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  1. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: Assign topics to moderators   
    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.
  2. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Ehren for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: Live Topic Improvements   
    Live Topics in Invision Community 5
    Introduced last year, Live Topics are an innovative way to host live chat and question-and-answer sessions, complete with the option for live video integration. Live Topics effortlessly transform these events into permanent forum topics once the event concludes, allowing your members to not only interact in real-time with the rest of your community, but also continue the conversation far beyond the events conclusion.
    As part of Invision Community 5, Live Topics will ship with a brand new design, rich-text editors and dynamic reactions. Let’s take a look at all three improvements, starting with the new design.
     

    Full-screen, 3 column layout
    When viewing a live topic, you’ll be taken to a new, minimal, full-screen, 3 column layout which provides plenty of space to simultaneously view your video, question-and-answer list, and live chat columns all at once. The width of the video can easily be adjusted using a simple drag and drop handle, allowing your members to shift their focus between the video or the question-and-answer list depending on the moment.
    Resize.mp4
     
    The second column holds a list of dynamic question-and-answer discussions, while the third column boasts a redesigned chat area that more closely resemble an app-like experience.
      Questions-and-chat.mp4  
    For smaller devices such as tablets and mobiles, the video is always visible at the top of the page. The question-and-answer list and live chat collapse into their own tabbed area to conserve space.
    Mobile.mp4
     
     

    Rich-text editors
    Text fields in Live Topics have been upgraded to CKEditor, allowing for greater flexibility when it comes to formatting text or posting emoji’s.
     
    Richtext.mp4
     
     
    Reactions
    Reactions have been added to live topics for both the question feed and the live chat. Reactions update dynamically in real-time, offering valuable insights into the content your community deems significant in the moment.
    Reactions.mp4
     
    A lot of thought has gone into transforming Live Topics into a much more user friendly experience. The refreshed, modern design combined with new real-time features make Live Topics a fantastic solution for hosting real-time community events, and we're looking forward to shipping these updates alongside Invision Community 5 later this year.
     
     
  3. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt Finger for a blog entry, 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.
  4. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Daniel F for a blog entry, 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!
  5. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, 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. 


  6. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, New community manager tool: schedule topics   
    Community managers and moderators have a simple but powerful new tool at their disposal: scheduling a topic's future publishing date.
    Previously, if a community manager wanted to draft a topic for a future release, they would have to craft the content elsewhere. It wasn’t the best experience. After listening to client feedback, we implemented a path for those with moderator privileges to create topics now, but have them go live in the future. 
    Set this new permissions setting in the Admin Control Panel -> Moderators -> Content -> Can set a future publishing date? 
    Notice the Publish date and time fields at the bottom:


     
    Here are a few examples of when this would be useful:
    Welcoming new members
    A community manager can compose a topic welcoming members from that week, but set it to go live the next week. It’s a powerful, engaging and visible way to acknowledge new sign-ups. Pair this with our new Alerts System.
    Anniversaries
    Big day coming up? Create content around it now, but set the topic's publish date on the actual day. 
    Content calendar
    If you are in charge of creating community content, budget a chunk of time towards creating engaging topics. Set their future publish dates apart so there’s space for members to engage accordingly. It also allows your team to visually see the content and weigh in with changes (or hoorays!) before members see it.
    Related:
     
    Announcements
    Scheduling an announcement inside a topic, in tandem with our Announcements workflow functionality located in the Moderator Control Panel, allows community moderators to create space for feedback from loyalists. 
    Promo campaign
    As a community manager, time is a commodity. Setting up a promotional campaign for a future product release sets you up for success. When planning intricate marketing projects, organization and editing are paramount. Setting a future release date creates space to ensure the messaging is clear and effective.
    This feature, available for all Invision Community clients, is available in 4.7.1 Beta 1 (out now). View our release notes.
    Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments (preferably now 😉).
  7. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, An easier way to edit your theme   
    In a digital world with no shortage of places to connect, a beautiful theme will help you stand out from the crowd. 
    We previously touched on the importance of branded communities, and now we’re unveiling new functionality that will help make your theme more functional: easy access to header and footer tabs within our new simple theme editor. 
    Invision Community already has a powerful and advanced theme editor allowing total control over every aspect of your community’s UI, however this power comes at the cost of ease of use. We often get asked if there’s an easier way to add a site wrapper, or header and footer with some tweaks to the CSS without learning the complexities of the theme editor. Now, we do!
    Invision Community 4.7.0 comes with a simple theme editing mode.
    Utilizing a clean interface, this editing mode allows you to quickly and easily add header and footer HTML, along with any CSS.
     


    When editing a theme, after clicking the big green button that says "Use Simple Theme Editing," you're taken to a simplified theme editor page where you can add in code for your header and footer, as well as custom CSS.
    Previously, this option was not available. Before, community leaders had to sift through a theme’s template structure to modify anything within the header and footer code by manually editing Core > Global > GlobalTemplate and work out where to put the HTML. Now, there are header, footer and CSS tabs for easy access.
     

     
    The same Header and Footer tabs are also viewable when editing a theme. 
     

     
    TL;DR? We streamlined an important theme editing process.
    Our mission is to further simplify the more complex parts of the Admin Control Panel without losing the extensibility and customization Invision Community is famous for. The simple theme editor is a single step in that direction.
    The new, easy-to-use header / footer / CSS theme options are available to use in our new release, 4.7.0.
     
