Social Community

The Social Community is a social networking area of your MC Professional site, used to unite and engage your members with networking features. Members can designate connections (similar to friending on Facebook), create circles, send private messages, and view the latest happenings in the activity stream. Find it under Community > Social Community.

Enabling the Social Community

The Social Community must be enabled before your members can access any of its features. Once enabled, add a navigation button to your site to give members access, or set it as your member landing page.

Configuring the Social Community

The configuration area controls the default settings for the Social Community. The configuration screen includes two sections:

• Frontpage: The Social Community home page (the my community tab). Control which sections display and how many of each item.
• Privacy: The default privacy settings, including user connection and photo visibility.

Frontpage configuration

• Activity stream: The number of items that display in the recent activities section.
• Default activity filter: The default display for the recent activities section—show all displays all activity, while user & friends displays only activity from the user and their connections.
• Members: The number of member profiles and photos that display in the members section.
• Latest photos: The number of photos that display in the new photos section.
• Latest circles: The number of circles that appear in the latest circles section.
• Show who's online, Show latest members, Show activity stream, Show latest circles, Show latest photos: Whether to display each section—show (visible to all) or hide (not visible to anyone).

Privacy configuration

• Connections privacy: Whether connections are visible to other users—community users (visible to all), connections (visible to connections only), or self (visible to the profile owner only).
• Photos privacy: Whether photos are visible to other users, with the same three options.
• Reset existing users' privacy: Resets all existing users' privacy settings to the defaults.

Notification configuration

Each option sets the default for whether users receive automatic emails:

• Receive system e-mails: Connection requests and messages.
• Receive wall comment notification: Wall comment activity.
• Receive circle wall post emails: Circle wall post activity.
• Receive circle photo emails: Circle photo uploads and photo wall posts.
• Receive circle discussion e-mails: Circle discussions.
• Receive circle bulletin e-mails: Circle bulletins.

Circles

Circles are user-created member networks. Your members can create their own circles for special interest groups to increase member-to-member engagement.

The circles list includes these controls and columns:

• Home: Returns to the main Social Community admin page.
• Delete, Publish, Unpublish: Select the checkbox next to one or more circles, then select the button to remove them, make them live, or hide them.
• Save and Cancel: Apply your changes, or leave without saving.
• Search: Finds specific circles.
• Viewing circles by category: Select a category in the menu to view only that category's circles.
• Name and Circle Description: Each circle's name and description. Select a circle name to edit both.
• Circle Administrator: The administrator for each circle—the circle creator by default.
• Published: Each circle's status. A check mark means published; a red X means not published. Select either icon to change the status.
• Member(s): The number of members in each circle.

To edit a circle, select its name. Edit the avatar image, status, type, category, name, and description.

Changing a circle administrator

Select the change link under the name in the Circle Administrator column. Change the administrator to any other member of that circle.

Circle settings

The circle settings area is located directly below the main list of circles.

• Enable circles: Whether circles can be used within the Social Community.
• Moderate circle creation: Whether to enable circle moderation. If enabled, new circles start in an unpublished status.
• Allow circle creation: Whether users can create circles.
• Circle creation limit: Limits the number of circles that can be created.
• Circle photo upload limit: Limits the number of photos that can be uploaded to circles.
• Enable circle discussions: Whether circle discussions are enabled.

Circle categories

Circle categories organize and keep track of circles.

• Home: Returns to the main Social Community admin page.
• Delete: Select the checkbox next to one or more categories, then select the button to remove them.
• New: Adds a new category.
• Name, Parent, Category Description: Each category's name, parent category (if applicable), and description.
• Circles: The number of circles in each category. Select the number to view them.
• Member(s): The number of members across all circles in each category.

Circle discussions

Within circles, members create circle discussions to discuss a particular topic. Discussions can include file uploads (pictures, videos, and so on) of up to 1 MB.

To create a new discussion from the member side of the community, open a circle and select Create Discussion. Add a discussion title and message, and include an attachment by selecting the Browse icon. Select Add Discussion when you're finished.

After the discussion is created, other users can comment on it and include attachments with their comments.

Viewing reported items

Many items that users post or share in the Social Community have a report link. Other users can report an item they feel is offensive or should be removed. Reportable items include circles, photos, and discussions. When a user selects a report link, a pop-up window lets them select a predefined reason or enter their own message.

Reported items appear in the view reported items section, where you decide on an action:

• Home: Returns to the main Social Community admin page.
• Delete: Select the checkbox next to one or more items, then select the button to remove them.
• Purge Completed: Removes all completed items (items with a status of processed).
• Item link: The full URL of the reported item.
• View reports: The reports for each item—the reason it was reported, the user who reported it, their IP address, and the date and time of the report.
• Status: Whether an item has been dealt with. Processed means the action is complete; pending means no action has been taken.
• Actions: Performs the listed action.
• View item: Opens the reported item.
• Count: The total number of reports for each item.
• Submitted on: The date and time the report was submitted.

Adding a Social Community menu item

Once the Social Community is configured, give members access by adding it as a menu item on your MC Professional site.

1. Go to Website > Menu Items and select the menu you want to add the menu item to.
2. Select the New plus sign.
3. Under Select Menu Item type, select Components > My Community.

   

4. Give the menu item a name (for example, Social Community), generate the alias by pressing the Tab key, then select the menu item under which the Social Community should appear. If the community should have a menu item of its own, select Top. Select Save.

   

5. Assign the menu item permissions by selecting the permissions lock at the top of the Menu Item Manager page, then select the groups who should be able to view this menu item.