Attracting the attention of Plusnet Staff using @

[#1]

I tried to find a post I made regarding this but I was unable to find it using the search. But is there a way to attract members of Plusnet's Team using @ citations.

I'd like my profile resetting and would like to have brought this to the attention of the Plusnet Staff but without actually citing individual members as I wouldn't want them to be bombarded with messages, so the use of the @ symbol with Staff, Admins, Mods etc would be a huge bonus, and I suspect not just to me.

If this has been implemented then please tell me what names are available for use, if they've not been then surely it must be doable. I'm convinced I've said all this before so forgive me, I'd have resurrected that thread if I could have found it.

[#2]

Hi @Anonymous,

As you can imagine, it depends on the staff member and what they are monitoring here. I personally only monitor this board (Community Feedback) and receive a notification for any activity here - threads elsewhere are not in my area of expertise so I don't reply on those boards. The community staff will monitor the other Feedback boards as well as the Broadband/Phone/Orders but I can't confirm what each person is looking at the most. If you want to give one of the staff members a little nudge there is no harm in using the @ mention system to give them a notification. If it's really urgent, you could also send a PM?

[#3]

Hi  @jaread83, I do appreciate that but not all staff are on duty at the same time, so if I were to @  user Joe who wasn't on duty for maybe days my message would appear to go unnoticed, which might add to any existing frustration held by the poster.

My suggestion is that there exists various groups; Admins, Mods, Staff etc. Taking the Admin group as an example you'd be in it along with (well I don't actually know as I can't recall other real Admin members*), but lets assume Bob, Joe and Liz.  Applying the law of averages someone from the group would be available to take action on a post containing this @ (working hours apply of course).

As a user of this forum I do find it frustrating that some posts appear to only be read by other forum members when they are in fact targeted directly at Plusnet, a prime example being a post I'd made that apparently went unread for over a day. I'm not wanting nor expecting special treatment but I do think that a feature such as this would be of huge benefit to everyone and to the normal day to day operation of the site.

* Is there a way of seeing a list of Staff, Admins and Mods?

[#4]

There is currently no way of displaying the mods and admins as a group (although.. it might be a good idea to have some kind of 'staff online' module in the future? Your best bet is to tag anyone you are familiar with like Harry, Chris, BenB and a few others to get their attention as they are the most active here that can deal with stuff like profiles and connection issues.

@HarryB or @Chris - can you guys comment? I don't really know how you guys work with taking responsibility of threads or dealing with customer queries that only a staff member can deal with.

[#5]

We will note that we have been @'d, though our workflows do tend to vary on a day to day basis. As a result, we can't really guarantee that any threads highlighted will be picked up straight away.

Let me assure you that there is method to the way we pick up threads, and there is some form of order.

@MatthewWheeler has picked up your post now by the way.

[#6]

Thanks everyone for your input, and a Staff / Mods / Admin online module sounds like a plan to me.

[#7]

I will add it to my enhancement list. If anything it should give users some confidence that we have some staff online.

Unless there are any objections from the community team..?

[#8]

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@jaread83 wrote:

Unless there are any objections from the community team..?

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I believe this was discussed previously (Although I'm not sure if it was on staging or over here) and it wasn't feasible.

[#9]

I think I do have some recollections from talking about it a while ago with your team now that you mention it. You are correct, it isn't feasible which is why I added the little black labels to the online users panel as a compromise instead.

[#10]

@jaread83, @HarryB - I know nothing about this forum’s implementation but why is it you think this is infeasible? On the main forum page there is already a list of who is online. So why can’t you extract from this list another list that only contains the Admins, Mods and Staff and have it as a floater / popup when a user's in composition mode.

Either that or change the existing layout and display these users on their own line or give them priority in the order they’re displayed so they come first. No?

[#11]

The infeasible comment was directed at the @staff/@PlusnetHelp suggestion.

If there was a weighting to keep staff/admins at the top of the online list, that seems fine. But prompting the names of staff when writing a post could promote staff being spammed when off shift or on other workflows.

[#12]

OK, thanks @HarryB, but if the user was off shift would they be logged in to the forum, as it alone would serve as a distraction, when their attention should be elsewhere. Just saying.

[#13]

I quite often log in to the forums at home and try to help people or just have a read up on what's happening. Although I'm staff, I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to read through the forums like any other customer when I'm not at work

[#14]

@HarryB - I wasn't implying in any way that you can't log in when and where you want, it was more to do with your comment regarding the potential spamming of those online who have other work flows. But with that said, is there not an easier way to toggle your visibility (that currently exists)? If this were possible it would easily cover the scenario you describe as the list would be dynamic and populated on request so even though a user was online if they were hidden then they'd be excluded from the list. Again just a thought.