We’re testing a new Forums experience – feedback welcomed

[amanda.k]

Edit 1/13/2025 - Please see the latest news regarding the Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums in the linked post. 

_______________________________________________

Hello Autodesk Community,  

We have launched an A/B test to explore a new and improved forums experience. This test will help us understand what works best for you and ensure that our forums remain an engaging place for everyone, and that you’re easily able to find relevant information for your needs.   

What This Means for You:  

Random Selection: Some users will continue to see the current layout (Group A), while other users will see the new forum layout (Group B).

No Action Needed: You don’t need to do anything differently. Just use the forums as you normally would.  

Valuable Feedback: Your interactions and feedback are incredibly important to us. They will guide us in making the best possible improvements. We welcome feedback in a reply to this post, or you can DM @amanda.k.   

Why Are We Doing This?  

Our goal is to enhance your experience by making the forums more user-friendly, intuitive, and enjoyable. By testing different layouts and features, we can identify what truly resonates with you. We’re also looking to make sure that you can find and see all the additional features and benefits we offer in the Community – such as Events and Blogs.    

  

How You Can Help:  

Engage and Explore: If you’re part of Group A, we encourage you to explore the new features and share your thoughts.  

Share Your Feedback: Whether you’re in Group A or Group B, your feedback is crucial. Let us know what you like, what you don’t, and any suggestions you have.  

  

Thank you for being a part of our community and helping us create the best forums experience possible. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and continue improving together!  

See you on the Community!  

@amanda.k 

Edited 12/12/24, 3:00PM PST to add:

Recordings of Office Hours

December 5, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 9, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 12, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

December 19, 2024 - Autodesk Community Team Product Team Office Hours recording

Blog Posts from the Product Team:

Week of 12/12/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/6/24 - Forum Redesign – New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week.

Week of 12/19/24 - Forum Redesign - New Releases & Office Hours Recap for this week

Week of  1/10/2025 - Community Redesign – Modernizing the Autodesk Forums

FAQ - living FAQ document. We are still gathering questions and will be updating it reguarly. 

[fieldguy]

The date / time of the latest reply is important to me.  It seems that "Mark All Read" doesn't work.  

I want to see date and time of the Latest reply.

[rhesusminus]

I'm mostly here to answer questions. I'm really missing the "stats" (last  week/last month/last/year all time) in this new experience. That's ONE BIG reason for me to answer questions here.

When opening the forums, I get the "Trending" tab. I don't care about that, but users looking for a solution might.

So, I change to the "All" tab, and sort by "last post" so that i can see what threads have undread message. These are difficult to see now. But ok. I answer something, and go back to the list of threads, and somehow it defaults to "Trending" again. So, I need to click "All" once more. This is just a terrible workflow for us that mostly answer questions, not looking for a solution.
And, the mobile version is even more terrible to work with. I answer mostly on mobile.

[ChrisRS]

Reply to message 19

Both of my grandmothers used to say "If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all."

I'm not sure it's related but we did have relatives that nobody talked about.

[o.briggs]

Hi @andrewpuller3811 
Thanks for spotting this. We are aware of this issue and its cause and have already started working on fixing it! Thanks for your patience ☺️

[o.briggs]

Hi @Pointdump 
We appreciate anything you have to say, whether they be good things or aspects that require improvement. 
The way we are logging feedback is based on topic, would you be able to go into some more detail about the aspects that you would want to see improvement on, that way I can log your feedback for the development teams to review ☺️
Thanks! 

[o.briggs]

Hi @rhesusminus 
Thanks for the feedback! Could you elaborate on what about the mobile experience you are struggling with? I would appreciate some more specific details so I can pass them on to the dev team? 
Thanks! 

[Pointdump]

Hi Oliver,
"...go into some more detail about the aspects that you would want to see improvement on..."
I'm sorry but I don't have anything nice to say. I liked the way the Forum was, and I dislike everything about the new format. Autodesk wasted their money on this debacle.
The only way I can see to fix things is to have the New Format taken out back behind the chemical sheds and shot.
Dave

[m_kingdon]

Is it possible to just revert back to the old website design and begin to work from there with small tweaks? All of this “we will pass on the feedback to the development team” is concerning to me.  It sounds like you are committed to this redesign.  We don’t want this!

[Chad-Smith]

---

@m_kingdon wrote:

Is it possible to just revert back to the old website design and begin to work from there with small tweaks?

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The more I use the new design, the more I find myself agreeing with this.

Everyone that has replied here appears to have very similar feedback, making it hard to believe if there was any consultation with actual users.

These changes are too much upfront. Start back at the beginning and pick some attribute that you think needs improving. Maybe it's the side panel, or how the conversations list is structured, etc.

Then reach out to the community about what we like and dislike about that attribute, then start suggesting changes from there to get community confirmation.

And you should do this for the different personas on these forums. e.g. how does a visit from someone seeking an answer look like vs someone seeking to provide answers.

[Chad-Smith]

I don't know what that top-right gallery of posts is supposed to represent, but it should be removed.

In its place should be a related forum such as Ideas. This puts the Ideas right next to the current forum title thereby bringing greater focus to it so encourage and help users understand whether to ask a question here, or go to the Ideas.

The "New to... " panel should be pinned to the top of the forum.

The Related Tags are not nearly as useful as before with the carousel navigation. For ACC there are 13 pages! Nobody is going to bother cycling through all those. They need to be fully expanded.

And why are the 'Top Contributors' now right at the bottom of the forum? If you want to encourage people to contribute, you need to make this more prominent. Bring it back to the side panel.

