@mentions feature release notes

Related products: CC Users & Roles

A feature that has been requested by a lot of customer is to have an @mentions functionality. We’re happy to announce that you can now make use of this.





The quality of service and response time are important factors that determine the customer satisfaction of your community. Using @mentions enables you and your users to trigger a quicker response from a specific user or moderator.








How does it work?


It’s very straightforward and similar to how @mention works on social media platforms. In the text field, when you type “@” a box appears that shows all the user who have participated in the topic you are posting to. You select a user, and his username will appear in the post. Once published that username is shown as a link (directing to the user profile). The mentioned user will receive an email, stating he has been mentioned in a post with a link to that post.





Next to typing “@” , you can also activate the @mention functionality by clicking on the “@” icon that has been added to the text editor.





If you want to mention a user who is not active in a thread; just type his username and after 3 characters all usernames that begin with those letters will appear in alphabetical order.





What happens to old posts with @ signs?


Nothing. @mentions will only be shown in posts that are made from the date the functionality was added to your community. (thanks for the question @benvanooijen)





Is mentions available in Control?


No, for now you can only @mention in the community. In Q2, we are going to build a WYSIWYG editor. Once this is in place, we will add the @mention functionality to that.





How to get @mention in your community


To enable @mentions in your platform, some small adjustments need to be made by our implementation team. This will cost 6 support hours.





To benefit from @mentions on your platform, you can simply send a change request to support@insided.com. Our team will plan and coordinate your @mentions implementation.





Please be aware that @mentions is only available on our Responsive template.





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Are you going to be using @mentions a lot? Try it out here first on inSpired.
We were looking forward to this new feauture, great work! I know some active users on our forum who will be very very happy 😃
Love this new feature!!! Its just been activated on our forum and I have used it so much already! So much easier to be able to tag a customer/user in a post instead of having to PM them to encourage them to get involved. It brings them right into the conversation!





Darran
Insided has implemented this feature for us recently. It's nice!


Here's some feedback:





> Users would like it to be optional to receive @-mentions. A setting that would be changeable in your profile.





> Moderators would like to be able to @-mention from the control environment.





> I'd like it if the notification wasn't sent:


- when you already follow the topic


- when a post is edited


- when an @-mention is quoted





> For notifications in general, I'd like to be able to write a few different phrases that are used randomly to keep them looking 'fresh' a little longer.





The notifications could look something like this:





"John mentioned you in this topic


We hope they said something nice!"





"John mentioned you in this topic


What is this gossip?"





"John mentioned you in this topic


Keep the conversation going and mention them back!"
@Jurgen, great feedback! You didn't mention anybody in your comment 😕 🤓 🤣
Agree with Jurgen re moderators being able to @ from the control environment! We love this feature, we've had a lot of success in re-engaging with some users that were originally not as active, plus bringing our active users into regular conversations.





Not sure about being able to switch off the function for the user, I guess it's similar to notifications, but as a moderator team, if you are not over using it, then the number of @mentions shouldn't be enough to put people off receiving them. Be good to hear others experience on this one!





Darran
Thanks for the feedback.





> I'd like it if the notification wasn't sent:


- when a post is edited


- when an @-mention is quoted





Last week, we made these changes available.





> Users would like it to be optional to receive @-mentions. A setting that would be changeable in your profile.





Good idea, but for now we don't see enough user value in spending resources on making this configurable. If a lot of users are getting overwhelmed with @ mentions, this could change





> Moderators would like to be able to @-mention from the control environment.





This is on our roadmap, but we'll be part of bigger changes in our Control Env.





> For notifications in general, I'd like to be able to write a few different phrases that are used randomly to keep them looking 'fresh' a little longer.





Love this idea. Will be added to our plans on how we can get our notification emails a bit more diverse and customized.
@alexisvos thanks for the speedy reply to my feedback! Great to hear this feature is being refined iteratively :)





Are you measuring how overwhelmed users could be / are with these notifications or is it something you count us to inform you about?
we log overall usage but not on a per user basis. but this is mostly a sentiment factor in the end, so we will depending on your feedback as well.
we log overall usage but not on a per user basis. but this is mostly a sentiment factor in the end, so we will depending on your feedback as well.





@Allart @OVOdarran Let's keep them posted about this 😉
Where can I turn these @ mentions off on this forum 😡 😋






@Allart @OVOdarran Let's keep them posted about this ;)






For sure!





Darran
@Arakou





Test 😉
Hello,





One question regarding the mentions:


- does it make sense for you guys that moderators won´t be able to be tagged?





My point is that many users may start tagging only the moderation team and it won´t be possible to answer them all. What is your opinion on this issue?





@alexisvos, is this possible?
On our forum* tagging works fine this way, @tomasmouton Mostly superusers make regular use of it, but that is useful (most of the time).





Most regular customers (telco forum) make less use of tagging and just want a quick response.





*(bearing in mind that our company has quite a big moderator team, so we can manage all the mentions 🙂
Hi @Allart, thanks for your feedback.





I am still waiting to see how the users will react and use the mentions.
I'm curious about the results, feel free to share the results later on!
Hello,





My point is that many users may start tagging only the moderation team and it won´t be possible to answer them all. What is your opinion on this issue?





@alexisvos, is this possible?






We don't offer this option at the moment. I'd advice to first see how mentions is being used in your community. Let us know how it goes!
Hi @alexisvos, i'm happy tot start using the @mentions feature.





I'm not sure if I understood correctly. But we cant see in a user export how many times a user has used the @mentions tag? ( I would like to know)
But we cant see in a user export how many times a user has used the @mentions tag? ( I would like to know)





me too!!
Great point! I would love to know some metrics regarding this feature
@Tanja @Allart @tomasmouton perhaps this is an idea you can propose to our product team by creating an ideation topic!
https://community.insided.com/ideas/438


feel free to vote
One of our superusers asked: can you exclude @mention notifications when a topic is (automatically) marked as spam?





Not that spammers are using the @mention, but we sometimes have false positives that do contain the @mention.
Hii, does anybody know when @mentions will be available in Control? 🙂
Yes, we are working on this at the moment. It will be part of having the WYSIWYG editor in Control. It's taking more time then expected, but it's on his way.