These are the known issues with the VMware Communities software. We will attempt to address all of these issues or provide workarounds as soon as possible. Follow the VMware Communities Blog for updates. Please report any additional bugs found in the Communities Website Feedback community.

We believe performance issues have been resolved, although we still see periodic slowdowns that require us to reboot the system. If you are experiencing problems, please report them to vmtn_team@vmware.com or in this thread.

Frequently Seen Problems

Periodic site slowdowns and restarts. This is the top-priority open issue.

Nov 4: See latest performance update at Re: Performance?.

Internet Explorer is slow. Because of the way Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 handles Javascript, performance is slower in IE6 than in other browsers. You may experience browser slowdowns using the menus and clicking on links. For faster performance, visitors should use IE7 or Firefox. There are some additional IE6 display issues.

Oct 9: Fixed. JavaScript-based menus were replaced with CSS-based ones. You may be required to clear your cache. See Monitoring and IE Performance. If you still experience problems with IE, see Request for Comments: IE6 and IE7 javascript errors?.

Email notification is ON by default. You will receive email notifications on all your postings, and all replies to your postings. To turn this off and return to the old behavior that was in VMTN Forums, go to "My Content > Preferences" in the menu bar above and turn off email notification.

Email reply functionality can take a long time. Although the new reply-via-email feature works, occasionally a reply will take hours to show back up in the thread.

Oct 24: Assumed fixed. We have not seen this recently, although we did not apply a specific fix other than performance tuning. Please report in Communities Website Feedback if you see this problem.

Posts per page setting can't be saved.

Oct 24: Fixed. You can set a preference of 15, 30, or 50 in My Content -> Preferences. More details at Feature Fix Released.

Use the Discussion tab for unread messages and last post

Oct 4: Fixed. The Discussion Tab, in which unread threads are marked as bold, is now the default view of each community.

View all posts from a user.

Oct 24: Fixed. Member profile now shows all messages posted by the member, not just threads started by the member. More details at Feature Fix Released.

Look and Feel

Threaded view. The current software does not have a threaded view.

Oct 24: Fixed. You can set a preference of threaded or flat in My Content -> Preferences. More details at Feature Fix Released.

Status icons missing from threads.

Oct 4: Fixed. Status icons are once again shown inside threads.

Text sometimes does not wrap with the screen. In reply screens and on the Browse Documents and Browse Discussion screens, text sometimes runs off the right edge of the screen and does not wrap. Refreshing often fixes the problem.

Oct 19: Several fixes made in different builds, and all known cases are resolved.

View communities with unread threads. Although you can see unread threads in a community in the Discussion tab, you can't see a list of all communities where those with unread threads are indicated.

Visible indication of watches. In the old VMTN Forums software, threads that were watched were indicated with an icon in the thread list. In the new software, there is no such indication on that screen. If a thread is being watched, in the Actions box there will be an item "Stop email notifications." All your watches can be seen under the menu item My Content > Email notifications.

Layout is hard to read. The fonts and colors in the Community (Discussion list) view have low contrast, and some people have commented that the layout feels cramped with the right sidebar not leaving much room for content. We will attempt to address these concerns.

Oct 24: Partial fix -- u/i changes were made to make list of discussions and messages easier to scan. We intend to make additional fixes in this area.

Right sidebar is static, not dynamic. The right sidebar was designed to contain dynamically-updated content (news feeds) and content specialized to each community (Workstation content in the Workstation community, etc.) While we are testing usability and performance improvements, we have turned off dynamic and contextual content on the right sidebar, and used the same static sidebar throughout the site.

Private messages

No notification for private messages. When you have a new message, your My Content menu should turn orange to let you know.

Oct 9: Fixed.

Email notification of private messages. If your email address is marked public, you will receive a notification when you have private messages. If your email is marked private, you will not. There is no way of changing this behavior otherwise.

Editor

Editor too small. The plain text editor is about 30 characters wide and not resizable. Rich text editor and preview pane are the correct size. The blog comment editor is also too small.

Oct 9: Fixed. It is now full width.

Editor fails to load. If the editor fails to load, please refresh the page.

Oct 19: We made a fix to the editor that we believe fixes the problem, except possibly when the site is running slowly. More details at Request for Comments: Rich Text Editor loading and IE.

code, pre, and url markup does not format properly. For threads that contained code, pre, and url markup before the migration to the new VMware Communities, that markup does not format correctly in VMware Communities. Users should ignore the links that are inserted. Document or discussions owners may edit their documents/discussions and update the markup for code segments and URLs. View the wiki markup help (also available by clicking the question mark help icon in the plain text editor) to see the full list of wiki markup conventions you can use.

Oct 10: Fixed. Code and URL tags now work correctly.

Editor adds/removes line breaks from my post. The editor sometimes does not format a post correctly while saving it. Use the preview tab of the editor to make sure the post will render correctly before submitting it. The plain text tab of the editor can sometimes be more convenient if you are comfortable with wiki markup.

Pasting uses pop-up window. If you use either button on the toolbar -- the plain text paste, or the rich text paste -- or if you use the Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut, you must paste within a pop-up dialog box. Your pop-up blocker should be set to allow pop-ups on communities.vmware.com. A workaround is to right-click in the editor and use the Paste function, which does not require a pop-up dialog.

Saving a document where you are not the original author can give a system error. Please let us know if you encounter this error.

Search

Advanced search. There is no direct link to the Advanced Search page and select "More Options".

Search in this community. To search in an individual community, do an empty search or go to the Advanced Search page and select "More Options".

Oct 24: Fixed. More details at Feature Fix Released.

No user filter. There is no way to limit searches to a particular user.

Searches default to AND, not OR The documentation states that "Intel AMD" will be interpreted as "Intel OR AMD". We have changed the default behavior to AND.

Search returns individual messages, not threads. In the old VMTN Forums behavior, search would return one result per thread. Now it will return a result for each message matching the search term.

OR searches not working. Using boolean OR in searches is not working at this time, but the || operator (two pipes) works correctly.

Quoted search phrases not working. Using quotes in your search (e.g., "ESX Server") are not working at this time.

Migration and Account issues

Email addresses can't be edited. To change your email address, please send a private message to JohnTroyer.

500 Server Error on Logout. If you see this error when you try to logout, delete all of your VMware cookies and log out again.

Oct 24: Assumed fixed. We have not seen this recently. Please report in Replay-Based Debugging if you see this problem.

Dates of private messages and polls are incorrect. The dates of private messages and polls were all set to the date of the migration.

Oct 24: Won't fix. Minor issue that becomes more minor over time.

Indication of new or updated content did not migrate. New discussions and documents since your last visit have bold titles and updated discussions and documents since your last visit have bold titles with the word "(updated)" appended to them. This feature is available only for new discussions and documents created since the migration.

Oct 24: Won't fix. Minor issue that becomes more minor over time.

The name field in your User Profile may not have migrated from your VMTN profile. If your name did not migrate in your user profile, please click My Content > Profile and then click Edit My Profile in the Actions box and enter your name.

Oct 24: Won't fix. Minor issue that becomes more minor over time.

User Profiles for users with usernames containing high-bit characters like é do not display The user profiles for these users are not available. In some cases, users may manually enter the URL in the form of http://communities.vmware.com/people/<username here>.

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Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience and we thank you for your patience. This transition will allow you to more easily find and share information and collaborate with others. Please report any additional bugs found in the Communities Website Feedback community.