AltiumLive - Wall

Frozen Content

Modified by Annika Krilov on Jun 1, 2015

Accessing Your Wall
Following an Item of Interest
Browsing Wall Items
Message Types
Browsing Multiple Events for a Single Root Item
Filtering Wall Content
Navigating to Source
Unfollowing Items
Wall Settings
Heads-Up Regions

Keeping abreast of the things that interest us is a natural part of everyday life. Fanning the pages of that physical (or virtual) newspaper, for example, is a daily ritual that most of us indulge in, to stay knowledgeable on current affairs. That's not to say we read each and every article on each and every page. Rather, many of us just skim and cherry-pick the nuggets that pique our interest, curiosity, or both.

Now in the course of day-to-day electronics design using Altium Design solutions, many designers will make use of the AltiumLive Forums to see what's happening. And again, drill down into threads and posts that interest them, or discuss functionality that is relevant to them. But the Forums are just one area of the wider AltiumLive community. What about keeping up-to-date with other areas, such as bug reports, ideas, or a particular blog entry?

Altium answers this call by providing members of the AltiumLive community with their very own, customizable 'notice board', simply named the Wall.

Like a particular thread in a forum? Interested in that pet bug someone entered in BugCrunch? Or think a suggested feature or enhancement is a a cool idea? Simply follow those items of interest, and have any future activity piped directly as messages to your Wall. Clicking a message will then take you straight to that item of interest, in its area of the community. And since the Wall is uniquely yours, and can be customized with respect to its content, you have full control over what gets displayed, so that only items of interest to you are presented. So only the items you purposefully click to follow will populate the wall, with no other community 'noise'. As a result, you are able to keep up with what's happening in the AltiumLive community, without getting bogged down in each and every event, of each and every area of the community. Skimming and cherry-picking at its best!

Accessing Your Wall

The Wall is a unique space within the wider AltiumLive community. Access can be made from anywhere within the AltiumLive site simply by clicking the Wall link at the top of a page.

The AltiumLive Wall - your personal, and customizable message board.

Following an Item of Interest

Items within the community that can be followed will have a link at the top-right of their page. These include:

Forums threads and posts.
BugCrunch reports.
Ideas
Blogs
Profile Pages (user or organization).

Simply click the link to declare your interest in the item. You will then be following that item, with applicable event activity sent through to your Wall. For example, a comment being added to a bug report or blog you are following, or the status of a bug/idea changing (reviewed, rejected, fixed, and so on).

Interested in a specific BugCrunch report? Click the associated Follow control to have any future comments added to the report
appear on your Wall.

If you are following a particular user, then any applicable event that user is involved in, such as posting to a forum, submitting a bug or idea, etc, will be sent through as a message notification to your wall.

Browsing Wall Items

When you enter the Wall, you are presented with a listing of the most recent messages, generated from activity associated with items currently being followed. The total number of messages on your Wall is shown in the banner area, along with how many of those messages are new – messages you haven't clicked, or haven't marked as 'read'.

Unread messages on the Wall have a black title, whereas those messages that have been read have their title grayed.

To quickly mark all unread messages as read, use the Mark All as Read control in the banner area of the page.

If, while you are browsing your Wall, new events occur for followed items, the applicable messages will not be presented dynamically in the list. Rather, an indication of how many new messages are available will appear at the top of the page. Think of these messages as being 'queued'. Clicking this indication will refresh the Wall, bringing the new messages in for reading.

Click on the indication for new messages to refresh the Wall, adding those messages.

Messages themselves are not deleted from the Wall. Think of it more as a continuous ticker of events. To browse older messages, simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Show More Messages control. The page will simply be expanded to include a number of previous messages posted to the Wall.

Use the control provided to display, and browse through, older messages posted to your Wall.

Message Types

The following is a listing of the types of message that can be received by a Wall.

