How to use the Community

About

Communities are a space for your customers to reach out to your business or to other customers to find answers, present ideas, and review important announcements.

In this Article

• About
• In this Article
• Viewing the Community in a Public Portal
• System Settings
  • Forum Categories
  • User Permission
  • Community Moderation
• Forums
  • Forum Types
  • How to Create Forums
  • How to Edit Forums
  • How to Delete Forums
  • How to Create a Forum Category
• Posts and Comments
  • How to Create a New Post
  • How to Create a New Post within the Portal
  • How to Create a New Comment
  • How to Create a New Comment within the Portal
  • Posts Waiting for Approval
  • Posts Marked as Spam

Viewing the Community in a Public Portal

Community forums act as a space for your customers to ask questions, collaborate, make product suggestions, and inform other users about issues or bugs. Users can follow forums to receive updates when there is new activity.

Members of the community can create posts and reply to other posts from other users and agents. Portal visitors must be logged in to create new posts or to add comments to posts. Insightly provides a Default Community for each Portal, which can be enabled or disabled in Portal Settings, covered further below in the System Settings section. If you are using the default portal template, the community can be accessed from the Community tab towards the top of the page.

System Settings

Admins can control which categories appear in each portal, who has permission to view community posts, and moderation settings in System Settings. To configure these settings, navigate to System Settings > Portal Management and select a Portal. This will bring the admin to the Portal Settings page. After configuring these settings, click Save Portal Settings.

Forum Categories

Under Portal Categories, use the Forum Categories field to add the forums you want to appear in the community. Enter the forum’s name manually or use the Add All button to add all forums you have created. Click Clear to remove all forums.

User Permission

Under this section, admins can choose who can view community posts: Logged In Users, Everyone, or Disable Community. There is also the option to force logged in users to enter CAPTCHA to create a post.

Community Moderation

There are three options for community moderation. Based on the moderation setting that is chosen, Insightly will automatically check every comment and post for any blacklisted SPAM words; the list of blacklisted words that is utilized cannot be customized. If any are detected, the comment or post will be flagged as SPAM and PENDING and it will need to be approved by a moderator.

Moderate all posts and replies containing links or spam content
Insightly will check all posts and replies for third party links and other spam activity

Moderate all posts and replies
Approve every post that gets created in your community

Do Not Moderate

Forums

From the Forums and Posts page, users can view a list of each forum that has been created, with 50 forums per page. Users can search for forum names and descriptions by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the screen. The order of the forums can be rearranged by dragging the forum handle to the left of the forum name. The number of posts in each forum is listed to the right of the forum name.

• NOTE: AppConnect functionality isn’t available for forums. 

Forum Types

Each type of forum serves a different purpose. The following forums are automatically created for each community:

• Tips and Tricks
  Type: Questions

• Feature Requests
  Type: Ideas

• Report a Problem
  Type: Problems

• Announcements
  Type: Announcements

Questions

Forum where users can ask questions and get answers. Other users can upvote these posts to indicate that they are also interested in finding the answer to the question. Agents should monitor these forums and provide solutions if possible. If a comment within the post answers the question, an agent can mark the comment as the answer. This is the default forum type.

Ideas

Forum where users can share their ideas that would improve their experience with your product. Other users can upvote the ideas and provide their own commentary.

Agents should be encouraged to share progress on the ideas customers have submitted. Agents can tag the Post as 'Planned', 'Completed', or 'Not Planned'.

Problems

Forum where users can share problems or bugs. Other users can upvote these Posts to indicate that they are also experiencing this issue.

Announcements

Forum where agents can share general announcements. Announcement forum posts do not have any voting options. Only agents can create an announcement post, but signed-in users can respond in the comments.

How to Create Forums

1. Go to the Community object. In the upper right of the screen, click the New Forum button.
   1. Enter a Forum Name and Description.
   2. Select a Forum Type from the drop-down.
   3. Select a Forum Category from the drop-down.
   4. Select who the forum will be visible to using the drop-down.
2. Click Save.

How to Edit Forums

1. Go to the Community object. Find the forum you need to edit from the list and click the three-dot menu to the right of the screen.
2. Click Edit this Forum.
3. Make edits to any of the following fields: Forum Name, Description, Forum Category, or Visible to. The Forum Type cannot be edited.
4. Click Save.

How to Delete Forums

1. Go to the Community object. Find the forum you need to edit from the list and click the three-dot menu to the right of the screen.
2. Click Delete this Forum.
3. A warning will appear: Are you sure you wish to delete this item? Click Delete.

How to Create a Forum Category

• NOTE: AppConnect functionality isn’t available for forum categories. 

1. Go to the Community object. Using the List View drop-down in the upper left, select Forum Categories.
2. In the upper right of the screen, click New Forum Category.
3. Enter a name for the category.
4. Click Save.

Posts and Comments

How to Create a New Post

1. Go to the Community object. In the upper right of the screen, click the drop-down on the right side of the New Forum button and select New Post.
2. Enter a Post Name.
   1. Enter the post's message.
   2. Select a Forum from the drop-down.
   3. Select a Status from the drop-down.
   4. If needed, check any of the following boxes:
      1. Pinned Post
         A pinned post will be shown at the top of the forum.
      2. Locked Post
         A locked post cannot have any additional comments added.
3. Click Save.

How to Create a New Post within the Portal

1. Open the community in your Public Portal Website. Open a forum by clicking the title of the forum.
2. Click the New Postbutton in the upper right of the screen.
   1. Enter the Title of the post.
   2. Enter the Details of the post.
   3. Use the Forum dropdown to select which forum the post should appear in.
3. Click Submit.

How to Create a New Comment

1. Go to the Community object. In the upper right of the screen, click the drop-down on the right side of the New Forum button and select New Comment.
2. Enter the comment text and use the Post dropdown to add the comment to a specific post.
3. Click Save.

How to Create a New Comment within the Portal

1. Open the community in your Public Portal Website. Open a forum by clicking the title of the forum.
2. Click on the title of an existing post.
3. In the Comments text box, enter your comment.
4. Click Submit.

Posts Waiting for Approval

Some posts and comments will need to be approved by your users before they can appear in the community.

1. Go to the Community object. Using the List View drop-down in the upper left, select Waiting for Approval.
2. To edit an individual post, click the three-dot menu to the right of the post title and select one of the following options:
   1. Edit this Post
   2. Delete this Post
   3. Approve this Post
   4. Mark Post as Spam
3. Click the speech icon to the left of the post title to approve the post.
4. To edit the posts in bulk, check the checkbox to the left of any of the posts or comments in the list. Click the More drop-down at the top of the list  and select Approve or Mark as Spam. Click the trash can icon to delete the posts.

Posts Marked as Spam

Any posts marked as spam will appear in the Spam List View.

1. Go to the Community object. Using the List View drop-down in the upper left, select Spam.
2. To edit an individual post, click the three-dot menu to the right of the post title and select one of the following options:
   1. Edit this Post
   2. Delete this Post
   3. Unmark Post as Spam.
3. Click the speech icon to the left of the post or comment title to approve the post.
4. To edit the spam posts in bulk, check the checkbox to the left of any of the posts in the list. Click the More drop-down at the top of the list and select Unmark as Spam. Click the trash can icon to delete the posts.