Dear Community Members,
As we approach the end of the year, we want to reflect on several improvements and changes made to this platform. We've been together on Graphisoft Community for more than a year, and we achieved many significant milestones together: passing 300 000 posts, adding two new languages, and introducing new features and interaction areas - challenges, user groups, webinars, and a blog.
Let's see what changes were made to Graphisoft Community.
New filtering options under “Hot Topics” and “Forum Posts”
We implemented new filtering options to list forum threads. You can now list forum topics based on those that still need answers if you click on 'Unanswered'. Similarly, you can list topics based on those threads with replies accepted as a 'Solution' or those conversations that still need to agree on a solution.
The "Hot topics" area has a more compact view now, showcasing only the title for each topic and the number of views.
Search bar improvement
Graphisoft Community collects the knowledge of almost 20 years of Archicad Talk and Help Center. With over 900+ articles and 332.000+ posts, the search bar is an essential feature of the site. We made the search bar available on every page, positioned and locked at the top of the screen.
Searches need to be relevant and reflect your current environment; thus, results are filtered depending on what type of page you start your search.
Adjust your search filtering with the drop-down menu options to narrow the search results.
Product help in the footer
Besides being home of our knowledgebase for years, Help Center hosted product help documents. Due to technical reasons, we moved all product help pages from Help Center to a dedicated server, where we can update the content in all languages regularly and effectively.
One of the first feedback requests on the Community was to make links to help documents available, thus we added them in the footer of all pages.
This new component always displays the latest available product version's help and brings you to our dedicated Help server.
Tip: You can switch between different languages and Archicad versions on the Help server. Replace the parts in the URL that indicates the version number and language pack as per your needs: https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/<26>/<INT>/
(You can also select your language under the globe icon on the top right corner of the Help page).
Labels on forum boards
You might have already noticed that some of your posts say a Graphisoft member modified them. No worries, we didn't change your message, we only modified the label(s). We merged some of the existing ones and created new labels on the forum boards to help you have a better overview of the forum board and its topics. You can find a list of all labels of each forum on the right side of the forum's page. If you're interested in a particular topic, subscribe to a relevant label to receive updates.
To keep things organized, we’ve changed the process of adding labels when posting. Before publishing a post, you must select one or more existing labels from the pre-defined list. If you cannot find an adequate label, check other forum boards, or choose 'Other'.
Going further, we will monitor the posts in 'Other' and create new labels if we see demand for more topics.
Graphisoft Insights
News of the latest product updates and upcoming events now have a more prominent position! To help them stand out from other forum topics, we launched the Graphisoft Insights blog. Since July 5th, it has been the new home of highlighted Graphisoft news.
You can subscribe to 6 different labels with different types of news to get all product updates and announcements for interesting competition timely!
Under the Worldwide label, you will find stories and interviews from all around the world from Archicad and BIM experts. We encourage you to share your stories and upcoming events via Graphisoft Insights. Send your post draft/brief to community-support@graphisoft.com.
Check our first Insights post where Huw Roberts, our CEO, briefly introduced this section.
New languages
In July 2022, we introduced two new languages to our community – Portuguese (Brazilian) and Japanese. This improvement brought a new globe icon to the user interface next to the Help section, and you can switch between the international and the localized content anytime.
For more information, check one of our previous Graphisoft Insights posts on this topic.
Updated site help
Connecting to our new languages, we updated our Help section to be available in Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese. We also updated the content to show relevant content for you, such as Graphisoft ID, account management, and the Community Guidelines.
Webinars
Graphisoft Community now has a dedicated section for webinars. Since September, this feature recognizes valid Graphisoft ID and registration on Graphisoft Community to access webinar content. Remove the status filters to check the webinars we had in 2022.
Never miss a webinar by selecting subscription via the Options menu, to get notifications whenever a new event is added.
For any upcoming webinar, besides marking your attendance on the community, you can also save a .ics file as a reminder in your Outlook, Gmail, iCalendar, or any other private calendar you use (click on 'Add to Calendar').
Profile settings menu enhancements
You can now find shortcuts to your subscriptions and bookmarks in the settings options by clicking on your user profile picture. These two shortcuts can be handy for managing forums and threads you've subscribed to. Also, we recommend you check other setting preferences to personalize your community experience.
Comments under TKB knowledgebase articles turned off
To keep unrelated content from cluttering discussions, comments are now disabled from the knowledgebase articles. Discussions like these belong in elong in the forums, even if spawned on the articles' pages. Conversations about an article topic are still possible in the forum with or without linking to the article. Legacy comments added to the articles will remain visible.
Small UI enhancements
Other small improvements and fixes were published during the past year to alter the user experience. Here is the summary of these updates:
- The size of hero images is reduced to give more space to valuable content;
- The large space between the title and the actual content of blog articles is reduced;
- The unnecessary drag & drop menu is disabled on Challenge pages, making the instructions clearer;
- User feedback on labels is improved – it is more visible which label you selected, and on which label your cursor is currently hovering;
- Avatar and like icons are compacted to occupy less space on the interface;
- Links in webinar descriptions were not visible enough. They are highlighted now for more efficient use;
- The default forum format for displaying posts is set to 'Linear'. You can change the default setting to ‘thread’. Check more information here.
What comes next?
We are committed to following up on your current and future feedback and requests. Improvements will continue as we revisit some of the existing structures and functionalities.
We wish for the new 2023 to bring more enhancements and valuable content to Graphisoft Community!
Happy holidays and a joyful New Year!
The Graphisoft Community Team
