Communities

About hoozin communities

Communities are assets to every company, because they're where ideas, projects, events, and other collaborative activities are managed. They provide the structure needed to share documents, web pages, files, images, and videos.

In hoozin, the Communities layer provides structured workspaces where users can exchange information about a topic, project, customer, and so on. The Communities layer is also where end-users are provided with hoozin apps they can choose to install.

Communities can include both internal and external users, so you can also invite your partners, vendors, and customers to join them. This allows you to more effectively and efficiently build a social business strategy using your hoozin ecosystem while still respecting security requirements, since external users can only be invited by hoozin administrators, can only view and participate in communities they're members of, and have no access to internal corporate data (such as user directories).

Creating and configuring a community

Click My communities in the left menu, then scroll up and click Create a community and fill in the three sections according to the instructions below. Once you're done, click the Create button at the bottom of the page.

Community information

Category

Categories are useful when browsing the community directory, with a dedicated filter available to quickly retrieve communities associated with a particular category. These are set up by the hoozin administrator.

Name

Choose a short and simple name for your community, since it will be appearing in the community's header, in the community directory, in the activity stream, and in live and email notifications.

URL

You can use the default generated URL or customize it.

Description

It's not mandatory to provide a description, but having one helps end-users understand the community's context and purpose.

Logo

You can upload an image file for your community's logo here. You should use a square image if possible, otherwise it will be automatically cropped to display the center. The recommended file format is .jpg.

Background image

You can upload an image file that will be displayed in the community header, beneath the logo and the community name. The recommended size is 1942 × 372 pixels. If the image has a different aspect ratio, it will automatically be cropped to display the center. The recommended file format is .jpg.

Security settings

Community type

• Public: Public communities are available to all internal users. These are useful for topic-based communities, communities of practice, and general communications.

• Private: Private communities are visible to internal users in the community directory, but they must request access from the community manager in order to join.

• Hidden: Hidden communities aren't listed in the community directory and require an invitation from a community manager.

Default permissions

Choose the permissions that new users will have by default when they join the community: Member or Visitor, which can then be modified by the community manager (see the Managing community members and groups section).

Theme

You can use the Default theme or choose a custom theme for your community. Different themes can be used within the same hoozin instance, which can be useful for multi-branded companies, for example.

Managing community members and groups

Community managers can add and/or invite new members as well as organize them into groups of Managers, Members, and Visitors.

This table lists the features and actions available to community managers, members, and visitors:

* Can participate but can't create. ✝ According to community rules.

Having different community groups is useful for organizing the audiences for your community's content. For example, you can make some community content hidden to visitor type members (such as external users from partner companies).

To add and manage community members and groups, click Manage members (displayed to community managers only). Click the gear icons to manage the groups. In the Manage groups page, click Add a member to open a panel where you can search for users and groups.

Clicking on a member will open a panel with their information and links to their profile pages. You can also start a private discussion, add the user to your contacts, and see which other communities they belong to.

Tools

Click the gear icon in the left menu to open the Tools page.

Settings

Parameters

On this page you can edit the community settings you configured when you created the community.

Advanced settings

• Check Display local navigation in community menu to show the local community navigation list, if one has been created (see the Navigation section).

• Check Collapse local navigation in community menu by default to display the local community navigation collapsed by default.

• You can set internal and external members' permissions to invite new users to the community.

• In the Invitations approval type drop-down list, the community manager can choose to automatically accept members' invitations, to receive notifications and automatically accept invitations, or to require their approval.

Statistics

Users

This page displays statistics on community users.

• Top influencers: The users who post the most content that gets the most reactions, both the community stream and generally.

• Top actors: The users with the most posts and reactions.

• Top posters: The users with the most posts.

• Top followers: The users who are following the most other users.

Activity

This page contains statistics on community activity, which can be filtered by a specific time period.

• User adoption:

  • Posts (comments and replies, images, documents, links, videos)

  • Reactions (likes, comments)

  • Communities (public, private, hidden)

  • Discussions (discussions, conversations)

  • User adoption trends

• Top public posts

• Top influencers

• Top tags

• User adoption graph

• Top applications

• User progression count

• User count

• Post type breakdown

• Post count evolution

• Unique connections

Navigation

Click Navigation (or Manage navigation in the left menu) to create a customized left menu navigation list for the community.

In the Navigation Editor, you can create a navigation list in a default language and/or in other languages in the Available languages list. Click the pencil icon to set up or edit a navigation list in the Community Navigation page.

Editing sections & links

In these panels, you can enable or disable the section (and its associated links) or the link, and give it a title.

Click Image to select an image file to add to a link name, either from the sitemap images or a uploaded from a local drive. You can add individual images by clicking the blue box with the arrow below the image thumbnail, or choose multiple image files to add.

The ID field contains the section or link's globally unique identifier (GUID), which can be used by developers to identify the section or link's node in the navigation tree. You can change this value to a more meaningful name, but make sure these are unique within your navigation list.

You can choose a resource file (in .resx format) to use section and field labels contained a separate external file, instead of having to maintain translations for specific languages within the Community Navigation page.

To make the navigation list visible to specific users and/or groups, click Select people, search for users and/or groups, and add them.

For links, add the URL and select whether it will open in the current page or in a new page.

Once you're done editing the navigation list, click Save, then Back to languages list.

To make navigation lists in other languages available to users who have selected one of those as their default language, click the toggle switch to the right to publish the list. (You can unpublish the list if necessary.)

The community navigation list will now appear in the Navigation section in the community's left menu, in the default language. Lists in other languages that have been published will appear if the user chooses that language.

Roles

In the Roles list, you can add members to the Invitation Managers list, giving them permissions to receive and approve community invitations, and the Navigation Management list, which will let them add and edit links in the left menu navigation (see Navigation).

Click a role's gear icon to open the Manage role screen. Here, you can edit the role's name and add members. Community owners have all roles by default.

Members

On the Members list screen, you can add users and groups to the Managers, Members, and Visitors lists. See Managing community members and groups for information on these roles.

Activating an app

Community managers can access the hoozin App store to activate or deactivate apps in the community. See the Apps section for information on setting up and using apps in communities.

Sharing content in the community

Like in the Social layer, community managers, members, and visitors can share content to the community's stream. You can set the visibility of posts to the entire community, or click the drop-down list and start typing a group or community member name to share it with them.

You can also add tags to better classify the content and make it easier to find. As well, you can filter the stream by type of content (message, image, document, link, or video), by author, and/or by date. Click the x next to the filter details to clear the criteria.

Click the thumbs-up to like the content post, and the speech bubble to leave a comment (click the x to delete it). You can edit a comment you've left, and others can reply to it.

In the upper right of a content post, click the star icon to add the post to your favorites, and the chain icon to get the post's direct URL. Click the + icon to delete, edit, hide, or report the content.

Community managers can also share content as Sticky posts that will remain pinned to the top of the community stream by clicking the push pin icon after posting the content.

In the Community section in the left menu, click Activity to view the community's stream. In the top left, click Sticky posts to show only the pinned posts.

Click System tasks to display the list of your assigned tasks, which you can filter by date.

Click Discussions to display all of your group or private discussions.