Customers often ask us for a “solved button” feature. This has been discussed a few times on meta. #7082#26070
We are going to embark on building an official “Solved Button” I wanted to make sure it is very well specified prior.
Prior Art
@shiv built the Solved Button plugin, it performs some of the functionality we would like to see, but not all. Further more it is build on some old interfaces and needs an update.
Spec
Admins can select a checkbox on categories → settings, “allow solved button”.
Admin can set a site setting globally to enable disable the solved button feature (works in multisite)
On an open topic, the OP or Staff may select any reply as a “solution”, only one reply may be marked as a solution.
If a topic has a solution, the solution will be linked directly from the bottom of the first post.
If a topic has a solution we will display a special icon in the topic list
If a topic is closed/frozed you can not set a solution.
The ui will hint (via a tooltip) who accepted the solution, as Staff have override power.
If the OP selects an answer it will become “locked” after a configurable period of time, after which they may not select a different answer.
We will have a special search query term to fine “unsolved”/“solved” topics in a category.
special css classes will be injected at the topic and post level to denote a topic has a solution.
Out of scope for initial version (maybe in v2)
Special badges for N accepted answers
Displaying count of accepted answers on usercard or user page
Will there be template hooks so that we can change the location and verbiage for this? For instance, we’ll want it to be more prominent and show who selected the answer without an onhover action.
Is there a timeframe for release (I know all devs love this question!)
Will we be able to tap into the actions around solving a topic for other actions?
I have mockups for something similar but with far more prominent placement since we are primarily a support forum - I’m hoping you’ll make this accessible for customization.
Please do update this (or another) topic when there is something ready to install for testing. This will be the last piece we need to unify all of our product support over to Discourse from other media.
Similarly I think the “solved” action button probably needs to stand out more visually, too, to remind people to use it. Otherwise it’s likely to go forgotten.
What will this do to existing topics in a category? I’m guessing the answer is “nothing”, in which case:
Allow bulk-application of Solved widget for existing topics
For my forum, our old Troubleshooting topics shouldn’t be left out of this functionality. Many users still land on old topics when searching for answers to already solved problems, and if these topics don’t have a Solved/Unsolved status, it will be confusing.
We’d like to automatically mark all our existing Troubleshooting topics as “Solved”, which will have further implications on the spec:
Can a Topic be “Solved” without an answer?
The poster might have solved the problem themselves shortly thereafter and edited in the answer.
The question/point is considered void/mute. As such, “Solved” is more appropriate since it’s not a real problem and it communicates that there’s nothing unresolved about this subject.
A large amount of legacy topics - of which 90% have good answers - should be marked Solved
What about OP reverting the Topic’s status to “Unsolved”? I think this should be possible to allow via settings. We trust our users to be good citizens and only revert the Solved status with probable cause.
Installing such plugins is way technical because I tried it several times and often end up with wrong SHH logins and there seems to be little support with regard to helping newbies in this case. I would request them to add it in default updates
this, which solves (pun intended) a problem we have been looking to fix in our community. It will be huge.