  8. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, New feature: disable your inbox   
    Take control of your community messenger inbox.
    Topics, replies and reviews are an incredible way to engage with members in a community, but sometimes a conversation needs to be had in private. 
    Invision Community's built-in messenger is a powerful system that allows members to privately message another member, or a group of members, directly within your community. 
    However, allowing your members unrestricted access to reach out could clog up your community inbox (and mind!). There are times when you may want a little space from receiving new messages. For example, when you are… 
    Going on vacation Working on a project that requires your complete attention Needing a moment to catch up Currently, your only option is to disable the entire messaging system. That is effective, but it means you cannot engage with existing messages, send replies or message other members.
    We’ve developed a solution! 
    Invision Community 4.7.0 allows for more refined control over your messenger by allowing you to disable the inbox. 
    The benefit of this is that you can continue existing conversations and start conversations with others while preventing anyone from messaging you (except staff members) either directly or via the Alerts System.


     
    The "Disable my messenger" link has been replaced with "Disable my inbox". The warning pop-up makes it clear what this action will do.


     
    Of course, administrators can still completely disable the messenger for themselves and other members of the community, which prevents them from accessing the messenger entirely.
    The new disable your inbox feature, included in Invision Community 4.7.0, will be available to all in the near future.
    Thoughts on the disabling the inbox feature? Let us know what you think in the comments!
     
    Related:
  9. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, Introducing The Alert System   
    Invision Community’s forthcoming release includes an exciting new feature available for all. 
    Announcing the Alert System! 🚨™
    The Alert System is a new tool for community managers to communicate with their members. There are times when a community manager needs to bring information to the attention of either a single user, or a group of users; when existing systems such as PMs or warning points are not suitable. So, we developed a happy medium to empower you. 
    The new alert system offers multiple ways to engage with single users or multiple member groups with a message that must be acknowledged and dismissed before further engagement with the community.
    Here are a few examples of when a community leader can use the Alert System for individual members:
    Moderator actions 
    A moderator moves a topic and wants to inform the topic starter that the topic has been moved and why. 
    Get ahead of warnings
    A member left a comment that doesn’t justify a warning point, nor should it warrant a private message. You want to kindly remind them of the community guidelines. 

    Community leaders may wish to send information to an entire member group. This may to warn them of new limits, or to notify support changes, etc. 
    Here are a few examples of when a community leader can use the Alert System for groups:
    Updates to community guidelines
    After reviewing and updating your community guidelines or terms of service, you can send an alert to all affected member groups outlining the changes, so they are aware. As the message needs to be dismissed before any further interaction with the community, you can be sure it has been read before any more posts are made.

    This example shows an alert with send anonymously switched on.
     
    Welcome message
    To strengthen your onboarding flow, you may like to send all new members a welcome message to introduce yourself and your team, along with some helpful information to help get them settled in.
    This example shows an alert with the option to reply, with send anonymously turned off.
    Heads up
    Remind a group of a permanent account-related change, like their subscription will be decreasing/increasing. 
    New forums added
    After consultation with your community, you want to add some new discussion areas for your VIP Members. You can now send an alert targeted to members in that group to let them know where the new forums are and what their purpose is.
    Let's chat
    You notice that a great community member is having a bad day. Instead of reaching for punitive tools, you can send them an alert that they have to reply to before being allowed to continue engaging in the community.

    These are just a few examples; of course, the alerts functionality has a lot of flexibility built in. 
    Alerts are managed from the Moderator's Control Panel.

     
    Let us take a look at the different areas that can be configured.

     
    Dates
    Each alert has a start date, and this date can be in the future. This is especially useful if you have an event coming up you want to showcase. You can optionally set an expiration date to only serve the alert for members that visit between the start and end date. You can also leave it running indefinitely for uses such as the welcome message.
    Send to
    This section allows you to choose to send to a single user or to a single or multiple groups. If you are sending to groups, you can further fine-tune the deliverability by choosing to send to everyone currently registered and to new members when they register, or you can target just new members (to be precise, this will target members who register after the alert date), this option is ideal for the welcome message alert.
    Send as yourself or anonymously 
    You can choose to send the alert anonymously or from yourself. There are times when you want a personal touch and times when you need more of a system style alert, perhaps when notifying of guideline updates. Or, if the message is general, or you want to protect members of your team, send the alert anonymously. 
    Replies
    If you choose to send the alert personally, then you can allow the member to reply, force the member to respond to dismiss the alert or remove the ability to reply. For a welcome message, you'd likely want to allow replies which then will create a new personal message between you and the member. 
    We have built the system to be very flexible to cover a wide range of uses where you want to directly engage with a member or group of members and be confident that they have seen the alert before any further engagement in the community. Alerts can be used to strengthen onboarding, notify sections of your community about exciting new features and changes or even create an open dialogue after a punitive measure such as having a posting time-out.
    This feature is coming to Invision Community 4.7, across all platforms.
    Thoughts on our new Alert System?! Drop us a line in the comments and let us know what you think.
  10. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, Interview with the founders of Invision Community (VIDEO)   
    To celebrate Invision Community turning 20-years-old (an eternity in Internet years), I interviewed the company's founding fathers.
    Ahh the good ol' days. Remember simpler times?
    This new video interview touches on Invision Community's past, present and future thanks to the invaluable insight from  @Charles, @Matt and @Lindy. 
     
    In our chat together, these gentlemen...
     
    Take a nostalgic trip down memory lane and reflect on the company's origins Explain the power of community amidst the social media boom Offer advice for new community leaders on how to grow Share some of the biggest changes to the platform Recant fond memories from the earlier days Reveal a teaser of what's next for Invision Community  
    Noteworthy quotes:
    Charles:
     
    Lindy:
     
    Matt:
     
    Thoughts on the interview? We'd love to hear from you in the comments! 🎂 
  11. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Twenty years of Invision Community   
    Twenty years ago today, Invision Community was founded and within months the first version of Invision Community was released. Little did we know, this would be the start of a remarkable journey spanning several decades.
    Our first version appeared shortly after we founded the company. It might be hard to imagine a time before social media and YouTube, but when we started out, the web looked very different.

