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How to use the Community
Community forums give your customers a space to ask questions, share ideas, report problems, and hear announcements, with other customers as well as your agents.
On this page:
- How the Community works
- Forum types
- Creating and managing forums
- Configuring the Community on a portal
- Moderating posts
How the Community works
Each portal gets a Default Community, which can be enabled or disabled in Portal Settings. On the default portal template it appears as a Community tab near the top of the page. Users can follow forums to get updates on new activity.
Portal visitors must be logged in to create posts or add comments.
Forum types
Four forums are created automatically for every community, each with a different type and purpose:
| Forum | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Tips and Tricks | Questions | Users ask questions and get answers. Others can upvote to signal shared interest. Agents can mark a comment as the answer. |
| Feature Requests | Ideas | Product suggestions from customers. |
| Report a Problem | Problems | Issues and bugs raised by users. |
| Announcements | Announcements | Updates published to customers. |
Creating and managing forums
Create a forum
- Go to the Community object and click New Forum in the upper right.
- Enter a Forum Name and Description.
- Select a Forum Type and a Forum Category from the dropdowns.
- Select who the forum will be visible to.
- Click Save.
Edit or delete a forum
From the Community object, find the forum in the list, click the three-dot menu, and choose Edit this Forum or the delete option.
Configuring the Community on a portal
Community configuration lives in portal settings rather than in the Community object itself. Go to System Settings > Portal Management, select a portal, adjust the settings below, then click Save Portal Settings.
- Forum Categories – under Portal Categories, choose which forums appear. Add them by name, use Add All, or Clear to remove all.
- User Permission – choose who can view community posts: Logged In Users, Everyone, or disabled.
- Community Moderation – choose whether to moderate everything, only posts containing links or suspected spam, or nothing.
These are the same controls documented on the Brands & Portal Guide; both pages should stay in sync if the settings change.
Moderating posts
Posts waiting for approval
Go to the Community object and switch the List View dropdown to Waiting for Approval. On an individual post, the three-dot menu offers Edit this Post, Delete this Post, Approve this Post, and Mark Post as Spam; the speech icon beside the title approves it directly. To handle several at once, check the boxes beside them and use the More dropdown.
Posts marked as spam
Switch the List View to Spam. The three-dot menu offers Edit this Post, Delete this Post, and Unmark Post as Spam. For bulk handling, select posts and use the More dropdown to Unmark as Spam, or the trash can icon to delete.
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