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New Spam Prevention Features

Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices.
We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense.
As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully.
Let's take a look at these new tools and settings.
Geolocation based registration filtering
Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely.

Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely.
Disposable Email Filtering
We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation.

During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken.
Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters.
Contact Us Email Verification
A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings.
To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications.
Cloud Content Analysis
For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration.

After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform.
The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam).
The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community.
The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received.
Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked.
Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts.
We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam.
The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages:
Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted).
Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise.
  • 5,947 views
Ryan Ashbrook

Marketplace Closure

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 
  • 22,838 views
Lindy

Data at Your Fingertips: Explore Our New Reporting and Statistical Capabilities

Our June release includes enhancements to our various statistics and reporting features included within the community.
Statistics are important for a community platform because they provide valuable insights about user engagement, preferences, and behaviors, which directly inform the platform's strategy and design. Furthermore, statistics enable the monitoring of the platform's growth and user retention, which are essential for maintaining a vibrant and active community.
In our June release, we have made some enhancements to those features that will allow you to more quickly monitor those trends.
Saved Charts
In Invision Community 4.3, we introduced the ability to save charts to allow you to view them multiple times without needing to reset your filters each time. This works well, however there are three notable downsides.
You could only save a chart if there were filters to apply, such as Warning Types, Device Types, Member Groups, etc. Any specified timescale was not retained in your saved chart. There was no centralized location to view every chart you have saved. In our June release, we have resolved both of those issues. Now, every chart can be saved regardless of if there are filters or not, and when saved, will now also retain your timescale as well. In addition to that, we have added an additional My Saved Charts page. This page will show you every chart you have saved, including all filters and timescales that have been selected.

From this page you can quickly review all charts, temporarily adjust their timescales and filters to quickly see other information, as well as download each individual chart as a CSV directly from this page.
Don't worry, though - your saved charts will also still show in their original locations just as they have in the past.
Content Level Statistics
Later on, in Invision Community 4.5, we introduced an improved Topic View that included various statistical information about the topic including the top comments, popular days, top commenters, and more. This, however, was only limited to topics in the forums, and not the rest of the community. In our June release, we have taken this and expanded it to content in every application. This includes Blog Entries, Gallery Albums, Gallery Images, and more.
Each content item (such as a topic, blog entry or image) will show a new button for those with moderator permissions which opens a full statistics and analytics modal, providing expanded statistical information related to that particular piece of content specifically.

Clicking this new button opens up the statistics and analytics modal. Our Classic customers will see the following view:

Cloud Powered Historical View Tracking
For our Invision Community cloud customers, we have expanded our infrastructure to allow for storing historical views for all content.
On the previously mentioned Statistics and Analytics modal, a chart will be shown that outlines the amount of views that content has gotten every single day over a period of time, to allow you to see when specifically content was popular. This chart allows you to view trends for up to a year in the past.

Additionally, we have expanded this to content containers Forums, Downloads Categories, Blogs, Blogs Categories, Gallery Categories, and more will all report their own historical view trends.

Finally, these trends can be exported as a CSV file for your own personal processing if desired - and if needed, you can choose to only include certain types of content if you are focusing on one particular section.

We hope these changes help you to identify trends from within your own community to help you promote and grow it further.
The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages:
Saved charts and content item level statistics: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Community Classic (Self Hosted). Saved charts, content item level statistics, analytic report generation, content level historical view tracking, container level historical view tracking: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.
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Ryan Ashbrook

Strengthening Community Trust with Privacy and PII Data Features

Our June release of Invision Community introduces several new improvements for your community to increase privacy controls and consent of personally identifiable information.
In today's digital age, privacy and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) have become increasingly important. By incorporating improved privacy and PII data features into Invision Community, we are creating a more secure and inclusive environment within your community. In this blog post, we will take a quick look at what PII is, and the new features Invision Community has to improve privacy within your community.
What is PII?
PII, or personally identifiable information, refers to any data that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual member. When users sign up and visit your community, they may provide various types of PII, either voluntarily or as required by the platform's registration process. For example, an email address is required to complete the registration, and in some cases and IP address may be logged to authenticate a session, or to provide some context to the person posting content. 
Invision Community introduced new data control tools in a previous release, so let's take a look at the improvements coming in our June release that improves cookie management, IP address management, PII data requests, and the right to be forgotten.
PII Data Request and Right to be Forgotten
Your members now have the ability to request their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data directly from their account settings page. Upon submitting a request, administrators will receive a notification alerting them to the new inquiry, where they can choose to either approve or deny it.
If approved, the member will be notified and provided information on how to download their requested data.

 
Additionally, members now have the option to request account deletion. After submitting this request, they will receive a confirmation email to verify their intent. Once confirmed, the request is forwarded to administrators, who can then decide whether to approve or reject the account deletion.

