Introducing Live Topics

[Matt Finger]

I am excited to officially announce the first release of Live Topics coming in our April release of Invision Community for selected cloud plans!

Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended.

Recap: The first look at Live Topics including a video showing the main features.

I know many of you on our community have already had sneak peeks and have been patiently waiting, so without further ado, let's get into it.

Who is Live Topics for?

Live Topics is a great way to bring people together for a live chat event. We have been using Live Topics for our monthly release chat webinars. In the past we have used Zoom to host the live stream and take some questions. This approach is fine, however once the Zoom finishes, the chat history isn't available on our community. We upload a video for those who missed the event, but it doesn't feel interactive.

Live Topics automatically converts the questions and answers to a regular forum topic which allows the discussion to continue. Furthermore, the questions are separated from the general chat during the event making it easier for hosts to find and answer questions raised during the event.

Live Topics is perfect for anything from product release events to monthly bookclub discussions and everything in between.

How does it work?

Live Topics are live virtual events within a community. The process to creating a live topic is simple:

1. Schedule your Live Topic from the ModeratorCP.
2. When it's time to start, a host starts the live session. This is the bread and butter of the system; attendees can answer your questions and post chat messages all in realtime.
3. All done? End the topic. It will be converted to a regular forum topic for further discussion and reference.

 

Scheduling and Managing Live Topics

Live topics are managed from the ModeratorCP.

When scheduling a live topic, you can configure the following options:

• Duration - This is the scheduled duration that attendees will see before the event. This sets expectations of time for your community.
• Add To Events - This option creates a new Calendar Event in your Community. This allows the live topic to be searched, viewed, and promoted like other event within your community.
• Live Video URL - This is the url of a YouTube embed. You can also add this after starting the live session. (Support for platforms other than YouTube coming soon 🙂). We stream Zoom straight to a live Youtube video currently.
• Attendees - This option specifies who can attend the live topic. Leaving as "Recommended" allows any registered member to join.
• Staff - The staff are responsible for moderating user generated content as it comes in. The default setting will add all groups that are allowed to moderate live topics. You can adjust this default in the AdminCP.
• Additional Hosts - The hosts have the highest level of permission in the live topic. They create questions, update the video url, and guide the discussion. By scheduling the Live Topic, you are automatically a host but you can add more hands to help. All hosts get a reminder notification close to when the event is due to start.
• Require Approval for question replies/chat messages - During the live session, you will likely want to control the rate of incoming content (especially questions). Chat Message creation can be locked during the live session.

 

Hosting the Live Topic

To start a live topic, you need to click into it from the ModeratorCP. Alternatively, if it was added to an Event you can click into it from there. Then just click start, it's as simple as that. Your attendees will see a waiting page with a count down.

It is worth mentioning that the live topic cannot

• Run without any hosts in attendance. When hosts abandon a live session, it will automatically end within a few minutes
• Run longer than 6 hours. The aim of Live Topics is to accompany a live event and to be short term compared to regular forum topics. The live session will also end automatically in this case

 

Once it's started, the UI is divided into have 2 main areas: One for Main Questions and another for Chat. Any video streams you embed are show in the top right and automatically started.

Main Questions (and Replies)

• Main Questions and their replies are what will be preserved when the topic is converted into a forum topic. Only staff can create main questions in order to ensure smooth topic flow. 
• For each question, you can also configure if the replies are "locked". A main question can be unlocked, locked to all members, or locked to non-staff. When a question is locked, new replies cannot be created.

 

Chat Channels

• For each Live Topic, there is a General Chat and a Staff Chat Channel. If a member is non-staff, instead of the Channel selector tabs, they will see only "Chat".
• When a non-staff attendee creates a chat message, it can be marked as a "question". This lets the host know that the question was intended for others to respond to. Optionally, the host can even convert the message into a question so it's integrated into the standard topic post-conversion

 

Live Stream Tools

• Hosts can select a time in the live feed a main question was answered.
• The video embed can also optionally be changed mid session. This is useful if you don't know the live stream URL before hand.

 

Moderation Tools

• Staff can hide or delete questions, chat messages and replies. The reply and chat feeds can also be set to automatically hide new items on creation.
• Non-staff attendees can report content. Reports show in the staff chat channel.
• Last but not least, staff members can silence attendees. This takes away their privileges to reply and create chat messages.

 

The Converted Topic

When the live session completes, our Cloud platform gets to work converting all that data into a regular forum topic. Converted Live Topics feature a questions box which allows you to drill down to specific questions within the topic.

The questions can be browsed individually, or even split into separate topics!

Lastly, new replies come with the option to select an originating question.

 

That's a wrap (for now)

We look forward to seeing all of you use live topics on your communities. As we've hinted elsewhere there are many more features coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.

View full blog entry

[My Sharona]

Am I to understand that this only works with utilizing a video? Can it be worked so as it is a live topic without video?

[Charles]

25 minutes ago, My Sharona said:

Am I to understand that this only works with utilizing a video? Can it be worked so as it is a live topic without video?

Yes, a video is not required. You can also just do text based Q&A.

[My Sharona]

49 minutes ago, Charles said:

Yes, a video is not required. You can also just do text based Q&A.

Great! Thank you for the clarification. Looking forward to trying it out.

[My Sharona]

One more noobish question from me I guess...

Is there the ability to have it post as a thread simultaneously and update as it goes?

 

Edited March 20, 2023 by My Sharona

[Charles]

7 minutes ago, My Sharona said:

One more noobish question from me I guess...

