Sort order on Customer Community

[DeanR]

Has anyone noticed the sort order of discussions on the Customer Community not working for them over the past week or so?  No matter what Preference I choose (Topic Start Date or Latest Post Date) I end up with older discussions listed before newer ones.  This is happening across different browsers and even if I'm not signed in, so I don't think it's an issue with my user account.

Example attached: 

If sorted by Start Date the order should be 3,1,2

If sorted by Latest Post the order should be 2,3,1

[AshleyB]

Hi @DeanR

Thanks for posting this concern. I will look into this for you. You are right, it should be sorted based on the option you chose. I am not seeing this issue on other accounts. I will follow up with you on this when I know more information.

[DeanR]

Hi @AshleyB 

Thanks for looking into this.  Sorting by Topic Start Date seems to be working; it's just sorting by Latest Post Date that is putting them in the wrong order.  It also seems to only be an issue in the Concur Expense part of Product Forums.  I don't really use the others as we don't have Travel or Invoice, but I did some testing in there and didn't find any issues with the sort order.

What is the system default for sorting when you are not logged in?  I was getting the same results when not logged in as I was when using 'Sort by Latest Post Date' when logged in - is that the same for you?

Kind regards,

Dean

[AshleyB]

Hi Dean,

Thanks for doing some testing. That is very helpful. By default, the forums will order the posts by most recent reply. This is why you saw it displayed this way when you were logged off as well. It sounds like this feature is working then. Could you share another screenshot of the forum sorted by original post date? That seems to be the main issue here. 

I'm glad to hear some of it is working again. Do let me know if you have any other questions. I am happy to help.

[DeanR]

Hi @AshleyB ,

It is the sorting by most recent reply that isn't working; I haven't come across any instances of posts being out of order when sorting by original post date.

I've taken this screenshot today while logged out, so it would be using the default sort of most recent reply, and added the order they should be sorted in.  You can see the ones numbered 7 and 8 have had no posts since March but are sorted higher than those with posts in April.

[DeanR]

Another screenshot from today, with (default) sort order by most recent reply.  The second item was updated more recently than the first.

[AshleyB]

Perfect! I will escalate this issue and let you know what I find. Thanks for the screenshots and extra help on this.

[AshleyB · Accepted solution]

Hi @DeanR 

Following up on this question: we have had a chance to investigate this and found that there is no issue in the sorting feature. The reason the posts seem to be out of order is that those posts were moved into that discussion board after they were originally posted. We as community managers do this at times to keep the community organized and to make sure that each post has the best visibility possible for the topic they are discussing. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention. Let me know if you have any other questions.

[DeanR]

Hi @AshleyB ,

Thanks for the reply; that makes sense now.

Cheers

Dean