IP Address Management
Invision Community has had tools to prune IP addresses within a timeframe for a while, but we have conducted a thorough evaluation of the data framework in Invision Community to ensure that all recorded IP addresses are systematically purged according to the designated timeframe.
Cookie Management
Empowering members to control which cookies are stored is an important aspect of fostering trust and security within an online community. By granting users the autonomy to manage cookie preferences, you demonstrate a commitment to respecting their privacy and protecting their personal data. This level of transparency not only helps build a strong sense of trust between the community and its members but also helps with compliance, ultimately contributing to a more engaging and responsible user experience.
The Invision Community cookie consent page has been revamped and now displays a list of essential cookies. Visitors have the option to opt out of non-essential cookies for a more customized browsing experience.

Additionally, we've introduced a new feature that allows for the inclusion of an optional third-party Cookie Description on the cookie consent page, further enhancing transparency and user control.

We trust that these enhancements to privacy and data collection practices will simplify compliance with various regulations and, most importantly, ensure that your community members feel secure and well-protected while engaging with your platform.
The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages:
Beginner Creator Creator Pro Team Business Enterprise These features are also available in the Invision Community Classic (self-hosted) product.
If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.
  • 6,906 views
Daniel F

Introducing Courses

Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. 
Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community.

Let's take a look at how it works!
Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout their learning journey in the course.
Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course.
Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz.
Modules and Lessons
Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding.
You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience!

The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential.

Managing Enrollments
As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend.
To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage.

Course Manager
Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view.

I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned!
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.
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Marshall Slemp

Giving you control with Email Bounce Management

Our May update brings Email Bounce Management to our Invision Community cloud platform. In this blog entry, I'll go over what it is, why it's important, and how you can use it when needed.
What is it?
For those who may not know, an email bounce occurs when an email message is sent and the recipient either doesn't exist (hard bounce) or they have blocked the sender (you!) in a spam complaint (soft bounce).
When an email message bounces we block that address at the cloud level so it cannot receive new messages from any community. This is considered good practice for email service providers, and ensures that we maintain a low bounce rate when sending emails on behalf of all the communities on our platform.
Please note this pertains to the Invision Community Cloud platform email service. If you use SMTP or SendGrid, email bounces are managed externally and may enforce different policies.
What Bounce Management Tools are we providing?
We're giving you the ability to see which members have blocked email addresses, and to unblock emails known to be safe.
Seeing which emails are blocked
In the AdminCP Members table (AdminCP > Members > Members), on cloud you will see a new filter: "Email Undeliverable". These are any member accounts that have emails blocked due to soft or hard bounces.

 
Additionally, on the front end, if a Member's email is blocked, they will see a warning indicator in the Nav/User Bar prompting them to change their email in their account settings.

 
Lifting Email Blocks
As stated earlier, when an email is blocked, it is blocked on the cloud platform level. If the block is not locked (which can happen if it's unblocked too many times), you will see a warning the Member's AdminCP Profile page.

 
Clicking into it you will see an option to unblock.

 
One final note on the Email Block Policy
If a situation occurs when an email is unblocked and gets blocked again a certain number of times, the block becomes permanent. In these cases, you will be able to see that the email is blocked but there won't be an option to unblock, and the member will have to change their email to resume receiving your Community's messages through us. This ensures that the Invision Community cloud platform retains a good email sending reputation.
Thanks for reading and as always stay tuned to for the latest and greatest upcoming features and insights!
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.
 
  • 6,600 views
Matt Finger

iPhone notifications, web app and more

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community.
Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while.

With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor.
The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen.

Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store.
With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app.
iPhone PWA.mp4
We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases.
We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are!
The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.
  • 6,694 views
Matt

Introducing Live Topics

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:
Schedule your Live Topic from the ModeratorCP. 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. 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.
  • 6,306 views
Matt Finger

Gallery, Events & Clubs: Improvements From Your Feedback

You may have noticed many of the Invision Community apps getting updates recently. Over the last several months we have revealed revamped Events, Gallery and Downloads apps and have listened to how you have been using them.
As a result, we are including some further app refinements as a direct result of that feedback.
Gallery
Many of you asked for more customisation options with the new overview page so 🎉 it is now possible to hide and show different sections of the overview using simple toggle settings without the need for theme edits. You can also adjust the number of items that show.

Searching for existing Gallery images to include in topics has been a feature of Invision Community for a while but previously search has been limited to the image name. Now, when searching for images via the "Insert other attachment" editor option, searching by album name returns images from that album.
Gallerysearch.mp4
Events
We added a similar improved overview to Events in the October release but for those of you with multiple Calendars you wanted a quicker way to subscribe to all events.
It is now possible to subscribe to all events from a prominent button in the header of the overview page. Members can subscribe to an iCal feed or download an export in just a couple of clicks.
 
Clubs
We also decided to use this release to add a couple of updates to clubs.
The popular “Mark solved” functionality is now available directly in your clubs with control over who can mark the item solved. You can allow the topic author to mark questions as solved or leave it to moderators only.
…and last but not least we added a contextual search tweak so that when members are viewing a club, the search filter defaults to “This Club”

We hope these small but useful improvements are popular in your communities and we look forward to hearing more of your feedback and requests.
Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.
The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.
  • 5,109 views
Andy Millne

Downloads updates, GraphQL and more

We love talking about our big new features, such as GraphQL and Live Topics, but we also like to shine a light on some of the smaller updates we've made to existing applications.
In this blog, I'll take you through a few changes to the Download app and an update on our various API integrations.
Downloads
After the success of the Events and Gallery refreshes, we've brought some of those changes over to the Downloads application.
Our Invision Community March '23 release will feature subtle theme updates to bring the Downloads app more in line with other applications. In addition, we have also added a grid mode for files. As in other areas of the platform, you can allow your members to choose their favourite view, which is remembered on subsequent visits.

