Introduction
The Community area of your platform offers a great way to interact and share ideas with other platform users. In the community, you can ask questions, answer other users’ questions, share your insights and chat with others. Communities can be private, meaning they are only visible to the platform users, or public, meaning they are visible to everyone. In all cases, the community’s functionalities detailed in this article are only available to signed-in users.
If you are a member of a private community and this community is later set as public by the administrators, you will be notified the next time you connect to the community. You can change the information in your community profile, if necessary.
Tip: To know if your community is public or private, open the community page while logged out. If you can still see the page content, then your community is public.When a platform administrator creates a community, they will add users that become members of the community. This article is a guide to help you navigate and use the main areas of the community. To know more about the community’s functionalities such as content creation and sharing, refer to the article Leveraging the community’s functionalities.
The community home page
To access the community area of your platform, press the menu icon in the top left corner of your platform and click on Community.
Please note ! Depending on the administrators’ settings, you might find the Community page under another name.
On this home page, you will find the following sections, which are detailed in the next chapters of this article.
- Newsfeed
- Write a post button in the left panel
- Access to the My community profile section in the left panel
Access to the My spaces section in the left panel
Your newsfeed
The main content of the community homepage is your newsfeed.
On the top of the page, you will see the posts that were pinned by the community administrators starting with the most recent posts. Unread pinned posts are shown in an expanded view while the posts you have read are collapsed.
Below these pinned posts, you will see the new and trending content followed by all the other posts. Read posts are identified by their grayed out title and description.
Every post displays the following details:
- Post author. Click on the post author to access the member’s community profile
- Space the post belongs to. Spaces are parts of the community that discuss a specific topic.
- Content preview
- Upvotes and comment counters. Click on the counter to jump to the comments section of the post
- Post type. Displayed when the post is an article or a question. More details on post types in the chapter Writing posts in the community in this article.
The post can also be accessed by clicking on any part of the post preview. This will take you to a page containing the following sections:
Post details
The post details section includes:
- The post author
- Date of posting
- Upvote button allowing you to upvote the post. Please note that, depending on the administrators' settings, the upvote button can have different labels and emoji.
- Social media sharing buttons if this option has been enabled by administrators
- Ellipsis menu with the option to leave the space the post belongs to. When you leave the space, all the content belonging to the space will disappear from your newsfeed and your email digests. You can join back the space at any time. More information on spaces in the following chapter.
Comments section
In the comments section, you can add new comments to the post, reply to existing comments and upvote comments and replies. More details on comments in the corresponding section of this article.
Joining and managing spaces
The list of the spaces that you have joined or that you have been added to is located in the left panel of your home page. Spaces can also have sub-spaces discussing a specific topic. When you join a space, its content will appear in your newsfeed and the updates in your email digests. Spaces that you have not joined will not appear in this list but you can access them by clicking on See all.
You will then see all the existing spaces in the community. Join or leave spaces by selecting the corresponding checkbox. The list of joined spaces is updated in real time in the left panel of the community home page.
Please note! When you join a space, you will automatically be added to all its sub-spaces. You can then pick the sub-spaces that you are interested in and leave the others.
From the home page left panel, click on the name of a space or a subspace to access it.
On the dedicated space page, you will find a short description of the space topic as well as the posts belonging to the space, starting with the pinned posts.
If an administrator has assigned a space manager, and made them visible to space members, the manager’s name appears below the description of the space.
If you want to leave the space, click on the Joined button in the top right corner of the page. When you leave a space, all the posts belonging to it will disappear from your newsfeed and your digest notifications.
Members profiles
A member’s community profile can be accessed by clicking on the member’s name, whether it is displayed in a post or in the messaging section.
On each community profile page, you will find:
- Profile picture
- Member’s first name and last name or nickname. Nicknames will override the first and last name when enabled by administrators and set by the member. Please note that if nicknames are later disabled, members will be prompted to remove theirs but this is not mandatory. You can also find that only the first letter of the last name is displayed if this option has been selected by the community administrators.
- Tagline: This is a brief self-description of the member
- Bio: This is a description of the member’s experience and topics on which they might be able to help other members
- Community badges awarded to the member, if any. Please note that, depending on the administrators' settings, you might not be able to view badges in other members' community profile.
- History of chats that you have exchanged with the member, if any
- History of the member’s posts, comments and replies, if any. These are found in the corresponding tabs.
Managing your community profile
When you access a community for the first time, you are prompted to check your community profile information. Some fields mayl be pre-filled based on the information found in the My profile area of your platform. Check them and edit them if needed. Upload your profile picture by clicking on Upload image. Supported files are .JPG, .PNG and .WEBP and the maximum file size is 2MB.
Click on Save when you are done. You can go back to your community profile page and edit all the information at any time. Simply click on My community profile at the top of the homepage left panel and proceed as outlined above. If you leave this page without saving your changes, they will be lost and you will not be able to retrieve them. After saving, you can click on View public version to see your community profile as seen by other members or by everyone depending on whether the community is private or public. Only click on View public version after saving your changes, otherwise they will be lost.
Notes on profile management:
- If you belong to several communities, editing your community profile in one community will automatically update your community profile in the other communities.
- The changes to your community profile in the community will not be reflected in the My profile area of the platform.
Earning community badges
In your platform, you can earn badges by performing specific actions. All your badges can be reached by clicking on the trophy icon in the platform header and going to Badges and points from the bottom of the right panel.
On the next page, go to the My badges tab to view all of the badges that have or have not yet been awarded to you. This includes badges that you can earn by performing specific actions in the community.
Depending on the administrators’ settings, the badges you have earned might be displayed on your community profile page. Similarly, you might be able to see other members’ badges on their community profile page.
Notifications
Real-time notifications
Real-time notifications are sent to the Notifications center of your platform and via email for the following events:
- New comment: sent when there is a new comment to a post you are subscribed to. From the notification, you can reply to the comment or choose to unsubscribe from the post
- New message: sent when someone sends you a direct message. You can access the message from the notification by clicking on View
- Post approval: sent when one of your posts went through pre-moderation and was approved and published by an administrator or a moderator
- Post rejection: sent when one of your posts went through pre-moderation and was rejected by an administrator or a moderator. You will be provided with a rejection reason that you can use to improve and send your post again.
- New mentions: sent when you are mentioned in a post or a comment
- Best answer: when replying to a question, this notification is sent when your answer was marked by an administrator or the post author as Best answer
- Featured article: sent when your article has been featured by an administrator.
Scheduled email digests
On top of the real-time email notifications sent for the above events, you might receive an email digest notification at a frequency set by the administrator. The email digests include the new posts from the spaces you have joined. You can also choose to unsubscribe to email digests from your community profile management area.
Notification markers
Your newsfeed includes all the posts you have subscribed to. These posts feature the number of comments (top-level comments and replies in threads):
- When you have no unread comments, the marker will show the total number of comments
- When you have unread comments, this notification will feature the number of unread comments, instead of total comments
- When you have unread mentions, the same marker will show an “@” symbol
Unread private messages are also marked in your left panel. The number of unread messages will be shown next to each member’s name.