I am no technical authority but carried out some user testing and wish to share my results to encourage solutions.
The Active Topics Issue
First, The Search Issue is different and will be looked into separately.
It appears that forums can be included or excluded in the Active Topics list based on the following criteria:
If the Generic Forum Permission named Forum Access is set to All Users the forum topics will be included in the Active Topics list. Under all other circumstances the topics will not display.
Group Permissions are not considered in the display of topic names but do control access to the postings as one would expect. The issue, therefore, is controlling the display of the topic name. To help you:
- if you have attempted to secure your forums using generic permissions, active topics will not work for NO-ONE.
- If you wish EVERYONE (including guests) to see all of your topic names set the Generic Forum Permission to All Users and use Group Permissions to control access to the forum's content. Thus, topic names can be seen but threads cannot be read.
- If you wish to prevent EVERYONE (including users with forum access) from seeing the topic names in specific forums, set the Generic Forum Permission for the specific forums to Private Groups and set up Group Permissions to control access to the forum's content.
If you wish to have increasing levels of users like Guests, Customers, Staff and Managers and use Active Topics you'll have to set up separate forums!!! The only three options are hidden for all, hidden for no-one, hidden for private forums.
As mentioned previously, the deficiency is that it is not possible to secure topic names without losing use of the Active Topics facility (even for those permitted to see the threads themselves).
I'd appreciate any ideas or feedback on this.
Edited by Nick-V
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