A long-awaited request by our Marketplace Contributors was to delete their pending version updates. The good news is that our March release now allows this!
API News
Invision Community benefits from several API services, including REST, GraphQL and webhooks.
Our March release brings some improvements to GraphQL, including the ability to query for clubs and members. We have also enhanced the webhook for clubs which now returns information about the club itself.
While we're on the subject of webhooks, we have created a new webhook that is triggered via Downloads when a new pending version is approved.
I hope you find these updates useful. I'll be posting some more in our developer's blog on GraphQL, including some simple javascript examples to show you how easy it is to query for data and insert it into the templates without needing to edit templates.
 
  • 35,724 views
Daniel F

UI Polish in Invision Community 4.7.8

This week, we're excited to preview some of the UI changes which will be included with Invision Community 4.7.8.
These changes result in improved performance for Google Fonts and better contrast for accessibility, while also fixing a few bugs along the way. When combined, these small improvements result in a much more polished UI, so lets dive in and take a look at some examples below!
Google Fonts
Google Fonts are now imported using the latest version of their API, which includes support for font-display:swap. This CSS property prevents FOUT, or the Flash Of Unstyled Text, where fonts would temporarily be invisible if the Google Font hadn't finished downloading. With this update, a fallback font will be displayed until the Google Font has been downloaded, so your text will be immediately visible even on your initial page load.
With this update, we have also imported font-weight:600 for improved rendering of semi-bold fonts.
Cleaner UI for Forum Grid
This update includes a cleaner UI for forum grids, resulting in improved contrast particularly for the forum icon and forum name.

Cleaner UI for "Expanded view" topic lists
In addition to new forum grids, the expanded view UI has also seen improvements in this update, where items are now separated by a simple border instead of being separated into their own boxes.

Improved button alignment on mobiles
When possible, buttons will now only occupy a single line on mobiles which results in a cleaner layout and less scrolling. Win win!
Before:

After:

Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs now use a darker color and thicker font-weight for improved contrast, and no longer truncate when long titles are included.
Before:

After:

Social Icons
The background color of certain social icons has been updated to match their current brand colours.
Before:

After:

Widget designs
All widgets have received a slight UI overhaul, resulting in improved readability due to heavier font-weights on titles. Alignment issues have also been addressed in certain widgets for mobiles:
Before:

After:

Improved alignment in posts
Post controls (the bar containing the quote link and reactions) are now vertically aligned to the bottom of posts, regardless of the post length. Small change, but a big difference!
Before:

After:

And much more!
In addition to these changes, we've included a bunch of fixes including broken stats on record lists, wide tooltips, sticky announcements not staying stuck to the screen, incorrect image ratios for Recent Achievement badges and stretched thumbnails in widgets.
We think these improvements have really helped to clean up certain areas of our UI and we look forward to them going live on all sites with 4.7.8!
  • 9,940 views
Ehren

Grow your community without limits

Over the past several years, you have seen us add many improvements to our platform packages. New features and capabilities leveraging the advanced technology we can offer you have really moved so many Invision Community powered sites into new areas of engagement.
We have been investing heavily in our platform resources and have seen hundreds of clients move from classic, self-hosted environments to our platform to take advantage of new features, and the peace that never having to run a server brings them. It's incredible how often the number one reason for moving is never having to utter the term VPS again!

Our packages used to limit based on online users, but that wasn't easy to track and explain. The switch to limits based on page views has made more sense, but it is still a limiter on traffic and, therefore, growth. 
We really do not want to limit your community growth! So today, we are happy to announce that all of our current platform packages now offer unlimited page views.
With this change, we look forward to seeing your community grow without worrying about traffic causing your costs to increase. We think you will love this change and look forward to presenting new platform improvements coming soon. 
Switch to our Platform 
Are you on a classic self-hosted Invision Community? Ready to stop caring about servers, databases, and backups? 
We offer free transfers to our platform, and we even give you an account credit if you want to give up your classic license. Not only does our team handle the technical move for you, but we also recognize your past loyalty so you can focus on running your community rather than the server. 
Contact sales today to talk about scheduling your transfer to our platform. We can talk via email or schedule a Zoom to go over options. 
  • 14,680 views
Charles

Live Topics: A first look

We're excited to bring you a first look at our new and innovative Invision Community feature: Live Topics.
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.
Your event doesn't have to just be text based! Live Topics allows you to feature a live video for your attendees. You can present to your attendees while fellow hosts select messages from the attendee chat to raise as questions for answers via the video or message replies from other attendees. 
Once the live event has ended, the questions and answers are converted into a permanent forum topic. Additional replies to the forum topic can reply to a specific question raised in the live event.

If you choose to answer on the live video, you can mark the timestamp of the answer, allowing members to jump to that segment of the video from the forum topic.

