Question vs Discussion?

Luke Shiras

What's the difference between the Discussion, Question, and Idea options for new posts?

I mean I get the meaning of the words but from a functional point of view, what difference is there?

Are they tagged or classified differently? Will they be color-coded or searchable? Are they only available based on the topic category we are posting in? For example, New Idea is available when looking at all topics but not Community Chatter. It's also the only choice in "Product Ideas & Feedback"

And finally, when making a poll, you can add an optional discussion but it doesn't seem to show up on the posted poll. Is that a bug?

Marco M

Hey @Luke Shiras,

Great questions! Yes, they are classified differently, color-coded, and searchable. Ideation (New Idea) is only available within the Product Ideas & Feedback category. This mostly is due to our product group being directly involved in that category and helps with analytics. We don't necessarily need that for Community Chatter, although that may change in the future! We're trying to keep things a bit easier and straightforward as we build up Bluebeam Community.

Let me also provide more context here, in case other concerns come up.

takes deep breath

While users can technically ask questions using a Discussion post, the ability to label it a Question includes a few features that make it better suited to asking (and answering).

Differentiating Questions and Discussions makes it easier for members to have their questions answered and helps others to quickly locate questions that need to be answered. When browsing posts, members can differentiate Questions, Answered Questions, and Solved Questions. There are tags located beneath the post status when browsing the list of Recent Discussions, Recently Answered, or Unanswered.

Another big feature is Follow Up notifications. By turning on Question type posts, we can enable follow-up notifications (including emails) to users who have asked questions in the community but who have not yet accepted or rejected the answers they’ve received. These notifications help prompt authors to follow up (hence the name) and ultimately flag an answer as accepted, which, in turn, benefits the rest of the community.

This post type allows us to better filter unanswered questions that Bluebeam Staff may be able to assist with, as well as better analytics controlled on the backend. And lastly, for points! Answering questions gives more points, and more points means more rewards. 😁

Hope this helps!

Regarding the Poll situation, can you provide more details? Are you referring to others being able to comment within a Poll post, just like a discussion?

Marco M

Got it!

Also wanted to point out that Polls selections cannot be edited at this time once you have already posted (although the content of the post can be edited). Ideal? Definitely not, but it's a limitation at this time. Hopefully we'll be able to provide an update in the future.

Luke Shiras

Re: Poll issue - it may have been a user error. The discussion content of my poll didn't show up but after an edit, it does show up. I've been having an issue where if I hit backspace to fast or too often, it deletes the discussion field box itself and I'd have to start over. I may have forgotten to paste my comments before hitting send.