Community Management (106)

What is a Private Community and why would I want to use it for my VT System?

The Community is a feature we developed based on feedback from our customers that wanted a social media component for their users. This serves not only as a premium offering to add value, but also as a safe place for users to interact with each other; away from the trolls of other social media platforms.

We promote it to users as:
“The Community is a safe place to learn and grow with your peers, which is a vital part of your interactive experience. To gain the most out of the community, you’ll need to remain an active participant in conversations. And just like other social communities, you can comment, like, and post videos and images. So jump in, and get involved.”

You can use the Community very similar to a private Facebook group, where your users can have a conversation, provide feedback, upload videos, pictures, and files. They can also ‘like,’ ‘react,’ and ‘reply’ to posts either in the Main Feed, or in separate Groups that can be created.

A great way to leverage the Community is to create Secret Groups for premium users, and then pin the membership of those groups to the Content Roles that represent your Premium offerings. This adds and subtracts users to those Secret Groups as they subscribe to your Premium offers. This will add value to your offer and create a more elite experience for your high line users.

Below is an article on how to set up the Community Feature, which is easy, and some deeper functionality which you can explore to gain the most out of it.

How to Setup a Private Community

Note: If you don’t see “106 – Community Management” on your Super User Dashboard, please contact our Support department and they’ll grant you access.

To get started in creating your Community, navigate to the Super User Dashboard and select “[106] Community Management”

From there, you can create a new Community and see existing ones.

You can create a Community per Location, per group of Locations, or for ALL of your Locations.

Any Community created that is assigned to multiple Locations will be able to communicate with each other through the Community.

When creating a new Community:

• Display Name - provide a friendly name that is displayed on the Main Menu and Slider Navigations for directing Users to the Community.

• Enable Groups - turning this on will allow Users to create their own open and private groups within the Community.

• Enable Video Uploads - choose if you would like Users to upload and share videos in their posts.

• Enable File Uploads - this will allow Users to upload and share common document files with others in the Community; such as PDF's, Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. You may also add and remove specific file types from being allowed.

• Force New Users to Follow Moderators- when a new User is created in your VT System, this will automatically "friend" Community Moderators so that they receive any relative and/or important notifications posted in the Community.

  • Manually Force All Users to Follow or Unfollow Moderators – this is helpful when adding or removing Moderators from the Community

• Location Access - Assign which Location(s) should have access to this Community. Note: a Location can only be assigned to one Community.

The Basics

So – now that you have a Community created… what is it??

A Community is meant to be a safe place for your Users to interact with each other and share their feedback and thoughts in a positive environment.

And don’t worry, as a Moderator, you can closely monitor and remove abusive material.

Once your Users sign into your VT System, they can access the Community by clicking on this button in the top navigation bar:

When they first come to the Community, you are viewing the “Community – Feed” which is a list of all of the recent posts made by Users in the Community.

From here, you can make a new post, comment, like, or react to any other post.

In the top navigation area, next to your profile name and picture, you can click on the “down” arrow to access a menu with the following items (these same items are in the left hand navigation as well, if you are viewing on a desktop):

• My Activity – this will show only your own posts. This is also where you can update your cover photo.

• My Friends – this will show all of the friends that you have connected with.

• My Photos – this will show only your own photos.

• My Audio and Video – this will show only your own audio and videos.

• My Files - this will display only your own files that have been uploaded.

• My Account Profile – this will show your main (VT) account profile, where you can change your profile pic, your password, etc.

• My Messages – this is where you can view your direct messages.

• My Followings – check and see content from only those individuals or Groups that you are following.

• My Saved Posts – view posts from the feed that you have saved.

• My Achievements – if you have an active Leaderboard in your VT System, you can access your achievements from here.

• My Preferences – this is where you can specify all of their community display and notification preferences.

The options you have are pretty self-explanatory, feel free to check them out and explore on your own!

How to Manage Multiple Communities

If you have more than one Community, you will need to “Impersonate” a User at the Location where the other Community is assigned, or sign in to that Location with another User.

At this time (August 2021) – You cannot use your Super User access to navigate to a different Location and view the Community. This may change in the future.

How do I Moderate Potentially Harmful Posts?

On every post in the main Community Feed, Users will see a “! Report” button.

Users can click this and specify the type of abuse that it is, and this reported item will go to you, the Community Moderator.

Posts that are reported can be viewed under the “Reported Content” tab under “106 – Community Management” – and you will be able to take action on it from there.

How Does the Main Feed Work?

When any User makes a new post, ALL Users will be able to see it on the main feed.

If Users would like to view only activity made by those they follow, they can click on the “Following” tab next to “Community” shown here:

Making a New Post / Formatting

When making a new post, you can "@" to tag anyone and notify them that they were mentioned in the post.
You can also format the text inside your posts using "Markdown" formatting for some simple styles:

**bold** for bold text
*italic* for italic text
~~strikethrough~~ for strikethrough
[link](https://www.lightspeedvt.com) for a link

__underline__ for Underline

::highlight:: for highlighting

How do Notifications Work?

By default, email notifications are disabled for all new Users, while on-site notifications are enabled. (That means, they will see an indicator while in the Community showing they have a new notification – for a friend request, a post, etc..)

New Users to the Community can navigate to “My Preferences -> Notifications” to enable email notifications.