We're thrilled to finally share details of this new and exciting Invision Community feature. Although this is just a first look at Live Topics, we will follow this blog up with others drilling into the details, and multiple use cases Live Topics offers.
Live Topics is unique to Invision Community and will soon be available to selected cloud plans.
  • 5,223 views
Matt

Introducing GraphQL for Invision Community

We are excited to announce that the Invision Community GraphQL API is now available.
This blog takes you through what GraphQL is and what makes it better than existing APIs present in Invision Community. It does get a bit technical, but you don't need to be a developer to appreciate how GraphQL will make life easier for those that do develop.
What is GraphQL?
GraphQL describes itself as a query language for APIs that gives clients the power to ask for precisely what is needed and nothing more.
GraphQL was created by Facebook in 2012 and is now an open-source project governed by the GraphQL Foundation, which operates independently of Facebook.
What makes GraphQL better than existing REST APIs?
GraphQL has several advantages over the existing REST API present in Invision Community, and these include:
Flexibility: GraphQL allows clients to request only the data they need, reducing over-fetching or under-fetching data. Getting data from a REST API often means receiving many fields and values you don't need to complete the operation you're creating.
Versatility: GraphQL can query multiple databases or APIs, making it a more versatile solution than REST, which often requires multiple endpoints for multiple data types.
Strong Typing: GraphQL has a robust type system, making it easier to understand the capabilities of an API and catch errors early in the development process.
Better Performance: By allowing the client to request only the data it needs, GraphQL can improve the performance of an application compared to REST, which often returns more data than necessary.
Easier to evolve: The schema-based nature of GraphQL allows for more straightforward and less-breaking changes to the API compared to REST.
Let's look at an example
You're building a dashboard that uses Invision Community data for your Node.js application that shows the latest topics, latest registered members and calendar events. With the REST API, you need to make three requests to get all the data you need. With GraphQL, you can fetch the exact data you need with a single request.

Modern Web Development
GraphQL is now the standard for modern web development, including building mobile apps. A modern web app has a "front-end" and a "back-end".
The front-end refers to the user-facing part of the web application. The front-end is typically written in client-side languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and is responsible for rendering the user interface and handling user interactions. It communicates with the back-end to retrieve and display data.
The back-end refers to the server-side part of the web application. The back-end is typically written in server-side languages such as PHP, and is responsible for performing business logic, managing data, and serving API responses to the front-end.
Using GraphQL as the interface between the front-end and back-end, the development and deployment of each component can be done independently, improving the overall efficiency and scalability of the application.
At Invision Community, we know that some clients use REST to pull data from Invision Community for use in bespoke web and mobile apps. So we hope you're even more excited about the possibilities with GraphQL.
A list with all currently available queries, mutators and data types can be found in our developer documentation section.

Extending Invision Community Functionality
Of course, you also have full access to the GraphQL API in the Invision Community framework, so you can use GraphQL inside your controllers to run your queries, which has the advantage that you won't need to worry about future changes to the API. 
In addition, we have also created a GraphQL template plugin, which can be utilized inside templates to fetch any data.
This is a more technology-heavy blog than usual. The main takeaway is that we continue to invest in ways to allow your Invision Community data to be used by your own applications. GraphQL makes that job a lot easier and much more efficient.
Let me know if you have any questions!
  • 61,576 views
Daniel F

What's New in Gallery?

Humans are visual beings. Images attract our attention, can communicate ideas faster than the written word and can trigger meaningful discussions. At Invision Community we recognised this very early in the company history and have included a Gallery application for many years. During this time online communities have evolved substantially so we thought it was time to re-assess what it means to offer a community gallery and have some exciting developments to share.
Visual Refresh
The first thing we wanted to do was to give the look & feel a modern overhaul. @Ehren has done a fantastic job with modern design ideas. We took inspiration from the recent overhaul of the Events app and included a brand new Gallery overview page. This view better highlights featured and new images but also brings recent image comments in to focus to promote discussion.

Better Video Support
Video support has been included in Invision Community for a while but browser support has varied wildly. This often led to a poor experience where viewers were prompted to download plugins or forced to download the video in its entirety. Browser support for MP4 playback has moved on however and we have been able to update Gallery with some new functionality.
Frames from the video can be extracted for the preview thumbnail automatically. We have retained the option to upload a separate preview image however for people that want manual control over the image shown. Skipping ahead in videos is now also supported without the need to download the entire file or use plugins.
For communities that are able to leverage our cloud platform non MP4 videos will be automatically converted to support these features.
Searchable Image Contents
Another benefit for Cloud Communities is images can now be optionally analysed to make their contents searchable. For example, if an image of a tree or woodland scene is uploaded, this would previously only be searchable if the title or description of the image contained specific words or phrases. Now images can be identified solely by their visual contents.
NSFW (Not Safe For Work)
Invision Community contains tools to automatically moderate sensitive images to prevent them being posted. Some communities with more mature audiences may wish to allow these to be posted however but with some protection. We have therefore added the ability for images to be optionally set as NSFW when uploading. This will cause images to be blurred until the viewer opts in to viewing them.

