Social Community

Why is it used?

The Social Community is used to unite and engage your members by offering them a wide variety of networking features.  With the ability to designate "connections" (similar to "friending" on Facebook™), create circles (user-created member network groups), send private messages, and view the latest happenings in the Activity Stream, your members will have plenty of opportunities to connect and share information.  

• Enabling the Social Community
• Configuring the Social Community
• Front page Configuration
• Privacy Configuration
• Notification Configuration
• Circles
• Change a Circle Administrator
• Circle Settings
• Circle Categories
• Circle Discussions
• View Reported Items
• Adding a Social Community Menu Item

What is it?

The Social Community is a social networking portion of your MC Professional site similar to Facebook™.

How to Access

Navigate to Community > Social Community

Enabling the Social Community

The Social Community must be enabled before your members can access any of its features. 

Once enabled, you can add a navigation button to your site to give members access and/or set it as your member landing page.

The configuration area allows administrators to control the default settings for the Social Community. There are 2 sections included on the configuration screen, frontpage and privacy.

• Frontpage: The frontpage is the Social Community home page (the "my community" tab, displayed below) and you are able to control what sections display as well as how many of each item.
• Privacy: The privacy section is where the default privacy settings are controlled including user connection and photo visibility.

Frontpage Configuration

1. Activity stream: Choose the number of items that display in the recent activities section

2. Default activity filter (show all/user & friends): Choose the default display for the recent activities section; show all will display all activity while user & friends will only display activity based on the user and their connections

3. Members: Choose the number of member profiles/photos that display in the members section

4. Latest photos: Choose the number of photos that display in the new photos section

5. Latest circles: Choose the number of circles that appear in the latest circles section

6. *Show who's online: Choose whether or not to display the who's online section

7. *Show latest members: Choose whether or not to display the members section

8. *Show activity stream: Choose whether or not to display the activity stream

9. *Show latest circles: Choose whether or not to display the latest circles section

10. *Show latest photos: Choose whether or not to display the latest photos section

* available options - show (visible to all), hide (not visible to anyone)

Privacy Configuration:

1. Connections privacy (community users/connections/self): Choose whether or not friends/connections are visible to other users; community users - visible to all, connections - visible to connections only, self - visible to profile owner only

2. Photos privacy (community users/connections/self): Choose whether or not photos are visible to other users; community users - visible to all, connections - visible to connections only, self - visible to profile owner only

3. Reset existing users' privacy: Reset all existing users' privacy settings to the defaults

Notification Configuration

1. Receive system e-mails: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic emails when they have connection requests and messages

2. Receive wall comment notification: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic emails about wall comment activity

3. Receive circle wall post emails: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic emails about circle wall post activity

4. Receive circle photo emails: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic emails about circle photo uploads and photo wall posts

5. Receive circle discussion e-mails: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic e-mails about circle discussions

6. Receive circle bulletin e-mails: Set default for whether or not users receive automatic e-mails about 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.

Note: Circles can only be created on the front end of the site.

Navigation:

• Home: Takes you back to the main Social Community admin page

• Delete: Check the box to the left of 1 or more circles and click the delete button to remove them

• Publish: Check the box to the left of 1 or more circles and click the publish button to make them live/active

• Unpublish: Check the box to the left of 1 or more circles and click the unpublish button to make them hidden/inactive

• Save: Use the save button to apply any changes you've made

• Cancel: Use the cancel button to leave this area without saving changes

• Search: Search for specific circles using this section

• Viewing circles by category: Select a category in the menu to view circles from that category only

• Name: This column displays each circle's name (click on a circle name to edit)

• Circle Description: This column displays each circle's description (click on a circle name to edit its description)

• Circle Administrator: This column displays the administrator for each circle which is the circle creator by default (click "change" to make another circle member the administrator)

• Published: This column displays the status of each circle; a check mark means it is published, a red "x" means that it is not published (click either icon to change its status)

• Member(s): This column displays the number of members a circle has

9. Edit a Circle

Click on a circle name to edit the avatar/image, status, type, category, name, and/or description.

Change a Circle Administrator

Click on the "change" link that appears under the name in the circle administrator column. You are able to 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.

1. Enable circles - choose whether or not circles can be used within the Social Community

2. Moderate circle creation - choose whether or not to enable circle moderation (if enabled, new circles will be in an unpublished status)

3. Allow circle creation - choose whether or not to allow users to create circles

4. Circle creation limit - choose a number to limit the number of circles that can be created

5. Circle photo upload limit - choose a number to limit the number of photos that can be uploaded to circles

6. Enable circle discussions - choose whether or not to enable circle discussions

Circle Categories

Circle categories allow you to organize and keep track of circles.

1. Navigation-

• Home - takes you back to the main Social Community admin page

• Delete - check the box to the left of 1 or more categories and click the delete button to remove them

• New - click the new button to add a new category

• Name - this column displays each category's name

• Parent - this column displays the parent category (if applicable)

• Category Description - this column displays each category's description

• Circles - this column displays the number of circles within each category (click on the number to view the corresponding circles)

• Member(s) - this column displays the number of members for all circles in each category

Circle Discussions

Within Circles, Circle Discussions may be created to discuss a particular topic. These discussions are able to include file uploads (pictures, videos, etc.) of up to 1MB. 

To create a new discussion, within a circle and from the member-side of the community, click on Create Discussion.

Here, add a Discussion Title and Message, and include an attachment by clicking on the Browse icon to search your computer. Once finished, click Add Discussion.

After the Discussion has been created, other users can comment on the Discussion, and include attachments with their comment if desired.

View Reported Items

Within the Social Community many items that users post/share have a "report" link.  This allows other users to report an item if they feel that it is offensive or should be removed for any reason.  When an item is reported, you will see it listed in the "view reported items" section where you are then able to decide on an action.  Some examples of items that can be reported are circles, photos and discussions.  Below is an image of a circle being reported; the first step is to click the "report circle" link.  When the link is clicked the popup window appears allowing the user to select a predefined report and/or enter their own message.

1. Navigation-

• Home - takes you back to the main Social Community admin page

• Delete - check the box to the left of 1 or more items and click the delete button to remove them

• Purge Completed - click this button to remove all completed items (completed items have a status of "processed")

• Item link - this column displays the full URL of the reported item (*removed from image below)

• View reports - click the link in this column to view the report(s) for each item (displays the reason it was reported, the user who reported it, their IP address, and date/time of report)

4. Status - this column displays whether or not an item has been dealt with; processed indicates the action has been completed, pending indicates no action has been taken

5. Actions - click the link in this column to perform the the listed action

6. View item - click the link in this column to view the reported item

7. Count - this column displays the total number of reports for each item

8. Submitted on - this column displays the date and time of when the report was submitted

Adding a Social Community Menu Item