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How to get a RSS feed for unsolved threads on a forum?

Hi, I would like to get a RSS feed for unsolved threads on a particular forum, how can I do that? The feed would be used to ask my community to help solve these unsolved topics, a pretty basic functionnality I guess but I did not find where to get such a feed. Thanks.

French Autodesk community manager
9 Replies 9
Lithium Alumni (Retired)

Hi @PatrickEmin!!

 

Perhaps this reply of @JakeR can help you!

 

http://community.lithium.com/t5/Support-Forum/How-can-find-unsolved-Threads-in-the-Community/m-p/179...

Xoxe García
Social Solutions Consultant

Khoros Oracle


PatrickEmin wrote:

Hi, I would like to get a RSS feed for unsolved threads on a particular forum, how can I do that? The feed would be used to ask my community to help solve these unsolved topics, a pretty basic functionnality I guess but I did not find where to get such a feed. Thanks.


I realize that this is not an RSS feed solution to your question (and I believe my old solution in the other thead that @xoxegarcia recommended still stands), but if your goal is to ask your community to help solve unsolved topics, why not put a widget on the front of the community with that type of call to action?

 

We have an "Unanswered Topics" widget that you could drop into the appropriate spots on your community.  Perhaps it would help you achieve what you're looking to accomplish.  Scroll about halfway down these release notes to find out more information:

 

http://community.lithium.com/t5/Release-Notes/13-3-Release-Notes/ba-p/81498

Hi, thanks but the need is for unsolved questions, not unanswered.

French Autodesk community manager

The need is for unsolved questions, not unanswered, wich is an entirely different subject, but thanks for trying to help.

French Autodesk community manager

Ah yes.  I understand. 

 

At first blush, a tool or report like that would be extremely useful, but it gets complicated quickly for a number of reasons.  Here are some of them:

 

1.  Pretend that you had a report which said these 50 threads are unsolved.  What do you do with it?  Give the list of 50 threads to your superusers for them to solve?  What if you gave them the list and immediately they told you that those 50 threads have been solved, but nobody has MARKED them as solved!  Perhaps the original person asking the question did not go back and mark the 'Accepted Solution'.  Perhaps your superusers are waiting on you, the community manager, to mark them as solved because you are empowered to mark them as such

 

2.  What if the threads that are 'unsolved' are not threads that need to be solved?  What if these 'unsolved threads' are threads that talk about what a wonderful experience a person had with your brand?  To wit, ANY thread without a solution would end up on this list, but not all threads without a solution require a solution

 

So you have two real issues with what you are requesting.  The first issue is that an 'unsolved thread' could, in fact, be solved (but not marked as such).  The second issue is that there could be so much noise in the report (i.e. - there are numerous threads that do not even require a solution, yet they end up on the list anyway), that you spend a bunch of time trying to further qualify what should truly be on the list, and you are busy removing stuff off of the list in order to make it truly accurate.

 

In theory, you could get your list, but for the two reasons above that I mentioned, I dont think it would be immediate cause for celebration.  Here is how you could do it:

 

1.  Go into Lithium Social Intelligence (LSI)

2.  Set the data range that you prefer (if you have a large or medium szied community set it for 1 day)

3.  Go to the Content area on the left

4.  Go to the Forums sub-area (within Content)

5.  Go to the 'Conversations' tab (directly underneath the 'Forums Overview' section)

6.  You will now have a list of the 'Top 50' threads for that 1 day that you set in Step #2

7.  Click the 'Solutions Accepted' column over near the right so that you sort all threads that have no solution

8.  Export the report into excel and further slice, dice, and sort as you see fit

***IF NECESSARY***

9. If you community is so big that you more than 50 threads in a day, you can select the board from the 'forums' (sort of an extra step before #5 above) tab and then it will default to the top 50 conversations on that particular board

 

So it is entirely possible to get you what you are asking for; namely, a list of the threads without solutions.  I hope that this information helps.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your comprehensive reply:

 

True that some questions are solved but not marked as such. Technicaly speaking they are not solved. A RSS feed listing unsolved questions would be filtered by date, my role as an (Autodesk) community manager is to be sure topics get answered, then solved. The one wich are not after a certain period, let's say two weeks, should get the attention of my users community, and most of them don't go every day on the forums, actualy they never go on the forums unless they have a question to ask. So if I had a RSS feed listing unsolved topics after two weeks, I could publish this feed on my social media (Linkedin, Twitter, Slack..and so on) to get the attention of people would could help.

 

Your second point is not all topics are questions, true. But on the Autodesk community forums, 99% are, so that's not a problem.

 

 

French Autodesk community manager

Ok - I think I have another approach now after your most recent reply.

 

You mentioned that your priority is to make sure that questions get answered, *then* solved. 

 

With that in mind, if it interests you, I can walk you through how to get an RSS feed to 'unanswered threads' for certain boards (or the community as a whole).  I realize you are looking for an RSS feed for 'unsolved' threads, but if it would still be valuable to have an RSS feed for threads with no replies, let me know.  I can step you through it.

Thank you, I know how to get the unanswered RSS feed. I guess since my request is not built into Lithium, there is no hope... May be approaching the Lithium tech guys at Autodesk? Could they program that functionnality?
French Autodesk community manager

Just to be clear, because the language gets a bit confusing sometimes, the RSS feed I'm talking about is 'threads with no replies' (so it is really a feed of threads that have not gotten any type of reply, much less an answer - basically it is an RSS feed of many threads that are identified by each having one lone original question at the top).  You said 'unanswered' in your post immediately above, so I just wanted to clarify.

 

To your next question of whether it could be built, yes, almost definitely.  Using our API, you could gather all of those threads without solutions into a list (in an XML format) and *probably* put that XML formatted list into a format that is able to be digested by RSS readers.  But, again, just be aware that the list you are describing will still have those specific drawbacks that I mentioned here

 

So yeah, in summary:

 

We do not have an RSS feed built into our platform of 'threads without a solution'

We do have an RSS feed of 'threads without a reply'

We do have a way to get a report (but not an RSS feed) on 'threads without a solution'

 

Although this is not the exact answer you want, hopefully this conversation was helpful to you.

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