Searching and exporting (own) posts

[Peter Paluch]

Hello everyone,

I've been thinking about this for quite a time - I am not sure if this has already been discussed here so let's give it a try.

What I would enjoy seeing on NetPro is a function to

1. Look up all posts by a specific person, at least my own
   
2. Export these posts to a separate file
   

Why am I asking for such functionality? During the time I've spent on NetPro, I have found articles of various people most enlightening and it would be very helpful to be able to look up the articles not by a particular keyword but rather by an author. I am aware that there is also a function in the Advanced Search that allows to search posts by a particular author but it does not work as I expected - it is first necessary to enter a phrase and only afterwards - as an additional criterium - the author's name can be added. I may not want to enter any particular phrase - all I know is that I want to see all posts made by a particular person. Also, I have found out that I have sometimes managed to explain a particular topic in a way that I am myself satisfied with, and I would like to be able to locate those articles months or years after they have been posted. A search function focusing solely on author's name would allow for this.

In addition, it would be great if the individual posts located by this search function could be batched and exported in some format (HTML or plaintext) for saving on client's PC.

What are your thoughts on this?

Best regards,

Peter

[Daniel Bruhn]

Hi Peter,

I haven't been ignoring this request.  Early next year we are upgrading to a new version of software and trying to determine if any of your requests will be a part of it.  Will update you when I hear back.

Cheers,

Dan

[marikakis]

Hi Dan,

Don't worry about late responses or no responses. You are most likely flooded with messages all the time. Just in case some members haven't noticed, I can say it explicitly. In most of the cases where Dan seems to not respond it typically means he seriously considers the matter.

If that feature comes, will we be able to hide our list of posts in our profiles like in old NetPro? Same thing for the export feature. I'm asking this because I suspect Peter wants to exploit the feature to export my posts in a third party website!

Also a "hide badge" feature was in old NetPro. Can we have that too? I'm asking this because you refuse to give me a good badge color! [Ok, Dan will not consider this seriously, but I said it anyway]. Alternatively, could we have a way to upload a second custom avatar, so I can experiment with a new avatar without removing first my current one?

Kind Regards,

Maria

p.s. Dan, some of the emoticons when using the drop-down instead of characters do not seem to work. Typically the naughtier ones!

[Peter Paluch]

Hello Maria,

I'm asking this because I suspect Peter wants to exploit the feature to export my posts in a third party website! 

Now you've exposed me!

By the way, I would even retype your posts letter by letter if I had to - it's worth the effort!

Best regards,

Peter

[marikakis]

Hi Peter,

You almost left me speechless. Almost.

If you do decide to retype any of my old posts, you might come across some asterisks that hide some of my words and it might be difficult to guess from the context what the hidden word is. I had noticed that some time ago, but didn't look into it further. However, in a recent post of mine about BGP I saw the asterisks in my submitted post right after I posted it. I had written [A][S][s] for Autonomous Systems (without the brackets of course )! It had never occurred to me that all these years I have been repeatedly violating the user agreement. I really cannot go back and fix this. I don't like reading my older posts anyway since, as I once said to George when he was asking for a way to locate his own posts, I sometimes do not recognize them as my own and other times I disagree with them. Now the irony with the intelligence of the software is that when the word is valid it is difficult for one to understand from the context what the missing word is. In the case where the word is indeed the "bad" one, everybody gets the message right away. Look at this thread for example:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2041630

By the way, here is another one, which is generally funny as Steven and author rock, sing and dance, and the album has a bonus track from the author right before Rob posted:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2044822

The features you are asking are definitely useful. Members have been asking for the list of their posts since day one of the new site. I had asked for that in my very first feedback about the new site. So, don't worry. The features you requested in this thread certainly have more chances of being implemented than my requests above. If you do decide to support my requests though, next time you ask for something I will enter the thread and claim that I need that feature too!

Kind Regards,

Maria

[marikakis]

Peter, sorry to hijack your thread a bit, but maybe another thread just for this issue is not necessary.

Dan, the problem with the emoticons I mentioned previously can lead to an unexpected early submit of a member's post before they have the chance to edit it completely. When I press backspace or enter to recover from the unsuccessful attempt to add an emoticon using the drop-down, my post is submitted. Depending on a member's writing style and edits they might sometimes make before posting, this might turn out embarrassing for the member. This has happened to me twice I think, and although I had only a few white spaces to remove before posting, it didn't feel very well.

[Peter Paluch]

Hello Dan,

Thank you very much indeed.

The ability to look up all posts by a particular person actually was supported in the previous (non-Jive) version of the NetPro so one of my requests actually goes back to having something we already had but which was become somewhat obscured and not-so-straightforward in the current version of the NetPro.

The ability to export the selected posts would be very helpful for me personally.

Best regards,

Peter

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Peter,

Just wanted to add another vote here

+5 to you, Maria and Dan for this great thread!

I just did a search on Best regards, Peter

This seemed to yeild all your great posts or at least

many, many pages of them. Then I saved one off

as a .pdf which you might do as well. I've done this

for some of my favorite threads from some excellent

author's. It might not be perfect but it does work quite well.

Cheers!

Rob

PS: Great references Maria....I really loved the 15 character comment

in the second thread ....hahahahahaha!

[marikakis]

Hi all,

Rob, thanks for posting something practical for Peter and reminding me I neglected to post even a link to the old thread that George had started some time ago: https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2001737
Peter, if you feel overwhelmed by the e-mails, you can use a rule to redirect them to the same folder you send the e-mails from QSolved.

If we could subscribe to discussions and not have the e-mails actually sent (by checking/unchecking some global or per-thread option), that could be a (perhaps easier to implement) workaround for the missing list of posts. There is an option associated with e-mail notifications per-thread, but its meaning could change to "send e-mail notifications or not, but remain loosely subscribed to the discussion" (i.e. change the action associated when checking/unchecking the option, but leave the list of threads as is, regardless of the selected action). In such a case, it would also be useful to have an option that enables/disables all existing e-mail notifications with one user action (i.e. global option) while also leaving the list of threads intact.

This e-mail notifications list is still a list of threads (not a list of personal posts) and perhaps what many people would actually want to see in the list of their posts is the ratings that each of their posts has received (as it was possible in old NetPro) rather than to read their posts again. This however might make the implementation harder. My understanding so far is that the ratings have been added as a customization on top of an already existing platform.

Unless Dan has some good news and we will have the list of posts soon.

Kind Regards,
Maria