    The first version of Invision Community was called Invision Board, reflecting the popular term for forums back in the early 2000s. It was full featured and you may recognise some elements that persist today.
    Like today, it even had a separate control panel where you could create new areas of discussion and customise the theme.

    Twenty years is a long time and we've continued to adapt with the ever-changing needs of community managers. We've seen the rise of social media impact how people consume content and found ways to compliment Twitter and Facebook by offering a place for long-form permanent discussion.
    Several elements remain from those early days but the concepts behind the theme have change significantly. New workflows, UI elements and views have helped the platform stay fresh and we've certainly innovated a few features that have since become industry standard over that time.
    I can't express how proud I am of what we've built together. From those humble beginnings working until 2am to growing a creative and talented team around our passion for community.
    I'm still as excited today as I was back in 2002. This year will see us build and release new tools to help guide and inform community managers. Our community platform continues to go from strength to strength.
    Of course, the platform is only one part of Invision Community. Over the last twenty years I've been grateful to get to know many of you and watch your lives unfold.
    This is as pure as community can get and I'm privileged to be part of it.

    We have a few other surprises to celebrate our twentieth anniversary. We can't wait to share them!

    I'd love to hear your memories of Invision Community! When did you first use our products and what was your community for? Please let me know in the comments below.
  12. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, The importance of branded communities   
    Branded communities mobilize your impassioned fans and customers. 
    If you’re even a little familiar with community building, you’ve probably seen marketing jargon about why owning your own community (and not exclusively relying on social media) is absolutely imperative for growth. 
    Relying on social media is a gamble. 
    At any given time the social media giants can take away your platform and following you had spent years building.  Meaningful ongoing conversations aren’t really a thing. No customization; your social account won’t have different functionality than everyone else (there’s a few exceptions with Instagram, but it’s based on follower count). With a community, you can grant your members far more flexibility and power.  Companies that thrive know of social media’s limitations. They opt to also include a community component to their brand because it’s a serious advantage. They use social media as a tool to drive traffic to their community and get to know their clients/customers on a deeper level. 
    Owning your own branded community... 
    Strengthens brand identity. Duh, but not really. I’d say most companies fail to establish a real look and feel. This is done by evoking an emotion in the customer through an intentional balance of visuals (colors, logos, fonts) alongside experiences the company, along with the community, creates together.  Builds trust with the consumer. Getting digital face time with your customers, sharing content and offering value on a consistent basis are the building blocks of trust between company and consumer. Gain this, and become an authority in your industry.  Provides a deeper understanding of customers' needs. Save money on market research. Tap into your audience's needs free of charge.  Encourages an open dialogue. Customers want to feel heard! Create an environment that's a two-way street so their thoughts and feelings don't fall into the Internet abyss. Creates visibility. At the heart of any business are the customers. Show them your true colors.
      Your brand’s look & feel matters
    Now that we’ve nailed down the ‘why,’ let’s touch on the nuts and bolts, err… colors and fonts. 
    Don’t underestimate the power of a cohesive and imaginative visual associated with your brand. 
    When you think of McDonald’s, does your brain fire off a pair of golden arches and a ketchup red color combo? When thinking about Coca Cola, maybe a cursive font bubbles up. Apple is internationally admired for their visuals and product presentation.
    These aren’t accidents.
    Companies spend millions of dollars on marketing to perfect the brand’s look and feel. 
    Your community should aim to feel as immersive as possible through its branding. 
    Your community, powered by Invision Community, was designed with that in mind. In the admin control panel, community leaders can design their own theme, including colors, fonts, headers, footers and logo. 
    Take a look at how some of our clients transformed their communities into something extra special:
     

    Squarespace
     

    Fiverr
     

    Corsair
     
    Those communities enlist our enterprise services. However, if you don’t have the marketing budget just yet to create a totally custom look and feel, we have a new option at your disposal starting today.
    We just launched a theme service available for all Invision Community clients on our standard plans. We’ll create you a theme based on certain criteria and keep it updated throughout future platform updates. 
    If that’s something of interest, please visit this new page on our website and reach out to us to get started.
    Design your new theme today.
    Owning a branded community doesn’t need to be complicated. If your idea is solid, and your intentions are to unite and connect like-minded people, then you’re golden. 
    Are you  interested in a branded community? Do you have a community that could use some extra attention? Are you ready to launch a new community but don’t know where to start? Drop us a line in the comments and we’ll respond to you.
     
  13. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, Achievements just became even more powerful   
    Earlier this year, Invision Community launched a native gamification system called Achievements. We added significant improvements to Achievements in our new release, 4.6.8, out now!  🎉 
    Achievements allows community leaders to reward members with points, badges and ranks for their outstanding contributions. We listened to your feedback and implemented some very exciting changes.
    In this post, you'll get a crash course on the new updates included in your Admin Control Panel (ACP) upon updating your community to 4.6.8. Once you're familiar with these concepts, you can take action to elevate your community.
     
    New! Married group promotions with Achievements. 
    New! Added metrics to better understand how Achievements functions within your community. 
    New! Implemented additional rules to further empower your members. 
    New! Updated email notifications to let your members know when they've earned a badge.
    New! Download member lists based on Achievements criteria.
     
    Before we expand on the new features, here's a recap of Achievements to refresh your memory:
     
    Related: Want to know more about Achievements? Read our original blog post.

    Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take a look at the new metrics and rules.
     
