Here are the basics you need to start using Communities:
■ Opting Out: When someone subscribes you to a community, you are signed up to get email notifications when community announcements are posted. You can opt out of these emails by clicking the Unsubscribe links for the community, the announcements, or any specific area of the community from which you don't want updates.
■ Opting In: When new content is created, you can opt in to get those updates. You can subscribe to any forums, forum topics, wikis, blogs, and blog entries that interest you. Pick the granularity that suits you: you can choose to get updates from an entire forum or just from a single, relevant topic. Subscribing means that you will follow all comments that follow from the original post.
To set your preferences
You can use communities without subscribing, but it can be hard to keep up without notifications about what's changing. Spending time setting your subscription and email preferences is key to achieving the flow of update notifications that works best for you.
1. Click Communities. The Community List shows you all of the communities that you are allowed to use.
2. Select Preferences to see what you are subscribed to across all communities.
Tip: If the subscription list is too long for you to easily find items, click the header labels to sort the columns (each click toggles between ascending/descending order).
3. Use the unsubscribe link to leave any communities or content areas (forums, blogs, etc.) that you do not want to follow.
Tip: Even if you hate email, stay subscribed at the community level so that you get critical announcements from the administrators.
To subscribe to a new community
1. Click Communities and select the Name link of the community you want to follow.
2. Use the Subscribe link at left to start receiving announcements for that community.
3. Browse through the content areas (blogs, forums, wikis) and use the subscribe link below each content area to follow updates to those areas that interest you.
To create a post
A post can be a reply, comment, blog entry, forum topic, or wiki page, as your permissions allow.
1. If you are allowed to create content in the area, you will see an Add... link.
2. Click Add.. and enter a title or subject and text for the body of the post.
3. If available and needed, click attachments to add a file (which is stored in the Document System).
4. Click Save.
To report inappropriate content
Community administrators can fix and even remove objectionable content throughout the community, but only if members alert them to the situation. Whenever you see problems with content in the community, use the report feature to help your administrators deal promptly with the problem.
1. While viewing the post or comment, click the report link.
The Report Inappropriate Content window appears.
2. Enter an Explanation with reasons for reporting the post or comment.
3. Click Send.
4. Once you see the message that your report has been sent, click Close.
All of your community administrators receive the email about the inappropriate content, which improves how quickly the team can respond to the problem.
To view community subscribers
The roster is the list of all subscribers to the community itself. The Position column lists the security role of each member. Most will be Subscriber; a few will be Administrator, Moderator, or Wiki Author.
1. Click Communities and open a community from the Community List.
2. Scroll down to the Community Roster section, on the lower right, to see the compact version.
3. Click the Roster link in the left navigation to view the expanded list of community members.
Tip: Click a column heading to sort by that column.