Performance & Usability
Images by their nature can be slow to load (particularly on mobile connections) so we took some time and removed lots of redundant javascript and CSS. Where appropriate we have also added support for prefetching the next and previous images in an album or category and lazy loading is handled by the browser natively. We combined this with an improved image navigation experience using an image carousel when viewing individual images and removed the confusing Lightbox overlay. The Lightbox is now used solely for full screen image previews without the visual clutter of comment counts and other meta data.

These changes are the start of further Gallery improvements to come and as always we will continue to develop based on your feedback.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
  • 57,767 views
Andy Millne

Keep it simple, silly!

Welcome to my first Invision Community blog post!
For those that haven't yet seen me making my way around this community, I'm Gary, and I have just recently joined the Customer Service team at Invision Community. I want to take this moment to thank the staff for giving me such an amazing opportunity and welcoming me with open arms.
My history goes way back to circa 2004-2005 (I was still in high school) where I first dug my hands into forums and forum software in the good old Invisionfree days. Through the years I have created too many communities to count, including my own free post-to-host hosting service (remember those days?). Some were successful and so many others were anything but. Little did I know these experiences would only get me more and more hooked into this virtual world!
Forums have been more to me than just an invaluable source of information. They are communities of like-minded people sharing their knowledge, experiences, hobbies and most of all, coming together in a common place to just be themselves. I have experienced nearly every forum software out there, though I always made my way back to the Invision Community suite of products as I not only found it to be a very powerful and dynamic bit of kit, but it always provided the solutions I wanted and needed for my communities.
I thought I would share some tips on things that have worked for me when creating my own community. This will make up part one of a set of planned blog entries relating to community tips in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Use the KISS principle.
One thing I have found in order to engage guests and new and existing members of my community is to incorporate the 'Keep it simple, silly!' principle.
When you visit a community and you're overwhelmed with categories, forums and unnecessary pinned topics, you are actually not doing yourself a favour. It mostly adds confusion to your community and does the complete opposite to having things organised. Too much clutter is never a good thing, and keeping things orderly and ensuring content is concise will provide your members with a more comfortable and easier overall experience. I did not incorporate this principle into my communities, and soon realised that was a huge contributor to the cause of their demise. 😅
Keep some of these in mind:
Can I combine forums that are similar in content? Do I need so many separately pinned topics? Can I write more concisely? Targeting this point on the more administrative side of things like 'how to use this forum' topics, forum descriptions, etc. Are there things that are already self-explanatory and do not require repeat descriptions or mentions? Can I use less jargon and target my writing to a wider audience? Am I using too many graphics? If the above is not a factor, can graphics assist in reducing large chunks of plain text? When is too much, in fact, too much? Quality over quantity as they say. How about, less is more?
Whatever stance you take and whichever influential quote you can most relate to, you want your audience to feel welcomed, not overstimulated with irrelevant content you think they need to see. Let your audience guide your community. I will delve into this further in the next blog entry.
I'll leave it there for this edition, otherwise I may just keep you here all day...
I'm sure there are many of you who are doing this so well already, so please share your own useful and proven tips and tricks. What have you found works for you and your community? What is something you are doing differently or uniquely in an effort to keep it simple?
  • 288,640 views
Gary

Events update includes additional streaming platforms

Last month we introduced some powerful updates with a long overdue overhaul of community events. We were very pleased by the excellent feedback received and enjoyed hearing your suggestions.
We listened and have been working hard to bring some further updates to Events.
Support for more streaming platforms
When creating a virtual event in your Events application, you may include a link to your event and the platform will advertise it with the vendor’s logo so your community knows what to expect. When your members are ready to join, choosing the “Open Event” button will set them on their way. With this update, a total of 14 third party streaming platforms are now supported.
Zoom YouTube EventBrite On24 Facebook Google Webex Slack Discord Microsoft Teams TikTok NEW! Twitch NEW! Vimeo NEW! SpotMe NEW!
Unobtrusive location prompts
When viewing the list of events, Invision Community would immediately prompt the user for their location. Your feedback suggested this was too intrusive and as a result members can now opt-in with the “Use my location” link and checkbox. If members do not opt in then their approximate location is used based on an IP address lookup. If neither of these options are available the results center on a default location that you can set in the admin control panel settings.

Bug fixes
As well as these changes we have also fixed a number of bugs including:
A longstanding issue where event times could show incorrectly when members in different timezones edited events. Better localization to make sure all phrases are translatable. Some issues showing events in regions that use commas instead of periods for numbers. Hiding online event links after the event has passed. We still want to make further improvements to Events and are looking forward to more updates in 2023. Let us know in the comments how you are using Events to bring together your community online and offline.
  • 113,136 views
Andy Millne

New feature: moderating with personal alerts

When we speak to community moderators of busy sites about what they want to see in future Invision Community versions, most ask for ways to improve daily workflows.
Community moderators are at the heart of every community, and those working with busy sites quickly find that repeating the same tasks reveals ways to save clicks and precious time.
We recently released our alert system, which is a great way to get information to a single user or an entire group of members. Alerts can be set so the members have to reply before they can continue interacting with the community.
Invision Community's November release now allows moderators to send a personal alert message to the author of the content they are moderating when their content is hidden, split, locked or moved.
This video takes you through the workflow when hiding a comment.
Combining the alert feature into the moderation workflow makes it easier to inform your members that you've taken action on their content.
For example, you may notice a member posting a topic in the wrong forum. It's now straightforward to move the topic and let the author know why it's been moved and where to find it.