    Group promotions


     
    Group promotions lay out various user journeys.
    Based on actions a member takes in a community, for example  commenting 100 times, having a high reputation score or having joined a community a year ago, the platform will automatically place them in a group (based on the rules you previously set up). This is useful when creating a hierarchy in your community. The more your members are engaged, the more access / privileges they receive.
     Now, community leaders can automatically place members in specific groups based on what badges they've earned in the community.  
    Couple examples:
    A moderator manually awards a member the 'Helpful Superstar' badge. In this scenario, that badge can only be earned if a moderator chooses to give it. Once someone earns that badge, they're automatically placed in the 'Helpful Superstars' group. This group may have the ability to create clubs (whereas the other groups can't).  A member earns the 'Engaged' badge. 'Engaged' badges are earned when a member has replied 100 times since joining. Once they've posted 100 replies, the system automatically places them in a new group with other contributing members.   
    Related: Learn more about Group Promotions
     
    Metrics
    Metrics reports are essential for understanding what's working in your community, and what needs improving. 


     
    Badges Earned: Track what badges were earned during a defined period of time. This is especially useful to track both member engagement as well as identify how often your community moderators are awarding badges manually.
    Badges earned by member group: How many members in each group earned a badge. Track this when quantifying what groups are most engaged with your community. Understanding which group(s) earn the most badges helps you better tend to groups that might be less engaged. It might be a good idea to show them some extra attention. 
    Badges by member: Search a time-based list of all members with an earned badge total. Easily discover who your VIP members are and reward / thank them for being active contributors. 
     
    Related: Maximize community growth with our new reporting metrics
     
    Rules
    Set up rules based on various criteria. These rules will automatically take a specific action once the criteria has been met.
     


    Member downloads a file: Members may earn a badge for downloading a specific file. This could be useful if your company wanted to share new policies or an announcement; track which members took the time to download the information and publicly recognize them for staying on top of things. 
    Member purchases a package or product: Members may also earn a badge for purchasing either a package or a specific product. For example, you could create a rule for members to earn a coveted product badge for opting to purchase a physical product (like a t-shirt). Only members who've purchased an item from your community would receive this type of recognition. 
     
    Outreach
    Jump into your members' inboxes with tailor-made good news. 


     
    New Email notifications: New notification emails let your members know when they've received a coveted rank.  
     
    Segment
    Download a list of members based on a number of Achievements criteria, including points, ranks and badges.


     
    In theory, you can upload this list of members elsewhere to target this specific audience (like sending an exclusive email drip campaign in Mail Chimp).
    Several examples include downloading a list of members who've:
    Earned 500 or more points Earned a specific badge Reached a specific rank  
    Achievements is a robust feature to engage your VIP members and spark the fuse of inspiration for newcomers. There’s a lot of power at your fingertips.
    Unsure where to start with implementing Achievements? Check out our original post and determine what behaviors you want to reward within your community. Sometimes just logging in is a good place to start. Reward them for that. 🙂
    Ready to take Achievements to the next level? Check out the new Group Promotions and Achievements Metrics now available in 4.6.8.

    Where are you in your journey with Achievements? Drop us a line in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!
  14. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Community Buzz: November.2021.1   
    🟢 Scaling your community requires overcoming many barriers and learning new ways of working with your community. Rosie explores this in her blog: How we are at the small scale is who we are at the large scale.
    "In community, we often say to do things that don't scale. To start small. To get the foundations right. To trust that how we are and what we do is what the community becomes, on a larger scale. Our behaviour, our intentions, our alignment, and our goals all influence what the community can become."
    🧠 What we think: There is no right or wrong way to scale your community from its humble beginnings and it can be a lot of hard work but that doesn't mean we should change our core values and how we approach helping others.
     
     
     🟢 Should you respond to questions before your members? Is a question explored by Richard at Feverbee.
    "If you (the community manager) respond to a question in a community, other members are less likely to respond. This makes it harder for top members to earn points and feel a sense of influence.
    But if you don’t respond to a question in a community, it can linger and look bad. It also means the person asking a question is waiting for a response and becoming increasingly frustrated."
     🧠 What we think: There are certain areas where you need your team to lead. Right here on this forum we want to provide the best service for our customers so our support team are active and quick to reply to all questions. There are other community-led sections that definitely benefit from allowing time for other members to reply to share their knowledge. It's a good feeling helping others.
     
     
     🟢 CMX explores how to move your community online. Much of this is great advice for anyone considering moving platform (to Invision Community, right?). 
    "Christiana recommends viewing community migration as a process that requires patiences, “this is not a race meant to be run fast. We are changing the mindset of the people in our ecosystem”. "
      🧠 What we think: Patience is definitely key when moving platforms. The sooner you start engaging with your own community and explaining the reasons for the move and the benefits it'll bring, the easier it will be.
     
     
     🟢 Michelle can't find the bathroom when at a party which inspires a blog on 5 secrets to community onboarding.
    "Walking into a party without your host can feel confusing, alienating, and frustrating. And for your customers, joining a new community without onboarding is just as bad."
       🧠 What we think: Onboarding is critical to your community's success. New members can often feel lost and unsure where to start. It can be intimidating in real life to enter a room full of people that know each other, and this is true in the online space too.
     
     
    🎧 Podcast: What makes a community a home? Patrick explores this by interviewing members of his own community, which opened 20 years ago and is still going strong.
        🧠 What we think: We love hearing about long established communities that are still thriving and hearing how those early online relationships shaped people's lives.
     
     
  15. Thanks
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, SEO: Improving crawling efficiency   
    No matter how good your content is, how accurate your keywords are or how precise your microdata is, inefficient crawling reduces the number of pages Google will read and store from your site.
    Search engines need to look at and store as many pages that exist on the internet as possible. There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion web pages active today. That's a lot of work for Google.
    It cannot look and store every page, so it needs to decide what to keep and how long it will spend on your site indexing pages.
    Right now, Invision Community is not very good at helping Google understand what is important and how to get there quickly. This blog article runs through the changes we've made to improve crawling efficiency dramatically, starting with Invision Community 4.6.8, our November release.

