Invision Community 5: Assign topics to moderators

[Matt]

Forum moderation management used to be straightforward. It was commonplace to assign a moderator to a single forum. They would be responsible for enforcing the rules, removing spam and generally modelling the behaviour you wanted to see within your community.

As community management has matured and moderators are tasked with roles based on knowledge, help and support, there is a need for more nuance in managing topics within your community.

For example, you may have specialists or teams of specialists who help answer questions about development, sales, or support. Topics that require this help may be posted anywhere within your community.

Indeed, this feature was inspired by a need in our own support community to ensure customers get the right help from the right team member. We have questions on feature sets, purchasing, and support requests, each requiring a different team member. It is not enough to hope that the right person sees the topics; they must be assigned to ensure excellent service.

 

What are the benefits of this feature?
The ability to assign a topic to a single moderator or a team of moderators ensures that each topic gets the best outcome regardless of where it was posted.

Having topics assigned helps moderators deal with issues quickly, as there's clarity over which moderators should handle the topic. It also helps keep your community team accountable by having the ability to monitor their workload and get statistics on the time it takes for your team to reply. These statistics also help the community lead assess quality control.

 

How do you use this feature?
There are two ways to assign a topic to a moderator or team of moderators. You can assign a topic when replying to it or do it from the topic's action menu.

Once assigned, the assignee can review their assigned topics via the Moderator Control Panel and see which are assigned to them via the list of topics. Each moderator will receive a notification informing them they have a new assignment.

Those with permission to assign topics to others will see all the assigned topics and who they are assigned to when reviewing the list of topics.

The Admin CP contains a list of all assigned topics and also allows you to create and manage teams of moderators, such as "Sales Team" or "Developers."

Finally, once the topic has been managed successfully, the moderators can remove themselves from the assignment completing the task.

Assigning a specific topic to a single person or team in a busy online forum is a strategy that can enhance the effectiveness of the forum's management. It promotes efficiency, expertise, consistency, and accountability, which are vital for maintaining a vibrant and respectful online community.

We hope you are looking forward to this feature and look forward to any comments you may have.

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[Mike G.]

This is another super helpful addition. Thank you!

[Jimi Wikman]

First of all, this is great. Really great.

Secondly, I think you are getting closer and closer to having all the ingredients for making a very nice ITSM tool for support purposes 🙂

[abobader]

Good one indeed, many thanks for IPS team and well done.

[PinPics]

Very nice feature! Definitely looking forward to this . . . and appreciating this advance notice, since we will build a few areas of the site with this feature in mind. Thanks so much!!

[Egorkin]

It's great, but there's not enough user ban in a specific topic and a specific section.

[Marc]

4 hours ago, Egorkin said:

It's great, but there's not enough user ban in a specific topic and a specific section.

Not for this feature no, as its not related to banning in any way

[Li3D]

Looks like Topic Moderators, would be great to be able to migrate from it 😛 

Will it be possible to assign an “ordinary” member without any moderating rights to a topic ?

[David N.]

So my first thought when I watched this video was: "looks nifty and sleek, and I'm sure this will be super useful to a lot of website, but I don't see how I would use it."

Now all of a sudden I realized, this could be a way for me to 'bookmark' topics I know I intend to respond to but not right now, only later when I have the time. It would also send the signal to the person who posted the topic that I have taken note of their question and intend to answer it later. 

Interesting. Can't wait to play with it. 

[teraßyte]

3 hours ago, David N. said:

It would also send the signal to the person who posted the topic that I have taken note of their question and intend to answer it later.

I don't think normal members will be able to see that someone is assigned to the topic. I might be wrong, though. 🙄

[MythonPonty]

On 3/24/2024 at 12:21 AM, teraßyte said:

I don't think normal members will be able to see that someone is assigned to the topic. I might be wrong, though. 🙄

Interesting... I also want to know how it works. Are the assignment details public or are they restricted only to the mod team?

[Egorkin]

Will the 5th version be just a modified 4th one, or is it something completely new? 🤔

And when we see it, I thought it would be at the beginning of the year. 🙃

[Gary]

Hi @Egorkin,

You can read about the new version in the topic below.

I would consider it a completely new version considering all of the features that have been introduced, and the changes to the existing software to make the whole package work seamlessly. But you can be your own judge once it has been released. On that note, there is no confirmed release date as of yet. 😉

[Karfunkel]

Will there also be a Feature to assign Moderators to a specific Forum or Category? This would be great aswell.