Perhaps you've had to hide some content that doesn't fit your community guidelines. You can now let the author know when hiding the topic and the reason it's been hidden.
Informing your members why you've taken action on their content helps educate, remind them of your community guidelines when needed and prevent confusion when they cannot locate the content they recently posted. Making a personal connection when moving or hiding a member's content helps keep a positive relationship throughout the community.
Viewing alert replies
While we were at it, we have also made it easier to track and respond to alert replies when sending them to large numbers of members.

From November onwards, you will see the number of replies sent to your message when viewing alerts in the Moderator Control Panel. Clicking the reply count will show all personal message replies to that alert via a top-level filter.
This new time-saving feature will come to all Invision Community platforms in November.
 @Daniel F proudly led development of this feature. 👏
We'd love your thoughts; let us know in the comments!
  • 45,308 views
Matt

New feature: moderator approval queue now includes a reason why

Community moderators have a responsibility to maintain a sense of normalcy and balance within a community.
The Invision Community platform includes powerful tools for moderators to help them mitigate issues that may arise. We just enhanced one of them.
Our new moderator approval queue feature, available in an upcoming release for all Invision Community clients, arms moderators with more information regarding why an item was sent to the approval queue in the first place.
The approval queue is a temporary waiting room for content that can either be approved, denied, hidden or deleted by a community moderator. 
Sometimes, it’s unclear to a moderator why an item was sent to the approval queue.
Our new feature solves that problem by including a reason with every item that needs to be approved. This provides clarity to the moderator in charge of handling items waiting in the wings.
There are a bunch of different methods in which an item can be held for approval:
Profanity/bad words
If a member uses a word you have deemed inappropriate, you may ask the platform via the ‘Word Filter’ option to automatically hold the post for moderator approval. In this example, the word “damn” is included in the Word Filter list. A member attempts to reply with it. Their comment is automatically held for moderator approval along with a reason why.


 
URLs
If a member posts a link to a third-party website, you may ask the platform to automatically hold it for moderator approval. 


Email addresses
If a member posts an email address, you may ask the platform to automatically hold it for moderator approval. 

 
Reviews
If a member posts a review on a digital download or a physical product, you may ask the platform to automatically hold the review for moderator approval. 


Topics/replies
A member, or group of members, must have their posts manually approved by a moderator before they can be seen by the rest of the community. 

 

A few other things worth mentioning:
The moderator approval queue explanation is compatible with all of our applications (minus the Blog). The Forum and Commerce applications are the only two apps that can be required to have moderator approval at an item level (for example, individual replies within a topic or reviews on a product).
This new feature will be available in an upcoming release.
Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments!
  • 36,194 views
Jordan Miller

Unite your community with the Events application

Bringing your community together with both online and in-person events is one of the most powerful ways to create meaningful connections, long-lasting relationships and one-of-a-kind experiences. 
The pandemic put a stop to many in-person events, but now that the dust is settling and people are beginning to return to some sense of normalcy, physical events are becoming commonplace. However, we can’t ignore the recent surge in online events now that COVID inspired a new norm. 
Previously, the Calendar application acted as more of a personal planner, focusing on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly happenings. That functionality still exists, but we’ll leave it to Google Calendar and the likes to handle your standard appointments. 
Instead, we’re shifting focus to community-driven events with our appropriately named app, Events, available for all Invision Community clients. 
Our Events app features a beautiful overview page that showcases community events.
Let’s take a closer look: 
 
Featured Events
calendar.mp4

Community leaders can now promote member-driven events with the “Feature” option. This highlights the event on the main overview page for all to see. It includes the event’s cover photo, date, title and description.
 
Search Events


 
Search for community events that are located near you. 
Tapping the “use my location” prompt allows your browser to identify your physical location, then shows a list of events that are in close proximity to you. 
Get granular with your search. Filter by general  location, date and/or whether the event is an in-person or online event. 

Maps

 
When searching, a map is also available for you to see in an instant what community events are happening.

Happening Near You


This section shows a list of events happening near you. It includes a snap shot of the events happening near your physical location, as well as a map of where the event is taking place.
This tailor-made page displays events based on geo-location, so communities with members from all over the world will view and experience the Events page differently. 
If there aren’t any events happening, a message block is displayed instead that says: 
 
Happening Today
 


On the day of, your event will include a badge to show the entire community the special event is happening.

Online Events


 
This section displays a list of virtual events within your community. Events are shown in chronological order by date and time.

Browse by month


 
We extended the search functionality to automatically show both in-person and online events categorized by the month. 
This is particularly useful to plan what events you’d like to attend and also see what’s in the pipeline. 
 
Event Page

Here's an example of what an Event's page looks like. It includes the event details, a map if it's an in-person event and an “Open Event” linked button for the online events. Optionally members can RSVP or confirm they attended when you request that per event.