	A new BugCrunch report has been submitted. This message will appear when you submit a report yourself (since you automatically follow your own submitted reports), or are following a user who subsequently creates a new report.
	A new comment has been added to a BugCrunch report that you are currently following.
	A BugCrunch report that you are currently following has been Crunched.
	A BugCrunch report that you are currently following has been Rejected – either by Altium, or by the original submitter.
	Voting has expired for a BugCrunch report you are currently following.
	A new Idea report has been submitted. This message will appear when you submit a report yourself (since you automatically follow your own submitted reports), or are following a user who subsequently creates a new report.
	A new comment has been added to an Idea report that you are currently following.
	An Idea report that you are currently following has been Released (implemented by Altium).
	An Idea report that you are currently following has been Rejected – either by Altium, or by the original submitter.
	Voting has expired for an Idea report you are currently following.
	A new thread has been started in a Forum you are currently following.
	A new post (reply) has been added to a Forum thread you are currently following.
	A new blog has been released as part of the community blogs. This message would typically come through if you are following a particular user (Altium Employee) who writes/publishes blogs.
	A new comment has been added to a blog you are currently following.

Browsing Multiple Events for a Single Root Item

Where multiple events occur for the same root item being followed, the latest event will be displayed on the Wall. An expand/collapse control appears at the bottom-right of the item's entry. Click this to access other previous events for that item – going back all the way to the point at which you started to follow that item.

Accessing previous activity for a followed item.

If there are a considerable number of previous events for an item, use the Load More control, located at the bottom of that item's message list, to successively reveal further messages.

Filtering Wall Content

Depending on what you are following, your Wall can end up receiving a pretty impressive number of messages, from various differing areas of the AltiumLive community. To help bring logical order to what could become a haystack of forum postings, bugs, ideas and the like, the Wall provides filtering. Located at the far right of the banner area, use the drop-down associated to the Show field to:

	Show all messages for all types of followed items.
	Show only messages for followed BugCrunch items.
	Show only messages for followed Idea items.
	Show only messages for followed Forum thread/post items.
	Show only messages for followed Blog items.

The default display is to show all messages for all item types (i.e. no filtering). The Wall will always revert to use this default setting if the browser page is reloaded.

Example of filtering to show messages for followed blog items only.

Navigating to Source

The information about events from various sources will be aggregated on your Wall, where a single click on a link will navigate to the source of the event.

Click on a message on the Wall, to navigate to the source of that event.

Unfollowing Items

To stop following an item, simply navigate to that item and click the link at the top-right of that item's page. No further applicable activity for that item will be routed through to your Wall from this time.

Want to stop following a particular blog? Click the associated Unfollow control to stop future events associated with this blog being sent through to your Wall.

If you navigate to an item from your Wall with the intent to stop following that item, and find that the item is currently not being followed, it may be that you are following a user. Any applicable activities made by a followed user will appear on your Wall, even though you are not specifically following those items. Conversely, when you stop following a particular user, all events stemming from applicable activities performed by that user within the community, will no longer be sent through to your Wall.

Wall Settings

If you have clicked to 'follow' a number of items within the AltiumLive community, tracking down those items to 'unfollow' them at a later stage can be both cumbersome, and laborious. And even the navigate-to-source feature of the Wall can prove weary, when the message required to jump to the source is several meters deep in the plethora of previous messages! To streamline the 'unfollow' process, the Wall provides a convenient listing of all items you are currently following. Access this list by clicking the Settings link, in the main banner area.

Click Settings to access a listing of all items currently being followed.

To stop following an item, simply click the associated link.

The list can also be filtered to quickly concentrate on a specific type of item being followed. Located at the far right of the banner area, use the drop-down associated to the Show field to:

	Show all followed items.
	Show only followed Forums
	Show only followed Forum Threads.
	Show only followed Blog items.
	Show only followed BugCrunch items.
	Show only followed Idea items.
	Show only followed Users (AltiumLive community members).
	Show only followed Organizations.

The default display is to show all followed items (i.e. no filtering). The Wall will always revert to use this default setting if the browser page is reloaded.

Example of filtering to show only Forums currently being followed.

Forums are followed in accordance with those subscribed to for receiving e-mail notifications. Be aware that if you 'unfollow' a Forum, you will receive no threads or posts from that forum on your Wall moving forward. Unlike other items that can be followed, Forums do not have an associated Follow or Unfollow control at the top-level (these can only be found at the thread-level). To follow an actual Forum that has been unfollowed, simply access the Email Notifications page, in the Forums area of the community, and re-subscribe to that Forum.

Heads-Up Regions

In addition, the Wall provides a series of regions down the right-hand side, listing possible items/activities that may be of interest to you. These regions are:

What's Hot in Content Store

Active Forum Threads

BugCrunch - Open for Vote

Latest Blogs.

A set of default regions offer key items that may be of interest.

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