Is there the ability to have it post as a thread simultaneously and update as it goes?

 

The topic that is generated happens once the Live Topic event is over. Once you end the Live Topic, the generated topic is posted within a few seconds.

[My Sharona]

3 minutes ago, Charles said:

The topic that is generated happens once the Live Topic event is over. Once you end the Live Topic, the generated topic is posted within a few seconds.

Thanks Charles. I did read that but wondered if it was customizable at all. 

I am assuming the "chat" is scrollable while it is live(?).

 

Thanks

[Randy Calvert]

3 minutes ago, My Sharona said:

I am assuming the "chat" is scrollable while it is live(?).

Yes. As the event progresses, it just feels like a live chat room.  (There is the chat side and the “questions” side.)  People can come and go as they want. 

Once it’s done, it automatically makes the forum topic and converts all the chat messages into replies in that topic. 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Randy Calvert

[Randy Calvert]

@Andy Millne one thing to consider later...  Let us control the UI a little bit more similar to how the next release offers some customization in Gallery.

For example:

• Ability to disable Main Questions.  (Just have chat only and hide that part of the UI.)  The idea here is there can be events such as viewing parties or addresses where questions are not taken live, but instead is a chance to gather members to talk about an issue.   For example, watching Apple keynotes.  
• Ability to flip flop the Main Question/Chat areas.  (Users tend to look left to right.  Put the chat right in front of them and let them look to the side for questions!)
• Ability to make the video full width (or nothing to the side of the video)

I'm really excited by what this has the potential to be as it develops further!  Ya'll have done some great work with figuring out some complex stuff on the backend to pull all of these complex things together!  

Edited March 20, 2023 by Randy Calvert

[Matt Finger]

Wow, shout out to Randy for being such an expert enthusiast before we even release! I've said this before but this was lots of work over the past months and I am so excited for everyone to use it and provide valuable feedback to prioritize next features.

[David N.]

Very excited about this new development. I saw the preview during the last release chat and it looks very promising. 

16 hours ago, Matt Finger said:

We stream Zoom straight to a live Youtube video currently.

I am not familiar with these technologies. I wonder what this entails and what are the associated costs (if any). Maybe someone could make an article to explain how to make this work? 

• Does this require having a Zoom license, and if yes what kind of license?
• Does this require having a YouTube paid account of some kind? 
• Does that mean the video is necessarily available on YouTube after the event or can it be made private?
• Is it necessary to use YouTube at all or can we just embed a Zoom meeting directly in the Live Topic? 

[Matt]

We plan on bringing more video platforms to Live Topics, but as of its first release, Zoom is not directly embeddable.

You can do an unlisted Youtube Live video too if you wished.

[Andy Millne]

15 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

@Andy Millne one thing to consider later...  Let us control the UI a little bit more similar to how the next release offers some customization in Gallery.

I'm really excited by what this has the potential to be as it develops further!  Ya'll have done some great work with figuring out some complex stuff on the backend to pull all of these complex things together!  

Thanks, it's some of my best work 😂 

Not really though, I'm happy to take the credit but this one was @Matt Finger and  @Matt

[Matt]

@Matt Finger did all the hard work (JS, node, React, etc). I got the easier jobs.

[LIVIO]

Hi,

Very good news, thank you.

So, only Youtube currently for live streaming, right ?

Vimeo Live not possible (yet) ?

Thanks for the confirmation

[Matt Finger]

On 3/25/2023 at 2:14 AM, LIVIO said:

Hi,

Very good news, thank you.

So, only Youtube currently for live streaming, right ?

Vimeo Live not possible (yet) ?

Thanks for the confirmation

Yes, that is correct for now. We're planning support for more streaming platforms (including Vimeo Live) coming up soon.

[BradTBP]

Are Live Topics rolled out completely?  I do not see them in my Moderator CP and I did install the April release.  Should I send a message to Support?

[Stuart Silvester]

2 minutes ago, BradTBP said:

Are Live Topics rolled out completely?  I do not see them in my Moderator CP and I did install the April release.  Should I send a message to Support?

Hi Brad,

You're currently on a legacy Cloud package that doesn't include some of the latest features we've been releasing. You would need to upgrade to one of our current packages. If you want to send an email to support, we can help you out with that.

[BradTBP]

Thanks for your response Stuart.  I would much like to upgrade, but my site does not produce the revenue to do so unfortunately.  This then makes me curious if you plan to ultimately make obsolete the legacy sites.  Is there somewhere I can go read about the longer term plans?  Thank you.

[Marc Stridgen]

There is no plan to remove them entirely as of yet, so nothing to really point you to

[iamART]

Will there ever be plans for this feature to be available to self-hosted customers?

[Charles]

10 hours ago, iamART said:

Will there ever be plans for this feature to be available to self-hosted customers?

Live Topics is available on Creator package and up. It's not available on Beginner or Classic (self-hosted) plans. Feel free to contact us to discuss changing plans.

[iamART]

1 hour ago, Charles said:

Live Topics is available on Creator package and up. It's not available on Beginner or Classic (self-hosted) plans. Feel free to contact us to discuss changing plans.

I can see that, not interested in cloud as I'd need the business tier to get the amount of Live Topics I need, which is out of my price range. Sad these features are cloud only. Are all future new features going to be cloud only?

[Noble~]

Would be nice to see this come to the people that moved licenses to classic.😁

[Charles]

We do not have any plans to bring Live Topics to Beginner or Classic plans 🙂