Is there a way to identify a user's first post?

[edgiansante]

wonder if there's a way we can identify a user's first post on the community and highlight that so that superusers can jump in quickly to answer?

[JasonHill · Accepted solution]

@edgiansante

Good thinking to ensure that a user has a great first experience on your community to encourage them to come back. Make sure you have automatic escalations for unanswered posts to ensure that everyone gets a reply, but another thing I've done on Workshop is to utilise the "Display an icon on topics started by this user" option on all my newbie and browser (lurker) ranks. Only users who have the View rank-based topic icons permission can see this icon (ie the mod team - but you could add Superusers if you wish). The icon ensures that when I browse the community I can quickly and easily see new users who have posted and jump on them to ensure they get a prompt reply and have a great first experience on the community. See below for an example...

Jason

[edgiansante]

Fantastic @JasonHill - that could work for us! Where exactly do you enable the "Display an icon on topics started by this user"? Is it under 'user ranking' settings?

Sorry for the newbie questions here - trying to get my head around the configuration 🙂

[JasonHill]

No worries @edgiansante. 

The setting you are looking for is in the Admin under Users/Ranking then by clicking Edit on the appropriate User Ranking.

Jason 

[edgiansante]

Hi Jason

I was talking to our Lithium consultant and he said that this feature is not working and being deprecated. Can you confirm if you're still using it and if it works as intended?

I created a ranking icon and set its visibility to only admins/mods but all users (even not logged in) can see it.

[CyJervis]

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edgiansante wrote:
Hi Jason

I was talking to our Lithium consultant and he said that this feature is not working and being deprecated. Can you confirm if you're still using it and if it works as intended?

I created a ranking icon and set its visibility to only admins/mods but all users (even not logged in) can see it.

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I sure hope that your consultant is wrong on this one. We also use this option only in our case it is to add an icon next to customer posts. Since the icon only appears when looking at the board level we have requested it be updated to community wide so we can easily identify customer posts. As for your issue with all users seeing the icons, make sure you are only using the Display an icon on topics started by this user field as seen below where we opted for a simple red dot. The other options show expose the icons to everyone.

[PaoloT]

Possibly a solution requiring some customization, but using LiQL is definitely possible to figure out a given user's first post in the community

For example, if I were to run this on the Lithium Community

SELECT subject,view_href FROM messages WHERE author.login = 'PaoloT' ORDER BY post_time ASC LIMIT 1

it would return the first ever post subject and the link to the post for my 'PaoloT' user. 

This could be used in Studio to build an appropriate customization identifying someone's first post.

Hope it helps,

[JasonHill]

@edgiansante

I think you've been misinformed. Definitely still working on Workshop and I certainly hope the feature isn't removed as it is useful.

Sounds like a permissions issue. Make sure only mods and admins have this setting set to grant - View rank-based topic icons 

Jason

[edgiansante]

Hey Jason

Thanks a lot for that. I'll get back to our (Lithium) consultant to check it again.

Thanks again for confirming

[PatrickEmin]

Hi all, following up on that, is there a way for a moderator to be alerted when a user posts his/her first post, so that I can welcome and encourage him/her.

(I am managing a forums category where I will not be overwhelmed by new users)

[HelgaMarieAuran]

Hi @PatrickEmin 

Did you figure out a way to alert the moderators?

[PatrickEmin]

Hi, no, actualy this is a big missing feature for me.

[peterlu]

This can be achieved by setting up custom coding to listen to new posts. Then you can use api to check if this is the first post of a user. Then if this is the case, write some code to poke the emailing service to notify the moderators or admins.

[moliver]

This thread made me happy and then sad. It's more than a year later. Is does the work around for using icons still work?

Thanks!

Meryl

Sr. Community Manager - iTalent Digital