    The short version
    This entry will get a little technical. The short version is that we remove a lot of pages from Google's view, including user profiles and filters that create faceted pages and remove a lot of redirect links to reduce the crawl depth and reduce the volume of thin content of little value. Instead, we want Google to focus wholly on topics, posts and other key user-generated content.
    Let's now take a deep dive into what crawl budget is, the current problem, the solution and finally look at a before and after analysis. Note, I use the terms "Google" and "search engines" interchangeably. I know that there are many wonderful search engines available but most understand what Google is and does.
    Crawl depth and budget
    In terms of crawl efficiency, there are two metrics to think about: crawl depth and crawl budget. The crawl budget is the number of links Google (and other search engines) will spider per day. The time spent on your site and the number of links examined depend on multiple factors, including site age, site freshness and more. For example, Google may choose to look at fewer than 100 links per day from your site, whereas Twitter may see hundreds of thousands of links indexed per day.
    Crawl depth is essentially how many links Google has to follow to index the page. The fewer links to get to a page, is better. Generally speaking, Google will reduce indexing links more than 5 to 6 clicks deep.
    The current problem #1: Crawl depth
    A community generates a lot of linked content. Many of these links, such as permalinks to specific posts and redirects to scroll to new posts in a topic, are very useful for logged in members but less so to spiders. These links are easy to spot; just look for "&do=getNewComment" or "&do=getLastComment" in the URL. Indeed, even guests would struggle to use these convenience links given the lack of unread tracking until logged in.  Although they offer no clear advantage to guests and search engines, they are prolific, and following the links results in a redirect which increases the crawl depth for content such as topics.
    The current problem #2: Crawl budget and faceted content
    A single user profile page can have around 150 redirect links to existing content. User profiles are linked from many pages. A single page of a topic will have around 25 links to user profiles. That's potentially 3,750 links Google has to crawl before deciding if any of it should be stored. Even sites with a healthy crawl budget will see a lot of their budget eaten up by links that add nothing new to the search index. These links are also very deep into the site, adding to the overall average crawl depth, which can signal search engines to reduce your crawl budget.
    Filters are a valuable tool to sort lists of data in particular ways. For example, when viewing a list of topics, you can filter by the number of replies or when the topic was created. Unfortunately, these filters are a problem for search engines as they create faceted navigation, which creates duplicate pages.

    The solution
    There is a straightforward solution to solve all of the problems outlined above.  We can ask that Google avoids indexing certain pages. We can help by using a mix of hints and directives to ensure pages without valuable content are ignored and by reducing the number of links to get to the content. We have used "noindex" in the past, but this still eats up the crawl budget as Google has to crawl the page to learn we do not want it stored in the index.
    Fortunately, Google has a hint directive called "nofollow", which you can apply in the <a href> code that wraps a link. This sends a strong hint that this link should not be read at all. However, Google may wish to follow it anyway, which means that we need to use a special file that contains firm instructions for Google on what to follow and index.
    This file is called robots.txt. We can use this file to write rules to ensure search engines don't waste their valuable time looking at links that do not have valuable content; that create faceted navigational issues and links that lead to a redirect.
    Invision Community will now create a dynamic robots.txt file with rules optimised for your community, or you can create custom rules if you prefer.

    The new robots.txt generator in Invision Community
    Analysis: Before and after
    I took a benchmark crawl using a popular SEO site audit tool of my test community with 50 members and around 20,000 posts, most of which were populated from RSS feeds, so they have actual content, including links, etc. There are approximately 5,000 topics visible to guests.
    Once I had implemented the "nofollow" changes, removed a lot of the redirect links for guests and added an optimised robots.txt file, I completed another crawl.
    Let's compare the data from the before and after.
    First up, the raw numbers show a stark difference.

    Before our changes, the audit tool crawled 176,175 links, of which nearly 23% were redirect links. After, just 6,389 links were crawled, with only 0.4% being redirection links. This is a dramatic reduction in both crawl budget and crawl depth. Simply by guiding Google away from thin content like profiles, leaderboards, online lists and redirect links, we can ask it to focus on content such as topics and posts.

    Note: You may notice a large drop in "Blocked by Robots.txt" in the 'after' crawl despite using a robots.txt for the first time. The calculation here also includes sharer images and other external links which are blocked by those sites robots.txt files. I added nofollow to the external links for the 'after' crawl so they were not fetched and then blocked externally.

    As we can see in this before, the crawl depth has a low peak between 5 and 7 levels deep, with a strong peak at 10+.

    After, the peak crawl depth is just 3. This will send a strong signal to Google that your site is optimised and worth crawling more often.
    Let's look at a crawl visualisation before we made these changes. It's easy to see how most content was found via table filters, which led to a redirect (the red dots), dramatically increasing crawl depth and reducing crawl efficiency.

    Compare that with the after, which shows a much more ordered crawl, with all content discoverable as expected without any red dots indicating redirects.

