Sparx Systems Forum
Enterprise Architect => General Board => Topic started by: petermantell on February 17, 2004, 01:11:42 am
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This is a kind of precursor to my next message...
Could the forums perhaps be given a little more structure? Perhaps a separate forum for issues to do with different diagram types, as well as different functions of EA (e.g. source / documentation generation, automation interface, etc).
Then it would be a little easier to see if someone else has posted on a similar topic.
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I'd second that. Especially Code Generation issues as this does seem to be a lively topic. (BTW there is one for the automation interface already.)
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Yep - that's why I chose it as an example. :) It backs up the fact that its a good idea!
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I remember discussions about that some time ago - but still a good idea.
Thomas
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G'day,
I'd much prefer one forum so that I don't have to go into each one to see what's new, what I can skip, and so on and so forth.
That said, it would only work well IF new topics could be marked with at least one "category" (multiple categories would be nice) so that we could filter out messages and search for certain categories.
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Sounds good. Does somebody from Sparx read this discussion board and give some feedback? I have no clue what Yabb is capable to do.
Thomas
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Me again ;D
I would like to keep this subject alive since it pops up as new topic every now and then. I think, this board contains a lot of valuable information (speaking for me: I learned a lot since I started reading posts regularly). However, finding information is difficult for two reasons:
1st the SEARCH screen automatically limits to 7 days in the past (probably the web server will boil while searching :-/)
I don't know whether I'm right with that assumption, but I'm not the only one that fell in the pit with this 7 days limitation.
2nd there is no (good) structure in this board. Jason's suggestion is great but probably too difficult to realize ??? Adding a few more top level topics would be a great improvement. Even better (and hopefully simple too) would be to have a 2nd level (especially for UML process)
Cheers from the other side of the world 8)
Thomas
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Sounds good to me too.
(Just a newbie, but a little more organization would be good) ;)
ErickG
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Hi All,
Yes- the topics topic is very much alive. Thomas and Erik, you just beat me to a response.
Sparx is open to the possibility of introducing more discussion boards- it seems code engineering in particular does hog a fair amount board space.
Before restructuring the forum, we would like to get a consensus from forum users as to the best approach... Jason's suggestion to introduce a category field has been noted and we're looking at the feasibility of this.
We welcome further suggestions and comments ...
Regards,
Ben
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My categories would be:
- Analysis
Design
Build (inc Code Engineering)
Implemention ???
Project Management
System Maintenance
Repository Management
General
(hmmm, I seem to be a bit process oriented ;D )
Benc, is there a reason for the 7 day default?
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If there's only one categorie-field for a discussion-thread my categories would be:
- General
- UML process
- Automation process
- Code generation
- How do I do <x>
- Suggestions
If there are two categorie-fields (or more) for a discussion-thread I would add Sargasso's process oriented categories:
- Analysis
- Design
- Build
- Implemention
- Project Management
- System Maintenance
- Repository Management
and add
- Documentation
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Indeed - all your suggestions for categories are very process oriented.
Interestingly enough, this precisely reflects my motivation for starting this topic, which was that it is a SparxSystems forum, not a software engineering forum. I was trying to find some help on using Enterprise Architect, but couldn't because I had to wade through hundreds of software engineering questions!
So what I would like to see are some specific EA related forums, as well as some specific software engineering ones. Then people like myself who actually want help using EA from other EA users can get it, and people who want to ask about anything else can go somewhere else...
Benc - what do you think? What is your idea of the purpose of these forums? Are they for EA issues or s/w eng issues?
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Hi everyone.
I agree with Oscar's proposal(s)
Would it also be possible to set up automated e-mail notification on new postings on these catagories.
At present you can ask for notification on an existing posting only.
Maybe each members personnal details could include a selection of checkboxes on these catagories. A member will then be notified/kept upto date with all new postings on these topics.
I sounds like a lot of work, but what are the capabilities of YaBB?
regards
David
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Great to see that Sparx monitors forum posts. This ensures us that they get our feedback on different things and will do something about them if possible.
1- I also think we need a "Code Engineering" forum. I am also interested in a "Methodologies" forum in which we can speak about RUP, Agile etc. issues.
