Help > Managing Communities

About Communities

Communities are groups to which members can belong that revolve around similar interests. Both network administrators and members can create communities. Communities are useful for organizing information for projects in a central location, encouraging collaboration between team members, and controlling access to sensitive information. If you think you will have several communities, consider creating folders for your communities.

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Using Community Folders

Network administrators can create folders for communities. Use folders when you have or anticipate having several communities. Placing communities in folders helps your network members find the communities in which they might be interested in joining. Or, if members belong to several communities, the folders can help them find a community they want to visit. Community folders are limited to one level.  For example, you can have a community in a folder named Marketing, but you cannot create another folder within Marketing named Collateral. However, you can have a community belong to more than one folder.

To create a community folder, select Communities>Add Community Folder:

  • Define your community folder by entering a folder title, description, and icon.
  • Define the privacy settings. You can choose to have your folder of communities be visible only to you, only to network members, or if you have a public network, visible to the general public.

Once you create some community folders, you can create communities and add them to the folder. Or, you can edit existing communities and add them to the community folders that you created.

To display all community folders, select Communities>All Community Folders.

 

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Creating a Community

All network members can create communities. When you create a community, you are considered the owner of the community.

To create a community, select Communities>Create Community:

  • Upload a community icon.
  • Define your community by entering a community name, description, and contact information.
  • Determine community membership settings. The Open setting allows anyone to join and Invitation Only requires that you explicitly invite members to join.
  • Define your community's privacy settings. You can choose to have your community be visible to network members, community members, or the general public.
  • Select one or more folders in which you want your community to appear.
  • Click Save when done.

Once you create a community, you can customize it by going to your community page, clicking on Edit Layout, and adding or removing the widgets you want to use. For example, you may not want community members to post photos on your community page. If this is the case you would remove the Images widget.

If you are the network administrator, you can determine whether or not a community will display on the network home page. For example, you might want a community named "HR Information" displayed on your network home page's Communities widget, but not a community related to leisure activities. To display a community on the home page, go to Communities>All Communities and click on Show on Network Page. This link toggles between Yes and No.

A note on widgets and content in communities: Community creators control who can view the contents of each widget. For example, you might set your community widgets with a privacy setting of Network Members, which allows all network members to view the information in these widgets. However, community members can set more restrictive settings for individual items. For instance, a community member might choose to upload a file and set the share setting to community members only, restricting access to the specific file to the current community. When members leave a community, they no longer have access to files, photos, events, or other content in a community if the privacy or share settings for the items are restricted.

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Inviting Community Members

When you create your community, you decide whether or not you are required to extend invitations for membership or if people can join the community without approval. In either case, you can invite new members by going to your community and selecting Manage Members>Invite. You can invite members or members who are your contacts and also include a personalized message with the invitation. Click Invite when done. Once you send an invitation, you will see the member's name listed under the Sent Invitations tab. If you did not invite someone but the member is requesting to join your community, you will see the member's name listed under Community Requests.

Also see Inviting Members in Managing Members for information about adding community members when you first invite them to the network.

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Managing Community Roles

As a community owner or network administrator, you may want to let one or more community members perform administrative tasks for the community. For example, as the network administrator, if the community owner is suddenly out of the office for a long period of time, you can give another community member administrative rights so that the person can manage the community while the community owner is out of the office.

As the community owner, you may find that you no longer want to manage the community. In this case, you can transfer ownership to another community member. The network owner can also transfer ownership in the case of the community owner being unavailable to make this change.

To manage community roles, click Manage Members>Members in the community. Select a community member and then use the drop-down context menu that appears at the corner of the member's icon to make a selection:

  • Remove from Community. Make this selection to remove a member from a community. For example, you might need to remove a member from a departmental community if that person no longer works in your department.

NOTE: A network administrator can remove a community owner from a community.

  • Make Community Admin. Use this selection to grant administrative privileges to another community member.
  • Remove Community Admin. Use this selection to remove administrative privileges from a community member.
  • Make Community Owner. Use this selection to make another member a community owner. For example, you would want to do this if you are the community owner and no longer want to be responsible for the community. The community owner has similar privileges to a community admin; however, the owner can also remove members from the community.
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Viewing a Community

You can see to which communities you belong by selecting the Communities tab. If you have the Community Membership widget on your Profile page, you can see your communities there, too. To view a specific community, click on that community's link. To view all communities on the network, select Communities>All Communities.

When you view community details, you see the widgets that the community creator placed on the community page. Only the community owner or administrator has the ability to change the page layout and widgets that appear in the community.

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Deleting a Community

Community owners and network administrators can delete communities. To delete a community:

  • Click Communities.
  • Select the community you want to delete.
  • Click the Delete link. The community and all of its content are deleted.

 

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Leaving a Community

If you are part of a community and no longer want to be, you can leave it. To leave a community, select the community and click Leave. A popup message appears asking you to confirm; click OK.

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Cloning a Community

Customers can subscribe to Clearvale Premium Services. One of the premium services available is Cloning. When you purchase this option and are a network admin, network owner, community admin or community owner, you see a Clone link display in the community. Click the link. On the page that appears, specify a name for your cloned community and whether or not you want to include members and content in the cloned community.

Note the following about Cloning a community:

  • You have the option of cloning an entire community. Cloning an entire community includes:
    • member data and member roles
    • files
    • DocuVault files, version history, and locations
    • forums
    • events
    • polls (however, results are not cloned)
    • Teamwork
    • photos and albums
    • videos and galleries
    • Twitter widget settings
    • Freeform widget content (links may need updating in newly cloned community)
    • Show on Homepage settings
    • disable settings
    • comments
  • You can choose to not clone the members and content; if so, then only your community structure is cloned. This includes:
    • community description
    • community settings
    • widget layout
    • your community DocuVault hierarchy
    • titles and display settings of each widget

NOTE: The only member in the new community will be the person who created the clone.

You can also clone entire networks. For information see Managing Your Network.

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