Communities in Enterprise allow segments of groups to be organized within Site. It can help structure workflow and process to allow certain Sites to be allocated to certain departments throughout.
What is the difference between Enterprise & Community?
- Enterprise is a singular landing page that shows all Sites and Communities within the affiliate that users can access easily and have ONE page to login to.
- Communities allows that, but on multiple pages. If we want to keep collaboration and conversation with segments of the organization separate
- In a community, the administrator can delegate which Sites is relative to the community so they submit and collaborate on ideas in many areas. A community is really beneficial if the admin wishes to lock one certain group to multiple Sites simultaneously.
- The system administrator can then add applicable Sites to those organizations to have them be presented cleanly to the admins' users. Each Community will have a landing page to help them navigate to those chosen Sites.
Getting Started
- First, refer to this article that explains how the transition from Enterprise to Communities
- Communities can be enabled under the Enterprise setup menu, this is a beta feature a Brightidea representative must enable for the admin.
- Once enabled, the feature will be located under Enterprise Setup > Sites > Communities
Adding a New Community
- Once communities is enabled, select Enterprise Setup > Sites Tab > Communities
- Select "Add Community" on the bottom to add a new level community to the system.
- Once the administrator selects "Add Community" - they will need to give the community a name in a confirmation popup
- Select "Create" when finished typing or "Cancel" to go go back
- Once created, the community will show up in the list
- Note: If the admin selected the main global Enterprise icon at the top - it will create a community on that level.
- However, if the admin creates a community when another community is selected, he/she will create a community within that a community
- Essentially - the admin will be creating a sub-community.
- Refer to this article to learn more details around subcommunities
- Once the community is added, the admin can select all underlying Sites with checkboxes on the right to select which Sites will be affiliated with this community.
- Note: With all Sites selected, the administrator is saying they wish to have all these Sites statistics roll up to the community level.
- When finished, select "Update Community"
Editing / Deleting a Community
- In Enterprise Setup > Sites > Communities, click the name of the Community to change the name to the right
- The administrator can also select / de-select any Sites to be associated with that specific community
- Select "Update Community" when finished
- To delete a community - select a community in the list - and select "Delete Community"
- Once selected, the system will prompt the administrator to confirm the deletion
- If the administrator deletes a community, they are NOT deleting any Site(s) - the admin is just removing the hierarchy placement (which can be set again later on)
- Any communities underneath get deleted
- Any pages that were in that community will not be accessible
- All ideas and data ARE NOT GONE, we are only losing structure changes (i.e. pages, widgets, navigation, etc.)
- All data can be accessed still once a community is deleted.
Creating a New Site as a Community Administrator
- The community administrator has the ability to create new Sites/Challenges within their community.
- Click here to learn more about creating new Sites
- Community administrators also have ability to create Sites from Brightidea's pre-built Applications by clicking "Click here" in the top banner on the Create Site tab:
- Once selected, they will be redirected to Brightidea's Applications page in our Pipeline Manage area.
- To learn more about Brightidea's Applications click here
- Note: For any new Site or App created, they will automatically be linked to the Community in which they were created and the Administrator who created them will automatically have Administrator access.
Using Communities
- Once the administrator has access to the new community, his/her users will see all trickled up activity from the underlying Sites
- Each community feels like its own Enterprise.
- Note below the affiliated Sites we set in Enterprise, are the ones that put together in this specific community:
- Each community has its own setup area - where the administrator can configure:
- Each community setup has a URL such as this: https://____brightidea.com/ct/c_admin_pool_options.bix?level_id={__}&a=OD___
- Navigation
- Design
- Setup Community level administrators (see more below)
- Contact email and email settings
- Manage users and block / unblock users
- Leverage a separate community level image library
- Create new Sites within the community / Manage the Sites assigned to the community
Communities and Vanity URL
- Brightidea doesn't offer a vanity URL from our side for communities.
- The administrator can retrieve the URL from the browser.
- Sample URL : https://___.brightidea.com/ct/c_ent_homex.bix?level_id={____}&a=OD___
Communities and Community level Widgets
- Refer to this article to learn more about community level widgets
Community Administrators
- Within communities, the admin can create community administrators based SOLELY in the respective community.
- Community administrators are able to:
- Edit ideas in the community
- Change CSS
- Manage users and groups
- Block users
- Turn off emails
- Turn on private messaging and user network
- Manage & Create Sites within the community
- Please follow these steps:
- Once there, add any users to be a community administrator
- Note: Any system administrator is inherently a community administrator already
- Go to the Community Landing page, and select Setup, the admin should be on an URL that looks somewhat like this:
- Select Setup > Sites > Communities
- Select the community
- On the far right, the admin will see a section that says "Community Administrators"
Communities and Search
- If the administrator conducts a search on the community level, the search will only return results that are respective to the community.
- Therefore, if the administrator has Site A, Site B, & Site C tied to a community, and they searched for an idea in Site D (which is not affiliated with that community) the idea in Site D would not return in the results for the community search.
Important Things to Note:
- When in a Community, the admin's profile page will be exactly the same as it was in Enterprise.
- However, let's say the admin submitted ideas and comments to an idea in another Community, those statistics would not be revealed.
- Only activity done in the Community will be shown in the Profile and Ideas pages, etc.
- Communities CSS defaults to Enterprise CSS, the admin can then make any edits afterwards if need be.
- Every user has access to the Enterprise home page and every user has access to a Communities page.
- The page for communities setup is: c_admin_pool_options.bix
- Example URL :https://____.brightidea.com/ct/c_admin_pool_options.bix?level_id={_______}&a=OD____
- The administrator will need the subdomain, community level ID, and OD affiliate number in the URL to access the setup, as well as having administrator access.
Does Global Navigation work across all communities?
Hello Damian,
Global Navigation is not specifically designed for communities (all links will still be Enterprise). However, enabling the Global Navigation option at the Enterprise level will enable the feature on the community page.
Thank you,
Ron Orlovetskiy
Brightidea Support
Is there access control for communities and sub communities based on what group a user belongs to?
Hi Damian,
Unfortunately, there is no group access control at the community level at this time.
Thank you,
Ron Orlovetskiy
Brightidea Support
Can we add custom pages to communities????
Hi Damian,
You can but they would all be just Enterprise level extra pages, e.g. c_z.bix would be the same page in Enterprise and all communities.
This is because Communities don't have their own separate extra pages.
Best,
Brightidea Support