    Conclusion
    SEO is a multi-faceted discipline. In the past, we have focused on ensuring we send the correct headers, use the correct microdata such as JSON-LD and optimise meta tags. These are all vital parts of ensuring your site is optimised for crawling. However, as we can see in this blog that without focusing on the crawl budget and crawl efficiency, even the most accurately presented content is wasted if it is not discovered and added into the search index.
    These simple changes will offer considerable advantages to how Google and other search engines spider your site.
    The features and changes outlined in this blog will be available in our November release, which will be Invision Community 4.6.8.
  16. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, Announcing new updates to Clubs and Activity Streams (plus a sneak peek at our website refresh)!   
    It’s been a minute since our last blog post, but we have cooked up several epic projects in the interim.
    To refresh your memory, we recently launched a new platform update, 4.6. It includes *takes a deep breath* Achievements, Zapier integration, web app and push notifications, anonymous posting, solved content, the ability to show when a team member has replied, a new health dashboard, spam improvements and more.
    In the time since, we prepared a few special treats for you. Before we dive into the feature feast, sample our forthcoming website refresh. In the very near future, our entire website will slip into something a little more comfortable. Not only will the look and feel change, but we’re implementing new sections to explain how and why Invision Community is any business’ go-to- solution for community building. More on that to come, but for now take a bite out of this:



    Onto the feature updates; hope you’re hungry!
    Extended closed Club functionality
    Clubs with ‘closed’ permissions have more flexibility than ever. 
    Now, the owner of a closed club can opt to have the club’s forums, calendar, pages, gallery and downloads be visible for all to see (despite the club being set to closed). Previously, members could not access any part of a closed club unless they joined.
    For example, a closed club leader could create a special landing page that’s viewable by members who have not yet joined the club, but the rest of the club is closed. This might be useful as a means to encourage someone to join, share information that’s pertinent to those in and out of the club or as a sales tool. 
    Another example could be keeping the club-associated forums visible for all, but keep the club’s calendar and image gallery exclusive to the club’s members as an incentive to join. 
    Gobble up this screengrab below:
     

     
    Subscribe to Activity Streams
    Never skip a beat! Members of a community can now subscribe to any default or custom activity stream (minus the All Activity Stream) and receive either daily or weekly email notifications with a roundup of content they may have missed. 
    This is especially useful for die-hard community members and moderators who frequently consume content. By subscribing to an activity stream, members have important, need-to-know items they’re interested in delivered straight to their inbox. 
     


    Community administrators have the option to limit how many activity streams a member can subscribe to. 
    Because email notifications are inherently intimate, we have also implemented something called stream decay. If the user hasn't visited the site for a predefined amount of time, the activity stream email notifications they previously subscribed to will automatically stop until the member re-engages with the community by visiting. Pretty nifty, right?
     

     

    Health Club
    Since you’ve made it to the bottom of this blog post, sink your teeth into dessert. Sugar free, of course! 
    We recently launched a new Health Club. It’s free to join and available for all Invision Community clients. This is a great opportunity for you to connect with other community leaders in the industry, as well as our own team, through the important modality of physical and mental health. The world is in a weird spot right now; please utilize this club to lean on one another for support, give advice, ask questions and share your health wins and missteps. As cheesy as it sounds, upping your general well-being will make you a better community leader and ultimately elevate your community as a whole. Just some food for thought!
     

    The new Club and Activity Stream features will be made available in September.
    Questions? Comments? Feedback? Drop us a crumb in the comments - we’d love to hear from you!
    Header photo: Unsplash
  17. Thanks
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, Web push notifications, native sharing & offline support   
    As we approach the release of Invision Community 4.6, I wanted to take you through some improvements for using Invision Community on a mobile device.
    Web push notifications
    For some time, we've used the local browser notification API to show users notifications. There's a big drawback though: users had to have the site open in a tab for these to work. This is particularly problematic for mobile devices.
    In 4.6, we've added support for the WebPush API, which allows sites to push notifications to users' browsers & devices even if the site isn't open - or even if the device is asleep.
    We already have support baked in for push notifications via our beta mobile app, so we've piggy-backed on that system and expanded it to support browser-based push notifications.

    Choosing push notifications
    For users, it's a simple process. A little while after joining a community they will prompted to accept notifications from the site when they open the notification list dropdown (or they can opt-in any time from the notification settings screen). After accepting, they will be able to choose a "Notification List + Push" option for any of the available notification types.

    Push notifications enabled
    Existing users, who may have already granted permission to the site in the past, will be re-prompted to accept push notifications upon logging in after the 4.6 upgrade.
    Push notifications typically show on the homescreen of a phone or in the notification tray of a desktop computer, so receiving dozens of notifications could be overwhelming. For that reason, Invision Community will automatically merge related notifications - for example, multiple mentions from the same topic, or multiple new topics from the same forum.

    Grouped push notifications
    And, of course, users can stop push notifications across all of their devices with a single click if they want to opt out.
    We're excited about the engagement potential of push notifications, since they allow you to immediately reach users who aren't currently on your site - a job previously left to email alone.
    On the subject of notifications, one more thing: we've heard your feedback about notifications for new replies/mentions being merged with notifications for likes/quotes, and will be separating these two types into their own permissions in 4.6. We're acutely aware that making notifications annoying results in users turning them off, so we're always looking to ensure there is a reasonable balance.
    Splash Screen Images
    When you add a website to your phone's desktop, it appears like a native app. Tapping to launch the site can show a blank screen for a few seconds while the website is loaded. Fortunately, you can now set a 'splash' image in the Admin CP which is shown when launching the app.
     

    Sharing using native share options
    Another enhancement coming in 4.6 is the addition of the device share sheet when sharing content from within Invision Community. Users will now see a "More Sharing Options" button (providing their device/browser supports the underlying API) which, when tapped, will open the device share sheet. The options available depend on the device, but typically include actions like sharing links in WhatsApp, posting to Facebook or creating a note.

    Offline support
    With a larger share of users now using mobile devices for most of their browsing comes the problem of patchy phone signal and internet connections dropping out. For a dynamic web-based platform like Invision Community, it's difficult to offer much in the way of full offline support, but starting in 4.6 we will present a branded offline page to users when they have no internet connection and try to access the community.