2- If it was possible to upgrade to a more powerful forum software such as InvisionBoard (also free) or vBulletin it would be great.
Yesterday I was trying to post soething but everytime forum software did not show the normal text correctly (some parts of the text were missing and some text were showing that were not in my text. I searched those text and did not found them in my text!!!) I tried to edit the text but I saw it has saved my text correctly and it just messes it up when showing.
Let me thank Sparx as a satisfied customer. I wish greater success for you.
Mac
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Just another idea. I'd like to have filtering/sorting of messages. Sorting for read access descending so I have the hot topics on top. Filtering - well, not really important if there is a better structure ;) - to have just unread posts. I normally have a daily look in the board and browse through new entries. The ones I read should then disappear. Those I'm not interested in should have button to mark them as read individually. Maybe this can be done with low effort.
Thanks,
Thomas
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And one very simple request: can you choose another color for new posts in boards? This light and dark blue is not very good to distinguish :-/
Thomas
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One more thing - it would be really cool to have some kind of voting mechanism for enhancements. The current way of sendind posts is a good start, but you loose overview which features are really needed. Probably the ability to sort for # of readings would be better. However - I'd prefer some kind of voting mechanism.
Cheers,
Thomas
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G'day g'day,
I'm with Thomas on the voting mechanism thing.
Maybe something like:
- Is urgent
- Would be nice to have
- Would not be useful
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Just to keep this topic somewhere on the first page ;)
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Hi All,
Thanks for your comments and suggestions- as always they are much appreciated.
Jason's idea of marking posts with categories is a good one, but will require a certain amount work to implement.
Our short term solution will be to introduce additional boards to gain some structure and assist searching. Then, if we do move toward the category approach later on, existing posts could be readily assigned a primary category- by virtue of the board they were posted in.
Regarding the 7-day default on searching: this doesn't appear to be necessary. We may just make "Max Age" a required field to be entered manually prior to searching.
We'll keep you posted with updates.
Regards,
Ben
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Hi Ben,
very much appreciated :) Is there already some kind of deadline when this first step will be taken?
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Don't mean to throw a spanner in the works, but what about switching to News Groups, then we can all use our preferred News Reader which provides all of the filtering and sorting people are looking for, also means we can download stuff for offline reading.
Once a root news group has been established there would be no limit to the number of sub groups Sparxs could host
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Hi All,
Sorry for the delay in updating here.
For the moment, the forum will remain "as is". Rather than patching the existing structure, we will be looking into a longer term solution to correct the issues raised in this thread.
Minor note: you may have noticed, the "Max Age" field in the search page was made mandatory, rather than using a 7 day default. This default did catch a few people out, myself included.
Regards,
Ben
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Hi Ben,
could you please check whether there would be a simple way of sorting the posts according to number of reads/replies. Many boards have this option (sort according to one of the title columns) and probably YABB isn't different here. Having that it would bring the most interesting topics right to the beginning of the search list.
One step further: adding a filter directly in the title column could ease search a lot. (E.g. show only posts with no reply; started by someone; in a date range.)
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Came to this via ThomasK's recent post.
'Losing' valuable knowledge inside forum postings is something that has exercised me in the past - so often after a longish period, the same subjects and questions recur, as the previous answers and threads vanish from visibility inside the forum.
Another thing is unanswered questions - you wonder if the questioner ever found out a solution, and if so, why couldn't he have let us all know !!
Keyword searching of old posts can help, but what is missing is semantic filtering - the person making the post is in a good position to categorise the information in the post, but doing this every time might become tedious.
Perhaps the "subject areas" is a good idea, but rather than forcing a post to go into one particular 'box', hereby presupposing the post is only applicable to one area, if the posting form had all the possible subjects as checkboxes at the bottom, the poster could tick all the categories felt to be appropriate.
Therefore if a post showed how to use EA to link requirements to a use case, the ticks might go into 'EA HowTo', 'Requirements', 'Use Case' ...
Then you could search / read by selecting one or more of these categories, in one browsing mode.
This might be adequate to improve things sufficiently, while not requiring undue effort from the poster. Of course, posters could just ignore it, but then they would be denying us the fruits of their labours !!
I suppose in a true collaborative spirit, we would be able to vote posts into additional categories ...