Community

Overview: The Community Forum


Murray Gray in Community

Feb 19, 2024 - 5 min read. Available on Growth plan or higher..

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Community Forum

How does our community differ from other community products out there (like Circle, Skool or Mighty Networks)?

While our forum module has a very close featureset to other products, we do a number of things differently.

  • Fine-grained permission controls on groups and spaces, to segment and control who has access to what parts of your forum, based on things like course enrollment and student tags.
  • Space syncing with course discussion – the perfect way to bring comment activity from inside your course into your forum - AS FORUM POSTS. On other platforms, content exists only in one place, which "traps" comments not inside the forum in a "silo". With us, you can include those comments and discussions INTO your main forum, so students browsing your forum will see discussions happening inside the course's content discussions. Which increases engagement on your content for all participants.
  • Multiple images in each post: most platforums allow just one image or animated GIF per post. We allow unlimited images, so users can fully express themselves.

How to Access the Forum

You can find the link to the Forum in your account sidebar. This will take you right into the Forum as an administrator, and will give you certain administrator-level tools that normal users don't see.

Using the Community Forum

Your Community Forum is divided into Groups, Spaces and Posts

  • First step is to create a Group by clicking the plus sign:
  • You'll see options to create your Group Name, Accent Color, and select who should be able to view this group (everyone, only students in a particular course, or only students with a particular Tag).
  • You'll also have an option whether or not to make the Members List public. (Note that if you choose to make it public, students can still choose whether or not they want to be shown in this list).
  • Once you've created a Group, you'll see it on the left sidebar
  • Click to create a new Space within the Group
  • Next, in the right sidebar that pops out, enter a name for your new Space
  • Choose whether this will be a regular space or if you want to use Space Syncing. Most of the time you'll be creating a normal Space (the top choice):

Space Syncing gives you the choice to:

  • Mirror no course content – this creates a regular forum space
  • Mirror discussion from all trainings – this places ALL course discussion into a single space. (Use this if your course has less than 10 trainings in total)
  • Mirror discussion from a specific module – this allows you to create a separate space for each module in your course. So, if your course has 5 modules, you can have 1 space for each module
  • Mirror selected training(s) – this allows you to choose which training discussion to mirror. (Handy if you want to create curated spaces with specific training content)
  • Mirror specific page(s) discussion – allows you to bring in discussions happening on custom pages in your course
  • After you've made your choice, click the Create Space button and you'll see your Space on the left sidebar inside your Group. Click to view Posts, Members, or Search within that Space!

How to Create a New Post in the Forum

Once you've created a Group and created a Space inside that Group, you can now add a post.

Click on the arrow to open up the Group and show the Spaces that you've created

Click on the Space where you want to create a post

Click to create your first post

Write your post. You can include emojis, attach files, upload images, and add animated GIFs!

How to Delete Posts from the Forum

Click on the "space" where the post is located

Click the menu in the top right hand corner of the post, and select "Delete"

How Your Students Can Access the Forum

For your students to be able to access the Forum, you'll need to first add it to your Navigation Bar. Here's how to do that.

Once you've set up a tab on your Nav Bar, then your students can click to access the Forum

How to Mention Someone in the Forum

You can "mention" a student in a post or reply to a post, using the @ symbol to pull up their name and tag them. Here's how to do it

This is helpful for drawing specific students' attention to a conversation, when needed!

Based on the students' notification settings, they can receive a notification either inside the app or by email (or both).

Pinning Posts in the Forum

As the admin, you can pin important posts to the top of your forum.

Students can also pin posts.

If the ADMIN pins a post, it will go to the top of the page.

If STUDENT pins a post, it will go in the "Pinned Posts" section in the upper right hand corner


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