Feature requests

[Molly K]

tst -

In order to be logged in when you hit a page in the forums, you need to go through the redirect that does the silent login.  Unfortunately, there is not a way around this - this is how the integration with the NI User Profile and the forums works.  I haven't worked with the Internet toolkit much, but I guess I'm surprised that there isn't a way to handle the redirect in the LV code.

We have the feature request to sort the tracker by latest activity (as well as subscriptions, bookmarks, and dashboard) on the list, but we don't have an estimate on when this will be released yet.

Take care, 

[tst]

I don't work with the internet toolkit either, so I wouldn't know (I ripped that VI off a CC post). I think I might have it somewhere with the enterprise connectivity toolset, so I will have to look.

Maybe someone with more experience knows (Charly?).

[tst]

OK, I got around to installing the internet toolkit and I finally noticed that the VI does have an input to follow redirects (the toolkit is old, so it's a classic X boolean). Anyway, this doesn't help because apparently the site uses javascript to confirm the login when you set it to log in automatically and that is something that I don't think can be simulated without a real browser. Looks like this VI won't make it past the hopeful stage.

[ernestm]

Hey all -

A word from the NI Web systems administrators; please be careful when crawling our site using automated tools.  We already blocked one IP address this week because it was generating a huge number of requests to an URL formatted very much like the one above (a sine URL hacked to pass through to the forums).  We have to be on guard against DoS attacks and routinely block IPs that are generating spikes of automated traffic; Molly just pointed this thread out to me and we figure it may be related.

Crawl away, but please meter your traffic.  More than 1 hit per second may get you detected and blocked by our network infrastructure. 

Thanks,
Ernest Mueller
Web Systems
National Instruments

[tst]

Well, it wasn't me. I basically gave up on this idea and am waiting for NI \ Lithium to allow us to either view our posts sorted by latest activity or (a better option in my mind) provide another section\page when you log into the forum which will include links to all the threads (in all the boards) you posted to and which have new posts. Personally, I think such a thing should be in a very prominent location and is more important to me than regularly viewing my statistics or who are the last users who logged in.

[Ben]

tst wrote;

" ...  include links to all the threads (in all the boards) you posted to and which have new posts."

This is really needed by those of us who post a lot. I have to review 300 posts to keep up on threads for the last 60 days. I am often suprised to see threads that I thought were done come to life again and only stumble across these updates by monitoring the main LV thread.

What complicates even further is people actually serach MORE than the last 90 days and find threads from years ago. People will reply to those old threads thinking that the original posters will be notified about the follow-up question. NOT!

Ben

[tst]

I searched for MORE than the last 90 days and found my original request from almost a year ago and Molly's reponse here. The suggestion she made there might be applicable to you (although I don't know if it would work retroactively and if there is a limited number of subscriptions it will stop monitoring you earlier threads). I still want a built-in mechanism for monitoring responses to my posts (and a way to get around the javascript problem using the internet toolkit, if someone knows one).

[Ben]

Hi tst,

Could you share a reply# so that I do not have to completely re-read that thread. That looks like the "we need a Breakpoint" thread.

Ben

[tst]

Interesting. I expected that link to take you directly to reply 69, which is Molly's response where she quotes me. The original one is probably about 10 or so before.

[Ben]

Thanks tst!

I gave up subscriptions with the old forum becuase after a while they become impossible to manage.

The Dashboard thingy requires pop-ups or some such thing and my pop-up blocker renders that gizmo a non-option.

I also no longer have the time to review all of those daily subscription e-mails. When I am locked up at a customer site for a week, I just have to blow away all but the most recent e-mail.

I know this sounds like whining but if you want free help, then make it easier.

Ben