Both email and on-site notifications are sent to regular Users following this criteria:

1. If you follow a Group, and the post is to that Group.

2. If you follow another User/Friend, and they make a Post.

3. If you are mentioned in the Post.

There are also other notification settings inside My Preferences -> Notifications – that you can set and control to your liking – for example if someone liked your Post, commented on your Post, wrote on your profile, etc. There are many to choose from, so we recommend they at least review it once they join the Community.

Currently we do not allow notifications to Regular Users on all Posts – only on Posts where they meet the criteria (as stated above).

If you would like Regular Users to receive a notification to a Post, it would be best to place them in a Group, and Post to that Group, to ensure they are alerted.

Note: Regular Users can be added to Groups very easily through Content Roles. See below “How do Groups work?” on how to automatically assign users to a Group.

As a top Admin/Moderator of the Community, you will automatically receive notifications on all posts/comments, without needing to be a part of any group. This is so you can better moderate the feed, to prevent any “bad stuff” from being posted without you knowing it.

How do I Notify -EVERYONE- with a single Post?

By design, the Community doesn’t notify EVERYONE with a single post, as to not create an abuse of notifications by users. However you, as the Admin/Moderator of the community, have the ability to do this by creating both a Community Group, and a Content Role by the same name, and this can serve as a way to “Notify Everyone” by posting in this specific Group.

To do that, you could follow these steps:

1. Create a common “Community Announcements” content role and assign it to all of your Users.

2. Create a common “Community Announcements” Group and under Settings, set the group to be assigned by content role, and select “Community Announcements”

3. When you make a new Post, post to the group “Community Announcements” and then everyone in that Group will be notified of the Post

This would be an easy way to alert everyone to a single Post.

One caveat to this is that Users must enable email notifications in order to receive the alert.

How to post Images and Videos to your Feed

There couple of ways to make a post with different media types. Under the comment box, select which media type you would like to post:

Each post type is different, but all of them allow you to add an additional text message if you’d like as well.

Photos

To make a photo post, select the photo type and then you will see a screen like this:

Select an image from your computer, and then it will look like this:

If you select the “+” symbol, you can add additional photos to your post.

Audio

To make an audio post type, select the Audio option, and then add a link to the URL field for the audio:

Video

Similar to the audio, the video URL field only accepts links to video resources or playlists. Video post types also accepts direct links to video files (like from your media library, for example).

If you place a direct link to a video in the text box, it will embed itself there:

File

Similar to posting a Photo, select the "File" post type, the select the files from your computer or drag-n-drop them directly on the post to begin uploading. You can add a message to accompany the files, as well.

All Photos, Videos, Audio, etc that you post can be found under your user profile under “My Photos”, “My Audio & Videos” and "My Files".

Creating Albums

You can also create a photo album and share it in the feed – to make this, navigate to “My Photos” and click on “Create Album”.

And then ad your photos:

How do I change my cover photo?

To change your cover photo, go to the “My Activity” tab, and you will see your full cover photo with a camera icon on the top right. Click this icon to change, modify or reposition your cover photo.

How do I change my profile pic?

Under the drop-down menu next to your name, select the “My Account Profile” section and then scroll down a little – there you will see your placeholder profile picture. You can select from a set of templates, or upload your own profile picture as desired.

How do Groups work?

Using Groups lets your community create and participate within a more narrowed discussion. For example, you can create a separate Group for different job positions within your company, like Sales, F&I, and Service.

Members of these Groups can communicate directly to each other, while at the same time also communicate with everyone else at the Location.

New: You can now automatically assign Users to Groups based on their content role.

This means, like the example used above, you can automatically place Sales Users in a Sales Group, F&I in another, etc…

To do this, when you create the Group, or edit an existing one, click on the Settings tab, and then change “Assign Group Members” to “By Content Roles” and then select the roles that should be in this Group from the list.

You have 3 options when creating groups: Open, Closed or Secret. As an Admin, you will be able to see all groups, no matter which version it is. Your Users however will only see what is available to them.

1. Open Group

   • With an Open group, anyone can join, a User simply has to navigate to the “Groups” section and select “join” – Non-members can see everything that is posted by members of the group, but they can’t post, comment, etc. until they join themselves.

2. Create a Closed Group

   • With a closed group, Users need to be invited or request group membership and be accepted. To invite Users to the group, click on the Group and select the “Invite” button, search for them on the list and send them an invite. It will go to their Community notifications and also their Email, if they have that set up

   • If the User is an Admin, they can join right away, by navigating to the Group and selecting “Accept” on the invite

   • If the User is a non-Member of the Group, they can request to join – this will place them in the ‘Pending’ column awaiting Admin or Manager approval.

   • A Closed group does not show a list of members or their posts if a User outside of the closed group is not a group member.

3. Create a Secret Group

• A secret group is not visible to anyone except the Group Owner or Admins. The Owner of the secret group can invite others to join it – but it will not show up on the regular list of Groups for Users, it’ll remain hidden.

How do I delete or deactivate a Group?

Currently you cannot delete or deactivate a Group. We do plan on adding this functionality in the future.

Short term, as a Moderator, you will need to change the Group to “Secret” and then remove all members from the Group. This will essentially “hide” the Group from everyone, and you can even re-use it in the future (rename it, change it back to an “open” group, etc…)

Automatically Assigning Users to Groups

You can automatically assign Users to Groups based on their content role. When you create a Group, or edit an existing one, click on the Settings tab, and then change “Assign Group Members” to “By Content Roles” and then select the roles from the list .