Integrations
A particularly useful addition to our new Events application is the inclusion of popular, third-party video streaming platforms. When creating a virtual event in your Events application, you may include a link to your event and the platform will advertise it with the vendor’s logo so your community knows what to expect. When your members are ready to join, choosing the “Open Event” button will set them on their way.

Below is a complete list of platforms that Invision Community’s Events app can showcase (see examples in the screen shots above):
Zoom YouTube EventBrite On24 Facebook Google Webex Slack Discord Microsoft Teams
Here are a few examples of how your community can leverage our Events with in-person events:
Team building meeting
Unite your team with a collaborative event celebrating the company’s wins and victories. Sometimes in-person meetings spark new ideas in ways that a virtual environment can’t. 
Donation drive
Round up your local community and raise money for those in need with an in-person fundraiser. 
Training programs
Gather a group of community moderators and/or employees together and teach them how to innovate, strategize and lead with a physical training event. 
Flash sale
Make Black Friday, Boxing Day and other major retail sales an event within your community. Encourage your community to show up to a limited-time flash sale where in-person purchases are the only route to obtain an exclusive item. 
 
Let's check out some examples for online events:
Virtual happy hour
Let loose with a few of your community buddies at a virtual happy hour. Schedule something once a week or month and make a few extra friends no matter where they live (a cold brew at 5 a.m. your time when it’s 5 p.m. their time might be a tad awkward, but hey, it’s 5 p.m. somewhere). 
Holiday party
If your company is remote-based, an online holiday party is the perfect solution to spread the good time vibes. 
Interviews
Invite fans of an artist to watch a virtual live stream or music video where they can actively engage and contribute.
Fan gatherings
Speaking of fans or an artist or brand, unite people who share common interests together with a fan-fueled event. Conduct a Q&A, share inside information and create a space for them to celebrate their collective passions.
 
Our Events application is a welcomed addition designed to bring an enhanced presentation of the events happening in your space both on and offline. Community users can enjoy this interactive overview as an add-on to the traditional view. As a site admin, the overview page can be set as the new default in your AdminCP.
We are excited to bring the Events application to all Invision Community plans in an upcoming release.
Let us know what you think in the comments. 
  • 42,109 views
Jordan Miller

Join our team! Customer Service team members needed

Invision Community has an exciting opportunity to have customer service superstars join our team. 
Invision Power Services, Inc. is behind the leading community software platform, Invision Community. Our tailored solutions serve clients of all sizes, from smaller communities to the world’s biggest brands.
We have been on the forefront of independent and white label engagement communities since 2002.
 
The Role
General duties could include assisting customers via forum support, customer communication and marketing needs, and bringing ideas and energy to new customer focused initiatives. Part-time and full-time positions are both available. This role will vary based on your experience, skills, and our needs. If you have a passion for helping others and all things customer service, we would love to hear from you.
The position is remote, but it will require significant overlap with the EST working day. We offer a friendly relaxed environment with an established team who have a passion for what they do. There is an opportunity to learn from others and progress into more senior roles.
 
Key Responsibilities
Provide public facing support and guidance to customers and prospective customers. Work with customer service team to communicate and prioritize customer needs Write and edit documentation Website maintenance and content creation The most important characteristic is a willingness to learn and to take on new challenges. The role is varied and we are happy to find the right combination of duties to fit your skills and experience.
 
Skills & Experience
Familiar with social engagement, not necessary Invision Community Experience writing cheerful and helpful support responses Willingness to learn our Invision Community software The depth of experience can vary between applicants. Please apply even if some of these areas are not your strongest points. We can offer training and mentoring for the right candidate and our team is very supportive.
 
Location
Remote but must be available for a significant portion of 9-5 EST working day.
 
Salary
Part-time and full-time positions are both available and pay would be determined by experience and assigned duties.
 
How To Apply
Please complete the application form (This link has been removed) giving us as much information as possible.
  • 61,311 views
Olivia Clark

Our new Image Scanner and Discoverability AI keeps your community safe (Video)

.
Image Scanner.mp4
 
Invision Community AI can now automatically detect and hold images not suitable for your community.
Our new Image Scanner and Discoverability tool, built into the newly-launched Smart Community section of the ACP for clients on select standard plans, has immense moderation power. 
This new AI feature scans images uploaded by a member, detects what objects the image contains then decides whether or not it’s appropriate to share the image within the community. 
If the AI believes the image contains anything adult, suggestive and racy, visually disturbing and/or violent, it will either hold the image for moderation or reject the image altogether. 
 

 
Should the image meet the approval requirements and get posted, the image is labeled with what the image “could contain.” These terms optionally show when hovering over the image and allow the image to appear as a search result. 
These keywords will also support your search.
In this example, I searched for the word “apple,” and results included a photo that @Matt posted of an apple.


