Yahoo! Groups Blog

Navigation changes being rolled out

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Administrator

Following last week’s post on upcoming navigation improvements, we’ve completed a limited roll out of the “My groups” drop down menu. See below visual mock-ups of the navigation changes planned. Let us know what you think.

We’re trying to make browsing through messages easier by adding message filters.With this change, users would be easily switch between view by Messages, topic and hot topics.

Hot topics are topics that have attracted a lot of replies from members of the the group. User could easily identify and catch-up on topics and discussions, that they might have missed.

Posted in General | 7 Comments

Upcoming updates for easier navigation

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Administrator

There are three changes we’re planning, to make navigation of Y! Groups easier.

First, is the sub header area, where the name of the groups is displayed. Here, we are making switching between Y! Groups that you are a member of, easier. “My groups” link would show the groups you are a member of, as a drop down list. Also featured on the sub-header, would be “info” or “about” drop-down button, which displays group information and group settings.

Second, when reading a message or topic, the header area that allows users to browse through previous and next messages and topics is being modified with the goal of making it easier to navigate.

Third, is the introduction of message filters when viewing list of posts. Users could view list of posts either by topic, messages or by ‘Hot topics‘. Hot topics are topics that have attracted a lot of replies from members of the the group. User could easily identify and catch-up on topics and discussions, that they might have missed.

With these changes, we hope to make your experience with Y! Groups better.

- Yahoo! Groups product team

Posted in General | Tagged Hot topics, My Groups | 4 Comments

Moderator feature : Pending messages and subscription expiry bug fixed

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Administrator

We’ve been getting a lot of valuable feedback from our users and we welcome it!

One of the issues that moderators had reported was that the messages and subscription expiry system was not working correctly for some groups. This caused a backlog of pending messages and subscriptions which the moderator had to explicitly clean-up. This problem particularly affected groups with lots of members or ones with high interest and activity.

We have looked into this problem and have taken corrective action. Pending messages and subscriptions should now start expiring from your groups as intended.

While the expiry mechanism is not a new feature, it was meant to make the moderator’s job easy, in keeping groups safe and spam free. We are committed to making sure it continues to work well.

-Yahoo! Groups product team

Posted in Bugs, Moderator | Comments Off

Daily digest re-design, now live !

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Administrator

The updated design of the daily digest is rolled out as planned and you should begin getting daily digest e-mails in the new format. We’ve already received feedback from users, and they seem to like it.

One of the issues reported by users was the “top” link after every message in the digest is missing. We have found that this is a problem with browsers that use “web kit” rendering engine and have a fix for it in place – being tested and we’ll roll it out soon.

Also the ‘bookmark’ functionality – which scrolls to message area when the message headline on the digest dashboard is clicked is not working in certain mail clients. We’re working on fixing this issue as well…

Pls do send us feedback, we’re listening.

-Yahoo! Groups product team

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Daily digest email re-design

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Administrator

We have been working on making the design of the daily Digest email sent to Yahoo! Groups users, better. The digest design was modified on June 28th and in response to feedback, again on June 29th 2012 (for U.S. users only). We placed a feedback link to invite comments and feedback on the design and we heard from thousands of users.

We’ve made changes to the Daily digest format based on the feedback. This will be rolled out starting July 11th 2012. Pls do review the new design when it is implemented (this is a heads up only ). Here’s a summary of feedback and changes being made:

The header or dashboard area is much taller due to header design, spacing between lines, bigger font size and reduced width,consequently users need to scroll more to read the summary.
- Made the digest dashboard area wider and header compressed to make the dashboard accommodate more lines.
A subset of users had rendering issues where the message content would be rendered one word at a time.
- We’ve fixed the one-word rendering issue – this was happening with Outlook on older versions of Windows and other mail client /OS combinations as well.
Some HTML markers were changed which caused issues with screen reader programs used by visually challenged users.
- We brought back the HTML markers that were there earlier.

We’re eager to listen and fix any other issues that you may have. As in the previous iteration, we would have a feedback link in the daily digest mail, so do let us know what you think.

- Yahoo Groups team

Posted in Features | 20 Comments

We’re back !

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Administrator

Welcome back ! Season’s greetings! We’re happy to re-activate the Yahoo! Groups Product blog today. Look forward to giving you, our valuable customers, advance information on upcoming changes, share our product thinking and seek your feedback to make Yahoo! Groups better than ever.

Posted in General | 3 Comments

Yahoo! Groups Planned Maintenance

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Y! Groups Team

Yahoo! Groups is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Monday, October 3 starting at 8:30pm PT (Tuesday, October 4 at 4:30am BST) and lasting 4 hours. Groups will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will not be affected by this.

If there is any change to the schedule, we will inform you here with updates. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused – we assure you this work is essential.

Posted in General | Comments Off

Delayed Messages

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Y! Groups Team

Hi everyone,

Because of a problem related to a fix last week, one of the servers, was still accepting messages (but not sending them out).

As a consequence, approximately 7% of messages that entered Groups last week were never actually posted to the group archive or distributed via email. This includes messages that were sent via email, through posts on the site, as well as messages that moderators approved.

The good news is that the problem should now be fully resolved and no messages sent today (7/19) should be affected. In addition, the messages that were stuck on the “out of rotation” server are being posted to the group archive and emailed out.

The bad news is that because of the sheer number of messages that were stuck, it’s going to take at least another day for these messages to all be sent and some of the sent messages will then have been delayed for up to a week. Plus, given this long delay, some users will have reposted the messages themselves to the group already, which means that the delayed message will then seem like a duplicate when it arrives.

Our apologies for any inconvenience and confusion caused by this error. We are already in the process of reviewing our systems to make sure a mistake like this never happens again.

- Yahoo! Groups Team

P.S. If you believe the problem has not been fully resolved and messages sent on the 19th (or later) have not posted, contact Customer Care using this form:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/ygpostform1.html

Posted in Bugs | Comments Off

Beta Group Chat Live

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Administrator

We wanted to let you know that we launched a beta version of group chat today. To use group chat, just click on the new chat link in the left menu.

Chat functionality is enabled by default for most groups. If you wish to disable chat in your group, here are instructions on how to do so:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/chat/ygchatmod-01.html

To learn more about the new Chat feature, who can access Chat, and options for moderators, see the Chat Help page:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/chat/

Enjoy, and please let us know what you think.

The Yahoo! Groups Team

Posted in Features | 27 Comments

New Groups Experience Rollback

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Administrator

Hi everyone,

Over the past few months, we have been evaluating your feedback on the new Groups experience that we have been testing with some groups for several months. Based on that feedback, we have decided to rollback the new Groups experience starting this Wednesday, January 12. We will instead iterate on the current interface going forward. Thanks for your feedback and thoughts throughout this process.