.

If users are to be in conversations, then it should be either just text only or avatar + name, not avatar + hover.

 

[Allan]

yeah, but if you hover over the Avatar, you will see the username anyway via the "tooltip".
Same as we already have for "People You Follow" at the "Members Online Now" in the sidebar of the Homepage. You hover over the Avatar-images and see the username.


View attachment 47167

+1

You have your preference erich, I have mine.
There is no need to get defensive or silly about it.

-1

 

[ibnesayeed]

Every single day.

This is probably a functions of the person, size and nature of the forum. Because this is not an issue for me as we often recognize some people without avatars as not having any avatar became their identity. I can understand your situation Brogan as you are providing support to several people every single hour. I still have my arguments that if a conversation is going on with few individuals, it lasts for few iterations and we remember their names in our short memory, I think in such cases we will remember their avatars more easily in our short memory. If we remember the name, we can certainly go and use the filter by name feature as advertised in the first post.

Clearly displayed text beats name on hover.

I would certainly agree with this phrase as it is. But if the primary identity is based on avatars and text is there to help disambiguate things while keeping design aesthetics in mind, I would vote for avatar+hover text as opposed to just the tiny text.

I am not trying to win any battle but I believe in healthy discussions. I used Conversation Essentials for a while and then for some reasons we have disabled it for a while and I really missed certain features it provides. My community members were also asking for those nice features including participant avatars.

 

[jerremy]

Wow have you seen's coming up daily now!

 

[Liam W]

There's a new HYS thread every time I open this community, which is very good