 
Score thresholds
Each uploaded image is assigned a score - essentially a gatekeeper to what is deemed appropriate (and what isn’t).
How does the AI determine this score?
For each of the categories, a score is returned indicating how confident the service is that the image matches the corresponding category. Depending on the threshold percentage, you can choose to either hold the post for approval, or reject the image.
If the content being posted cannot be held for approval (for example inside a personal conversation) the image will be rejected at either threshold. 
When choosing your percentages, the higher the percentage, the more confident you want the AI to be when it scans images and identifies what the image contains and before holding or rejecting the image. 
For example, if an image is scanned for adult content and the threshold is 75% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, the platform will hold the image for moderator approval. For the same image, if it is 85% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, it will reject the image. 
If you want to hold more images, resulting in more moderator oversight, you would keep your percentages low. 
For example, if an image is scanned for visually disturbing content and is 40% or greater in confidence that it contains visually disturbing content, the image will be held for moderator approval. For the same image, if it is 75% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, it will reject it.
The same applies to the suggestive and racy / violence and gore categories:


 
Here are a few more real life examples:
Example 1: A sneaky troll decides to disrupt a corporate brand community by posting NSFW images. The image detection can automatically enforce predetermined rules set by the administrator and stop the photo from seeing the light of day in the community.  
Example 2: A travel company has a community for people to share vacation experiences and information with others. Someone innocently posts a photo wearing a bikini during their trip to the beach, however posting scantily clad images in this community goes against the terms of the community. It is therefore automatically either held for moderation, or is automatically hidden from view. 
The Image Scanner and Discoverability feature is available now on select standard plans. 
ACP -> System -> Smart Community -> Features -> Image Scanner
Please note the video above uses a Beta version of the Image Scanner; the screen shots in this post reflect the most up-to-date interface. However, the logic remains the same. 😀
Interested in moving to a plan with the Image Scanner feature? Please feel free to reach out to us.
Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think about the feature in the replies. 
 
  • 15,635 views
Jordan Miller

Finding solutions made easier

You’ve got questions, and you’ve got answers.
One of the glorious benefits to running a thriving community is its ability to be self-sustainable. We’ve added new Solved features available on both standard and self-hosted plans. 
While you’re working on growing the community’s presence (and the bottom line), your members are busy connecting and engaging with one another. In addition to you and your team answering questions, peer-to-peer networking is an efficient way to increase support and quickly attend to your members’/clients’/customers’ needs. 
Invision Community’s previously existing Solutions feature allows a topic starter, as well as community moderators, to mark a reply inside a topic as the solution to the question. We’ve added a green block for the member who started the topic that encourages them to mark a response as the solution. This is only visible to them and not other members participating inside the topic. 


 
Here is what the new Solutions button looks like:


 
Not only did it receive a style update, but more importantly the topic starter can now receive periodic emails reminding them to revisit their topic and either re-engage until a solution is found, or mark a previously-posted answer as the solution. 
Community leaders have the ability to turn this feature off, or set the number of days before an email is sent (the default is set to 14 days).
Here is an example email:


 
We also added a Solved report in the Statistics section of your Admin Control Panel.
The report consists of daily snapshots taken within the community. The platform then records the percent of topics solved, as well as the average time it took to find a solution. This helps you understand pain points in your community, as well as what kinds of questions get answered and how long it took for a solution to come to light. 



Benefits of your community using Solutions:
Cuts support costs: Customers help one another so your team can focus elsewhere. Builds a library: Community answers are easily searchable & shareable for future customers. Gives props: Reward customers for answering questions with Achievements. Empowers members: Customers help themselves by asking questions and finding answers. The new Solutions features are available in an upcoming update to version 4.7 of our platform. 
The Solutions option is located in: Admin Control Panel -> Community -> Forums -> Forums -> Select desired Forum -> Edit -> Display Settings -> "Enable Solved?" Toggle + "Allow the topic starter to mark solved?" Toggle
Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments! 
  • 29,763 views
Jordan Miller

New Live Community Features!

Invision Community’s new Live Community features offer an immersive, real-time experience for members. 
Clients on select standard plans now have access to live components that drastically change how their users engage within the forum section of their community. 
These live features are included in the new Smart Community section in the Admin Control Panel. When enabled, Live Community allows a community to track and display hot spots where members are most enthralled. 


Admin Control Panel -> System -> Smart Community -> Features -> Live Community
 
Our Live Community components include:
Who’s viewing an area live Who’s typing a response live
Who’s Viewing 


Our new Who's Viewing feature shows a list of members who are viewing any area within the forums application.
Sound familiar? We previously created a "Recently Browsing" block that shows what members are viewing a topic, however that block was a snapshot over a small block of time. The new Who's Viewing feature shows a list of members who are viewing a topic (and when they leave) in the present moment. 

Who’s Typing


We also implemented a live Who’s Typing feature. If you're quick, you’ll see a member typing a reply in real-time when formulating your own reply at the form located near the bottom of a content item.
These live community features can enhance your community by inspiring members to stay engaged within the community for longer, as well as feel connected to the other registered members. 
Whether you’re patiently waiting for a comment to come through because the reply form indicates a member/multiple members are typing, or gauging who’s viewing what in real-time, Invision Community’s new live features will elevate your community’s experience in the here and now.
No time like the present; that's why it's a gift! The Live Community features are available in our new version, 4.7.1. 


  • 22,524 views
Jordan Miller