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 on Create space, the space will immediately become visible to all the community members (that you have included in the space) if it is included in a published community. You can set the status of the space to Unpublished from the publishing bar.

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. Using the cross icon, you can reorder spaces or turn a space into a sub-space by dragging and dropping it under another space. Please note that you will find both published and unpublished spaces in the Active tab.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 and 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, that 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’s 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.

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 space page in the community. 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.