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Next Topic and Previous Topic Navigation
I'd love links to easily navigate to the next or previous topic once I've already clicked on a topic. Right now, when I go check our satisfaction page, I need to go through and open tabs for each, or keep hitting back and forward.
It would be cool if you put next topic, previous topic links in for employees/official reps so they can more easily navigate unanswered topics or recently active topics. Seems like a low-impact piece of sugar that might be worth adding in
It would be cool if you put next topic, previous topic links in for employees/official reps so they can more easily navigate unanswered topics or recently active topics. Seems like a low-impact piece of sugar that might be worth adding in
I’m awesome
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The more people who like this idea, the more it gets noticed.
The company is considering this idea.
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Inappropriate?That's a very good point. We have had similar requests to just have a button that takes you to the "next" topic, but that seemed like it might no be all that useful. However, in the situation you describe -- company employees thumbing through unanswered topics, for example -- this does seem really useful. I'm going to see what everyone else here thinks about this idea.
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Inappropriate?Even just turning on those links for employees when they're viewing a product they're attached to -
Inappropriate?We talk about this also over here: http://getsatisfaction.com/satisfacti...
I touch upon it indirectly in that topic, but pushing the concept of topic lists down into the topic page is problematic, and I've not seen, nor have I myself, come up with acceptable solution. I'd love your thoughts on this.
The problem is that there are multiple filters and sorts on the list of topics: filter by tag, order by activity date, etc. In many cases, people come into the topic from outside of GSFN (google, widgets, etc.) or from their dashboard which further complicates the issue. Given all of this, a User's expectation can be all across the board for what a next link should point to or a previous link should point to. If I come to a topic from my dashboard, what is next? How does that differ, or does it differ when I come to that topic from the "Unawnsered" tab.
This ambiguity gets further complicated by the fact that these many, many filterings and orderings can be affected by users other than yourself. Even if we can nail down what should be next at an instant in time, outside forces are always affecting that list, introducing another complication.
I would love to here how you think this should behave. -
Inappropriate?Scott - Although I haven't fully explored how they solve those issues, my inclination would be to do it exactly how gmail does it.
If I click on a message in my inbox I can go hit newer or older and it navigates in the inbox - if I do a search, for any terms, it still works.
I think this idea centers on an implicit ordering of all the topics based on latest reply.
After that, a user can drill into that list using a variety of well defined predicates: tags, groups of tags, search query, recently active, unanswered.
Now they see a list of topics that are filtered appropriately. If they click on one of them, they are still within the context of that list, and next topic or previous topic should navigate within it. You can let them know what their filter/search was on the actual topic page.
For instance, I click the tag 'bug" and then get a list of recently active topics with the tag "bug". Then I click on the first one. Right now, satisfaction doesn't give me any context of how i got here or what i was looking for, other than suggesting related topics. One thing you could do is offer a box that is like "Other topics tagged with bug" or "Other topics matching search 'crash"" - but I don't know if I'd need to see the topics in line. I could imagine some navigation that allows me to hit "next or previous" topic that matched bug.
with regard to the user modifying the search results -- it doesnt' have to be a perfect snapshot in time you hold on to forever. It's a convenience more than anything. If new data comes in and expands the list, no big deal - show it. Given that topics can't currently be deleted, that's not a huge issue, but if you add that in sometime in the future, you can just have a Previous link that no longer points to anything bring you back to the search list -
Inappropriate?Gmail maintains consistency by pre-loading a pages worth of messages, and the next-prev links are consistent within that page. On the boundaries, it goes all out of whack in the manner I describe, so that if a new message comes in clicking next takes you to the same message.
The problems is almost unnoticeable because of the pre-loading. This is certainly something we can do, but it would be a pretty large departure from our current design. It becomes a much more stateful application.
Thanks so much for bringing this up, It helped me re-think through the problem. We'll probably kick this around the office, and I might prototype something like this using the API. Maybe we can realize this, like you specifically say, as a power-tool for employees who will more often be dealing with topics in this way.
Thanks so much!
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?Point noted about the pre-loading, but I think it's reasonably simple to engineer around that by keeping a bit of state in the users session.
Gmail doesn't actually pre-load all of the messages, just the IDs of the messages. If you're on a slow connection it's pretty easy to notice it polling in the messages after you've ticket through a few.
You could do something dead simple like keep an array in the users session with the id's of all the topics from a given search, then just step back and forth from that in a similar way to how gmail pre-loads
Either way, it'd be really cool. And to be honest, if it only worked on recently active topics or unanswered topics, that'd be great too
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