I see there are Bookmarks. I can't recall if these were previously as obvious? But your bookmark library is buried deep in the profile preferences. Nobody will use this unless they can be easily accessed.

[Chad-Smith]

---

@fieldguy wrote:

The date / time of the latest reply is important to me.  ... I want to see date and time of the Latest reply.

---

100% agree with this.

[Chad-Smith]

---

@rhesusminus wrote:

I answer something, and go back to the list of threads, and somehow it defaults to "Trending" again. So, I need to click "All" once more. This is just a terrible workflow for us that mostly answer questions, not looking for a solution.

---

⬆️This! The #1 reason why I don't want to see a 'Trending' list. It destroys someone's ability to answer questions.

But furthermore, someone asking a question is also unlikely to care. Knowing what is 'trending' is inconsequential to asking or answering questions.

And further again, after posting to the forum, it redirects to the 'Trending'.

[Chad-Smith]

OK, so a few more points I've now encountered based on my recent replies.

For some reason, my below two replies did not reply correctly to the comments that I pressed the Reply button on. The forum aribtrarily decided to post them here.

I also see that emojis are not supported.

[kina_86]

Take a look to Dynamo forum, maybe will help you to make something better.

[rhesusminus]

Look at all that wasted space. Look at how the hheader of the post

Collides with the "options".

It's impossible to see which threads have new messages. 

And... It's impossible to see what you're writing, because the text is disappearing  all the time!

This is the worst experience ever!!

 

[gbattinPH5TG]

I too am not a fan of the "Trending" category being the default. I prefer the "All" option for being the default.

[Simon_Weel]

I agree with just about all the posts above. This is my issue-list, containing a lot of items mentioned in the other posts as well.

• No pinned posts
• No date of last response for posts
• No longer visible which posts are read / unread
• The list of posts is too cluttered / uneasy on the eye
• What does 'Trending' mean in this case?
• No easy navigation between topics - once you've read a post, you have to go back to the first page of the topic list. Which also reverts to 'Trending' making it hard to find the next (unread) post.

While I'm sure there are good reasons to change the layout, there are just as many reasons NOT to change the layout. So why not offer both forum layouts and let the user decide which one they like to use?

[jay_colcombe]

On opening the New Interface my it was quite overwhelming and not in a good way, I felt it lacked instant clarity unlike the current version!

In one hand it is great not to have a big list of pinned notification posts at the top but where it is now will it really be used and these notifications easily dismissed?

Also as mentioned by many others, it seems counter productive to make space and then leave lots of blank space?

Too Much Empty Space

I can understand the "Trending" Tab as if something was evident in the software it is identified on mass and a good browsing section for users looking for more insight into the software on topics and more in-depth conversations but for those who just log in to answer and help others it not a priority and would be nice possibly to have a Selection Tool to reorder the Status Categories

I am not sure if its toom much, too soon but the Topic Reference Field just does not read as easily as the previous version and takes more time to understand the information shown and is not a clear and concise and before.

Maybe keep the bottom Text Field Entries consistent meaning all Topic look the same in size and test layout as it may make it easier to the eye as you can see below entries are moved around based on a solution or not - this could allow the "Accepted Solution" to be moved to the Top making it much clearer to the reader in tabular form.

Also add in Viewed Count, I always though this was a good indication of priority and peoples interest in the Topic Item and Content (why have so many viewed it?)

I like that this is now easier to access as if you cannot find the Solution in the form you can check a bit quicker if it has been logged as an Idea or add it if needed

I appreciate the need for Tags especially with more AI related processes and probably do not use them often enough but maybe some help when posting from Autodesk and predefined based on a topic list?  What does your Topic relate to?  Floors > Slabs > creating?

Within the Topic I do quite the 'Accepted Solutions" as it takes you now to a more direct route to an answers - I think this only could be improved to filter out and show only ALL selected solutions so the reader can work though them as required.  Again I also see the need to "Upvote" as to try and keep repeat posts down to a minimum but possibly needs more instruction from the webpage to look for a post and solution prior to Starting a Topic!

Is the Views and Replies count needed as it is indicated in the List Heading (10) and the amount of wasted white space between Reply and Replies (10) seem excessive

When replying using  Reply under the thread this box is always too small you spend more time scrolling than anything maybe there need to be a decision on just one Reply Button but with more real estate

[andrewiv]

I agree with pretty much all of the sentiments already provided.  I want to see what posts I have already read, I want to do away with the "trending" list, or at least make the all list the default, there is too much wasted space on the forum topics list and when are actually reading a topic, I also want to see when the last reply was posted and that should be the default sorting of the messages, just like the old format.  Not sure if this is true for all the forums, but in the Inventor forum there is an events pane and it is showing something from 2022.  That either needs to be renamed or by default show the next event on the calendar, not one that is 2 years old.

I do like the bright green label on a topic when it has an accepted solution and the list of accepted solutions on the right side.  That too could be better, instead of saying solution 1, solution 2, etc., how about listing the users that have provided the solutions, and maybe even the first few words of the post.

Others have stated that having the ability to switch from the old and new formats would be nice and I agree with that.  You know that there are issues with the new format, so give us the ability to turn it off until those issues are addressed.  Just like in most software, when something is new I want the ability to try it out but I also want to be able to disable it if I run into issues.

[andrewiv]

One more thing, I miss having the ability to go back to the topic list at the bottom of a topic.  If I read through an entire topic, I like having a button at the bottom to click on that takes me back to the list instead of having to scroll all the way back to the top of the topic.