Our user community has been growing thanks to the wide range of data and services made available by ECMWF. One of these services is the new forum, which builds on the success of the previous (Copernicus-focused) forum. The aim of the new forum is to reach a larger number of users, from ECMWF itself as well as from the Copernicus services run by ECMWF, and to help them build a user self-supporting community where they can share their knowledge and experience with others. A short project began in October 2023, and the new forum platform was released on 14 February 2024.
From Copernicus User Support to the new forum
Over the last few years, various support channels have been introduced to better support Copernicus users with the aim to encourage self-help. Until April 2019, the Copernicus User Support Ecosystem was only composed of the Jira-based service desk and the Copernicus Knowledge Base. However, these components were lacking a feature to enable users to help themselves. In order to connect with the growing Copernicus community, the Copernicus User Support forum was launched in April 2019. It was primarily intended for users of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS) and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Atmosphere Data Store (ADS), and it was built using the Atlassian Confluence platform.
After a review of the user journey carried out by Nomensa in the last quarter of 2021, the Data Support team introduced the ‘User Support Journey’ and restructured the forum platform following their recommendations. The ‘User Support Journey’ includes four channels: the Virtual Assistant, the Knowledge Base, the User Forum, and the Jira-based Support Portal. The aim is to direct users to find the information they are looking for as quickly and efficiently as possible.
While Confluence provided a good starting point, it became apparent over time that a dedicated forum platform with advanced capabilities would be needed. A new project started in October 2023 with Interloop, with the aim of moving the forum from Confluence to a new platform. In the first part of the project, a review of the most popular forum platforms was carried out, and Discourse was selected as the best candidate. The main benefits of choosing Discourse are:
- It is a leading forum platform, supporting single sign‑on (SSO), easy look and feel customisation and embedding, and quick content migration.
- It provides a much-improved user experience.
- It supports threading, categorisation and tagging of discussions.
- It allows us to better respond to the needs of a fast-growing user community, greatly boosting collaboration and self-help among users.
Having identified the platform, the Data Support team worked with the contractors and a number of ECMWF teams to fulfil the different requirements to make the platform work in the ECMWF infrastructure. In particular, the SSO was implemented with the ECMWF authentication and authorisation service, and the look and feel was customised to assure consistency with ECMWF and Copernicus stylesheets.
In order to widen the scope from the original target audience, the structure of the forum was completely reviewed to make it more general and accessible for all ECMWF users. The new structure includes categories for announcements, access and login, datasets and usage, software and tools, training, workshops and events, feedback, and general background information. There are also subcategories related to the Copernicus services and general services. All the content and related metadata of the previous forum platform were migrated and redirected/reorganised to comply with the new structure. A new ECMWF subdomain and related email address were also implemented to improve consistency and allow notifications to be sent to users when there is activity in the forum.
The forum platform is now accessible at: https://forum.ecmwf.int. Here, users can engage in discussions and share information (when logged in using their ECMWF account), and access the latest news about Copernicus/ECMWF products.
What next?
The next steps to make the forum a key point of the user journey include:
- selecting and training moderators who can act as area specialists to stimulate discussion (and will be identifiable as such from the badge icon next to their name)
- making the forum a useful and valuable resource for all users (e.g. training, open data, Integrated Forecasting System users) in the service of ‘one ECMWF’ – it is no longer a service only available to CAMS and C3S users
- developing a strategy to promote the forum widely. In this context, we are already working closely with collaborators to embed the content of the forum in the new CDS and ADS portal so that users can easily find it and better access the forum platform.