BruceW's profile

Gold Problem Solver

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26K Messages

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023 7:02 PM

Closed

Mystery Forum icon

1. What is the purpose of the white-chat-icon-in-a-purple-disk that sometimes appears in the lower-right corner of Forum pages? When I clicked the icon and typed "Is this Forum chat or regular chat or what?", I received the answer "Hello, and good morning. This is Forums live chat. 😊 How can we help?". What is this? What is "Forums live chat"? Who am I talking to? Is it the same as "Xfinity Support"? If not, how are they different? Why isn't this documented anywhere? Why does the icon come and go, appearing perhaps half the time?

2. Why was a "Top" icon added? Do users really need help finding the top of the page? Since the top of the page is just a useless blob of color, do we really need a quick way to get there?

3. Why does the mystery white-chat-icon-in-a-purple-disk overlay the useless "Top" icon?

4. Why is Comcast so documentation averse???

5. The icon I'd like to see might be called the "make all the 'View other replies' posts visible and then display the entire thread in chronological order. Hidden posts, posts not in date/time order, and not getting any notifications for Replies is killing me!

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.

Official Solution

Retired Employee

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5.9K Messages

2 years ago

@BruceW 

Last year we launched a Live Chat tool in our Xfinity Forum. If selected you can have immediate access to our Xfinity Support Team (the same people helping here in the forum). This Live Chat is only provided to forum users when on specific boards that would normally only have assistance being provided by Official Employees (i.e. our Customer Service and Billing boards). The reason this has not been shared widely or offered on all boards is so we can strategically allow for the good content of the forum to flourish (i.e. peer to peer conversations). The value of this forum (and all forums) is public discussions and we want to allow for that as much as possible while being mindful of those needing immediate assistance.

We are working to resolve the overlay issue with the back-to-top button and the chat icon. Soon, we hope those things no longer impede each other.

As for your other forum concerns, we have shared these with our platform vendor and they have assured us that things are functioning as designed. We have asked them to provide a feasibility review of those requests and see if they are something that will be added to their roadmap of offerings in the future. If any update to this is provided, we will share it here. Thank you for your feedback. 

We hope this answers your questions. Please let us know if you need anything else.

(edited)

Gold Problem Solver

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5.9K Messages

2 years ago

I saw the same icon. I thought it was from Microsoft and decided not to select it.

Gold Problem Solver

 • 

26K Messages

2 years ago

@XfinityJessie wrote: "... This Live Chat is only provided to forum users when on specific boards that would normally only have assistance being provided by Official Employees (i.e. our Customer Service and Billing boards). ..."

Thank you for the information. The above probably explains why it seemed like the icon was "coming and going".

Permit me to suggest, yet again, that documenting forum features would be an enormous help to both users and staff. Personally I have never seen any references to a Live Chat icon by anyone before my post today. DM icon, yes. LC icon, no.

User interface changes especially should not be made without notifying users and providing documentation for the changes.

Please be aware that there are 2 kinds of responses in this Forum: Replies and Comments. When you Comment on a post by scrolling down to "Comment on this post here...", I am notified of your response. But if you select Reply, I am NOT notified and may not be aware of your response.
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