Introduction

The Community hub area of your platform allows you to engage your learners by fostering the sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Spaces are the main way to organize community content by topic. The visibility of spaces can be customized to make them visible to specific groups and/or branches. Members can choose to join or leave spaces, thus subscribing or unsubscribing from the space’s posts appearing in their newsfeed and email digests. Please note that once a member unsubscribes from a space, you cannot add them back. 

This article explains how you can create and manage your community spaces. Spaces can only be created and managed by Superadmins and Power Users (with granted permissions). Superadmins and Power Users are referred to as administrators in this article.

Creating a community space 

Before creating spaces, start by creating a community as outlined in the corresponding article.

To create a new space, go to the Community hub area and move to the Spaces tab. Click on the plus icon in the top right corner or on the Create space button if you have not created any space yet. Configure the space as described below and click on Create space when you are done.

General settings tab

• Set the name, description and emoji of the space. 
• If you want to restrict the ability to write posts to administrators, select the corresponding checkbox.

Visibility tab

Choose the set of members that will be able to access the space

• All members
• A selection of members
• Administrators only

Automatically add members tab

Choose how community administrators and members should be added to the space.

Please note! Once you click Create space, the space will be created in Unpublished status. Set the status to Published from the publishing bar in order for the space to become visible to members.

Managing spaces

The Spaces page lists all the spaces you have created, if any. Every new community comes with a number of pre-created spaces that you can edit or delete. 

You can filter spaces to show only active or archived spaces from the Space category option on the left side of the table. You can also reorder spaces or place a space under another one to turn it into a sub-space. To do this, click on the cross icon in the space row. Then, place the space in the desired position by clicking and releasing on the corresponding icon. The first-level icon is used to modify the order while the second-level icon is used to create sub-spaces. Please note that you will find both published and unpublished spaces in the Active tab. 

From this page, you can also: 

• Select and edit the space emoji by opening the emoji picker in the corresponding column
• Edit the space visibility from the Visibility column
• Select groups and branches that will be automatically added to the space
• Restrict the space positing and set it to Admin-only using the corresponding icon turning it from gray to green.
• Make members automatically join the space by using the Add new members icon and turning it from gray to green
• Publish or unpublish the space 

Editing spaces 

To access and configure a space, click on its name or select Edit from the ellipsis menu at the end of the space’s row. The following actions are available: 

• Edit: Configure the space settings. You will find more details on the space’s settings in the following paragraphs. 
• Remove emoji: Remove the space’s emoji. An emoji can be added back by opening the emoji picker in the corresponding column. 
• Go to space in the community: This will redirect you to the Space page of the community, which can be accessed from the User menu. 
• Archive: Archive the space. Archived spaces can still be accessed by members. You can also activate the space again by clicking on the ellipsis menu at the end of an archived space row and selecting Activate.  
• Delete: Delete the space. Deleted spaces will be removed from the system and you will not be able to retrieve them. 

Select Edit to configure the space settings.

Space can be published or unpublished. Unpublished spaces are not visible and accessible to members. More information on space publishing in the Publishing spaces chapter of this article.

General settings 

From the General settings tab you can:

• Edit the space’s name. The name can be changed at any time. 
• Enter a description. The description will be useful for members to understand what topics are discussed in a space. It is visible when members enter a dedicated space page. The description is not mandatory but it is strongly recommended to add one.
• Choose an emoji that will be shown next to the name. The emoji can also be changed directly from the Spaces main page by clicking on it and using the emoji picker. 
• Restrict members from posting. if this option is enabled, only Superadmins and Power Users (with granted permissions) can post in this space. Space members can still access the space but they are not able to add posts. They will only be able to comment posts created by administrators. This option is disabled by default. 

Space visibility

From the Visibility tab, select which users will have access to this space. You can choose to give access to: 

• All members
• A custom selection of members
• Only Superadmins and Power Users with granted permissions. 

By choosing a custom selection of members, you can decide which branches and/or groups will have access to the space. Members should belong to at least one of the selected groups or branches to access the space. If you are editing a sub-space, some visibility options might not be available because a sub-space cannot have a wider visibility than its parent space.

If you enable cohorts for multiple groups, members belonging to a specific group will only be able to see posts from the same group’s members. 

Please note! Cohorts are not available for branches. If you enable the Cohorts functionality, you will no longer be able to select branches and any previous branch selection will be lost.

Once you are done with the space’s configuration, click on Save changes. If you leave the page without saving, all unsaved changes will be lost. 

Automatically add members

From this tab, you can enable the automatic addition of members to the space. Members will still have the option to leave the space. This option is enabled by default. If it is disabled, members will not automatically be added to the space and will not see it unless they click on See all in the navigation panel of their community. Choose which members you want to automatically add to the space: 

• All existing and new members who have access to the space
• Existing and new members from specific groups and branches

You can also automatically add community administrators to the space by selecting the corresponding checkbox. 

Members can also be added from the community space page. Find the Add members area in the top right corner and type a member’s name in the search box. If a user has chosen to leave the space, you cannot add them back. 

Publishing spaces

Spaces can be published or unpublished:

• Unpublished spaces are not visible and accessible to members.
• Members will not see the unpublished spaces and their content anywhere in the community or their notifications.
• Administrators will see the unpublished spaces in the community with the Unpublished status.

As a community administrator, you can change the status of a space from the Community hub area of the platform.

• Go to the Spaces tab.
• Click on a space name to access and edit it.
• Look for the publishing bar at the bottom of the page.
• Choose Published or Unpublished and click on Save changes to apply your selection.

Space publishing works in the following way with regard to sub-spaces:

• When you publish a space, you can either publish the space only or the space with all its related sub-spaces.
• If you unpublish a space, all its related sub-spaces will automatically be unpublished.
• If you unpublish a space, you cannot publish its related sub-spaces.
• Moving a published space to make it a sub-space of an unpublished space will automatically change its status to Unpublished.

Please note! Publishing works differently from archiving. When you archive a space, it will disappear from the members’ My spaces left panel. It will also disappear from the My spaces page when clicking on See all in said panel. However, archived spaces remain accessible via a direct URL. On the contrary, unpublished spaces will disappear in the same way but also become inaccessible via a direct URL.