     
    We hope that you are looking forward to these PWA improvements coming in Invision Community 4.6!
  18. Thanks
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, No-code automation with Zapier   
    Invision Community customers can create automated workflows between Invision Community and over 3,000 other apps including Google Documents, MailChimp, Facebook and Twitter with just a few clicks.
    If you haven’t integrated your Invision Community with Zapier yet, you’re leaving organic growth on the table!

    It’s been a wild year, so we’d like to refresh your memory regarding the very powerful Invision and Zapier marriage (hey, remember when weddings were a thing?). 
    Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 3,000 web apps. 
    Last year, Invision Community released the 4.5 update, and with it a beta service of Zapier integration.
    Zapier is the first smart community enhancement available for Cloud and Enterprise Community customers exclusively.
    It’s worth it’s weight in gold. Or, crypto? However we quantify value these days, Invision Community and Zapier together creates real value and has the potential to elevate your community (and bottom line). 
    If you haven’t yet set up Zapier, you can follow our guide to creating your first ‘Zap’ with Invision Community.
    As @Matt previously mentioned in our announcement post, the Invision and Zapier integration can communicate with some of the Internet’s most wide-reaching platforms, including Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, Slack, Trello, Facebook Ads, ActiveCampaign, Zendesk, Asana, Salesforce, Hubspot, Discord, Stripe and more.
    There are three key items we want to highlight:
    Triggers Actions Self-integration Triggers: Invision → Zapier

    A “trigger” takes place when there’s a specified signal in your community. For instance, a member registering or a topic being posted. 
    A trigger can be sent to Zapier to then run actions in other apps.
    Here are a few examples:
    When a member registers, add their email to a Mailchimp list. When a moderator posts a topic in a news forum, share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. When a member posts something that requires moderator approval, send a message to a Slack channel for your moderators. Actions: Zapier → Invision

    An “action” is similar to a “trigger” in that there’s movement, but it happens by setting up an action in Zapier first which then tells your community to perform X action. 
    Whereas a “trigger” happens by setting up an action in your Invision community first, which then tells Zapier to perform X action.
    Here are some examples to wrap your mind around:
    When you add an event in a Google Calendar, create a Calendar Event on your community. When you receive an email to a feedback email address, create a topic on your community in a forum for moderators. When you create a task in Trello, add a record to a Pages Database on your community. When a new member registers, add them to your mailing list via MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, etc. Self-integrated: Invision → Invision

    We also included a self-integrated option that allows community owners to connect an Invision Community trigger to an Invision Community action. For example: when a member registers, create a topic in a welcome forum.
    In a nutshell:
    Triggers = Invision talks to → Zapier, then Zapier takes action.
    Actions = Zapier talks to → Invision, then Invision takes action.
    Self-integrated = Your Invision community talks to → your Invision community, then your Invision community takes action.
    If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below! I’m here to help you transform your Invision community into an engaging and efficient world with automated systems powered by Zapier. 
    Already on Zapier? What’s been your experience? Sound off and let us know what features you’ve utilized thus far and which triggers or actions you’d like to see for the future.
  19. Thanks
    IPCommerceFan reacted to bfarber for a blog entry, Health Dashboard   
    The support tool has served us well for many years. You can identify, at a glance, potential issues with your community both presently and down the road, right from the comfort of your AdminCP, and you can often resolve those issues with just a few clicks.
    But what if we could do better? What if we could make this useful administrative area of the software even more useful?
    The next version of Invision Community introduces a new "Health Dashboard" which replaces the previous support tool and helps you get a better overview of potential issues within your community while retaining all of the functionality you've come to know and rely on to resolve issues with your community.

    When you launch the new health dashboard, the first thing you will notice is that the previous "Wizard" process is now gone, in favor of a single page giving you access to everything you might want or need.
    Central to the page are blocks that identify specific areas of your community, server, and configuration which could be problematic now or in the future. Invision Community will check for available updates, modified source files, server software configuration issues, whether your server is running required and/or recommended versions of important software and more.
    Additional checks and recommendations have been added to this page, to help identify other adjustments that could benefit or prevent harm to your community.  Issues are color coded and classified as informational, recommended, or critical and a summary is provided at the top of the page with an easy "check again" button which will do so without taking you away from the screen.
    If we become aware of an issue, we can quickly notify communities through a bulletin which will be displayed in the "Known Issues" block on this page. These bulletins can also trigger AdminCP notifications, however they will continue to show on the Health Dashboard so long as they are relevant, even when the AdminCP notification is dismissed.
    A graph showing system, error and email error log activity has been added to the page to help you identify spikes in logged issues. Commonly, if an issue begins to surface on your community there will be an increase in these types of error logs, so the graph here is intended to allow you to identify an increase in these logs, allowing you to investigate and react quicker.
    The right-hand sidebar surfaces common tools you may need to access.

    The first block allows you to see our most recently featured guides, as well as search our documentation. While this functionality was available in the existing support tool, we found that it was rarely used because people more often visited the tool to allow the software to check for common issues, and the ability to search the documentation required a separate work flow through the support wizard. With the block always available (and searches performed "live" via AJAX), we expect users will find the ability to search our documentation from the AdminCP much more useful now.
    Next up, the Tools and Diagnostics block gives you access to common tools you may need to use. You can quickly clear your system caches, as well as access phpinfo, the SQL toolbox (for self-hosted clients only), and disable all third party customizations. The process and behavior for disabling customizations is very similar to the existing process within the support tool, with the list of customizations disabled opening in a modal window and the ability to re-enable all customizations, or selectively re-enable individual customizations, still available.

