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    285 Posts
    Planned for Q1 release - post date/time with timezone
    By Kevin Fielding   

    For our Q1 release we will begin appending the community's timezone to all timestamps within discussions (e.g. EST, CST, etc.).  As of Q1 this will be a community wide setting, so the administrator will determine the appropriate time zone for the organization and define it (this already exists via the admin panel -> Community Settings). 

    For example, if you select Eastern, an EST will be appended to every timestamp within discussions to aid users across the country / world in understanding when a post occured.

    We currently do not have a mechanism to allow users to define their personal timezone and change timestamps dynamically, so this is our interim solution to alleviate the confusion.
    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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    Visit ADACarolyn's profile
    90 Posts
    ADACarolyn  says:

    It's certainly an improvement, but I hope it continues to be looked at as an interim solution.

    Can we please have the post date added to the summary for each of the original posts as shown on the introductory  /discussions page and each individual /discussions/specific-discussion  pages even when there are no replies?


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    Visit Kevin Fielding's profile
    285 Posts

    Hi Carolyn,

    I'm not sure what you mean by adding the post date to the summary for each original post.  Could you please provide a screenshot or some additional detail?

    Thanks,
    Kevin
    Posted:   
    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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    Visit Morris Older's profile
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    Morris Older  says:
    In the Discussion list, there is a date and time listed  showing when the latest reply has been received to a topic--that time served as the direct link to the last post in a topic.

    But for new topics, when there have been no replies yet, there is no date listed, and on the older ones, where ther are liks to the most recent post, there is no indication on the topics listing of when each topic was originated.

    I think that is what Carolyn was suggesting be made available.
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    Visit ADACarolyn's profile
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    ADACarolyn  says:

    Yes, exactly, Morris.

    Take a look at http://connect.diabetes.org/discussions/forum-tools--information 
    or http://connect.diabetes.org/discussions/ for topics that have zero replies.  They are identified as New Post and carry no information about the original post date.
    Morris Older says:
    In the Discussion list, there is a date and time listed  showing when the latest reply has been received to a topic--that time served as the direct link to the last post in a topic.

    But for new topics, when there have been no replies yet, there is no date listed, and on the older ones, where ther are liks to the most recent post, there is no indication on the topics listing of when each topic was originated.

    I think that is what Carolyn was suggesting be made available.
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    Visit Kevin Fielding's profile
    285 Posts

    Ok I'm with you now.  We originally thought of this idea to make it clear which topics are new with no replies.  We also felt that showing the date/time is a bit misleading since this is actually the date/time the topic was published and the column is named "Latest Reply."

    I can see your point though.  Is this something everyone finds confusing?  We may be able to address this in Q1 if so.

    Thanks,
    Kevin
    Posted:   
    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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    Visit ADACarolyn's profile
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    ADACarolyn  says:

    I doubt that our readers make the same kind of distinction between original post and replies that is important from the programming perspective.  The column heading could be changed  from Last Reply to Last Post.  The zero replies is enough to indicate when there are no replies to the original post.
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    Visit Morris Older's profile
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    Morris Older  says:
    With the older Mzinga boards, it used to have the date the topic originated (and for the first day it listed the time as well) in the column where the name of the topic was listed, after the name of the originator--separately from the date of the most recent post.

    That would be most preferable.

    Otherwise, changing the heading to read "most recent Post" rather than "Most recent Reply" as Caorlyn suggested would still be an mprovement
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    Visit ADAMateo's profile
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    ADAMateo  says:
    I agree that this would be preferable. It would give users an indication of how "fresh" the original post is, which often shows how relevant the content is.
    Posted:   

    Matt Emery
    Associate Manager, Digital Marketing
    American Diabetes Association
    www.diabetes.org
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    Visit ADAMateo's profile
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    ADAMateo  says:
    Re: the OP, as long as it's standard across the community, that seems most important to start.

    I definitely agree with Carolyn that users should be able to define their own time zone in the community/boards, though. Wasn't aware that was an issue. Must be confusing to people.
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    Matt Emery
    Associate Manager, Digital Marketing
    American Diabetes Association
    www.diabetes.org
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    Visit Morris Older's profile
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    Morris Older  says:

    Paticularly when soeone is asking for advice by starting a tpic, the original date is important...
    ADAMateo says:
    I agree that this would be preferable. It would give users an indication of how "fresh" the original post is, which often shows how relevant the content is.
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    Visit Kevin Fielding's profile
    285 Posts

    Thanks for the feebdack, I'll see if we can add the original post date to our pages.

    As for the time zone issue, our system does not have a mechanism to allow a user to define their own time zone right now.  Developing this is a significant effort that we will not be able to undertake prior to Q1.  For now our solution for the time zone confusion will be to clearly display the community time zone on all time stamps and for further releases we can investigate individualized time zones.
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    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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    Visit ADACarolyn's profile
    90 Posts
    ADACarolyn  says:

    I noticed tonight that a couple of the feeds on our Community page (Discussions and Community News) use GMT rather than our board's EST time zone.  Is that what is intended? 
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    Visit Kevin Fielding's profile
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    Hey Carolyn,

    Not sure what you mean here.  Can you provide an example?

    Thanks,
    Kevin
    Posted:   
    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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    ADACarolyn  says:

    From  our Community Page at http://connect.diabetes.org/app/render/go.aspx?xsl=tp_community.xslt

    under the heading ADA Feeds we have
    * Discussions
    * Twitter Feed
    * Community News

    The times for Twitter are typically like "three days ago"  while a Discussions entry carries a time stamp using "Z" or GMT, even though it was created as a post in Discussions, and in Discussions it carries a time stamp in our default EST:

    OT: Solstice Lunar Eclipse
    Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:08:29 Z
    Hope you take time to catch this! It's a very rare event! http://spaceweather.com/

    is the entry shown for http://connect.diabetes.org/discussions/general-discussion-type2/2010/12/20/ot-solstice-lunar-eclipse
    which shown the time as 12/20/10 7:08 AM, which is the same time, but formatted differently.  Can the app use our time zone instead, to make it more readable for our users?
    Kevin Fielding says:

    Hey Carolyn,

    Not sure what you mean here.  Can you provide an example?

    Thanks,
    Kevin
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    Hey Carolyn,

    Our feed rolls don't control the date or time stamps for external sources such as Twitter (that information is included within the RSS feed from the source).  However, we should not be appending a "Z" to timestamps for items within the community such as blogs or discussions.  This is a bug that we will address.

    Thanks,
    Kevin
    Posted:   
    Project Manager at ThePort Network.


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