    Disabling customizations is still simple
    Finally, the ability to submit a support ticket is still available right from this screen. Upon clicking the button to submit a support ticket, you will be presented with a form inside a modal dialog that behaves very similarly to the existing form with one minor but useful addition: if there are any patches not yet installed on the community, you will be alerted to this right on the form before submitting your ticket. Think of this as one last reminder that your issue may already be solved by installing any available patches before reaching out to us for official technical support.

    Submitting a support ticket is still just a few clicks away
    We believe the improved workflow and user experience will help administrators and support technicians alike more quickly identify any issues that need addressing on the community.
  20. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Highlight Topics With Replies From Groups   
    Wouldn't it be great to know if a staff member had replied to a topic before you clicked to open it?
    When you're scanning a list of topics, knowing which have had a reply by a member of the community team can help decide which to read. Currently, you need to open the topic and scan the posts to see if there's a reply from the team.
    Happily, in our next release, we've made it clear which have had a reply by a member of a specific group.
    You can specify which groups to show as having replied via the Groups form in the Admin CP.

    The per-group setting in the Admin CP
    You can select to detect the group based on the member's primary group, secondary group or both.
    When viewing a list of topics, you will see a badge showing that a member of that group has replied.

    This simple feature will make it easier to highlight when important replies have been made to topics, which is a great addition for forums using the new 'solved' feature.

    Let me know below if you'll use this new feature and what you'd like to see in the future.
  21. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to bfarber for a blog entry, Solved Content Improvements   
    For a long time, Invision Community has supported a Question and Answer mode within the Forums application which allows a reply to be flagged as the "best answer" to the question posed. With the release of 4.5, we also introduced a way to allow topics to be marked as "solved" which introduces similar functionality without transforming the look and feel or other behavior of the forum itself.
    Based on the popularity of this new addition in 4.5, we have made some further improvements to solved topics and answered questions in our next release.
    Notification to topic/question starter
    While notifications were available to the poster who answered a question or solved a topic with the release of 4.5, this release also adds notifications for the topic or question starter so that they can be made aware that an answer is available to their question.

    Topic and question starters now get notifications for solutions
    AdminCP Statistics
    Solved topics and answered questions provide for measurable statistics that can help you determine the health and direction of your community, particularly for support communities. To that end, we have introduced two new content statistic blocks that can help you measure how well areas of the community that support answers and solutions are faring.

    New AdminCP statistics
    You can now quickly see the percentage of topics/questions that have been solved (relative to the total number posted in areas that support solutions), as well as the average time it has taken for a solution to be marked on a topic or question (relative to the time the topic or question was initially posted). These statistic blocks support time period filter, time period comparisons, and node filtering to narrow down the statistical data for your specific needs.
    User profile enhancements
    User profiles now show the number of solutions the user has posted, and also allows you to view all of those solutions, in a manner very similar to reputation.

    Prolific problem solvers will now be called out boldly

    Answers can be quickly found on user profiles
    These improvements should help reward the most helpful users on your community by giving them more prestige and helping other users find their answers quicker.
    Collectively, we hope that these changes make the question and answer and topic solution features in the Forums application more useful for your community members, and the administrators behind the community.
  22. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Andy Millne for a blog entry, Anonymous Posting   
    For a very long time Invision Community has allowed community owners to choose how open or private their communities should be. Communities could optionally allow guests to post without registering, they could allow the use of pseudonyms or they could require the use of real names.
    This covers a diverse range of communities but feedback from our clients made us realize that some use cases have not been accounted for.
    For some types of community, where discussion topics are particularly sensitive, community owners want to make sure that members register with their real details but are given the option to post anonymously where appropriate. For example, organisations dealing with abuse or sensitive topics might want the member to feel safe and disinhibited to post info without fear of being identified by the rest of the community.
    With our next release, we are pleased to introduce Anonymous Posting to make this a reality.
    When enabled, members will see the option to post anonymously when creating or replying to content.

    Starting a new anonymous topic
    Author details for anonymously posted content is hidden throughout the community and instead a default profile picture and name is shown.
    Total anonymity is not always desirable however and in some cases it may be necessary for trusted staff members to know who posted the content. Where allowed, these staff members will be shown an option to reveal the content author.

    Author details are hidden but can be revealed by trusted staff members
    Anonymous posting can be enabled on a per group basis and also limited to specific forums, albums and categories etc. The ability for staff members to reveal who really posted the content is a moderator permission.
    We hope this new feature is a useful addition and where appropriate makes your members feel safe or comfortable to share info they might not have otherwise.
    How open or private is your community and what do you find are the benefits or disadvantages of anonymity?
  23. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Welcome to Invision Community 4.5   
    We've been on a little journey together since we announced the first Invision Community 4.5 feature way back in November 2019.
    The first feature we announced was a revamped Admin Control Panel interface which created more visual space and brightened it up. Actually, we made it so bright that the first feature request was to add a dark mode (which we did).
    In the space of three short months, we had spoken about Club improvements, invites and referrals, RSS feed improvements, blog categories, the simple stock photo picker, search insights, security enhancements, user interface updates, new statistic views, and notification improvements.
    Most will agree that March and April seemed to last months, thanks to a global pandemic. We used these extra days to talk about marking posts as a solution, topic view summary, Zapier integration, forum view updates, post-installation onboarding, private staff notes, page builder widgets, theme designer improvements, a new default theme, language system updates and everything else we missed.
    We have also revamped the front end user interface to modernise the look and feel but also to introduce new CSS frameworks, variables and other time-saving features our design team have been eager to implement.

    On the subject of modernisation, we've deprecated some legacy functionality. We've given up trying to make anything look good with IE11 which last saw an update in 2013. We've also deprecated older caching engines like Memcache, APC and Wincache and recommend using Redis instead. The web hosting and domain management features of Commerce are also deprecated as is BBCode. BBCode has its roots in the earliest bulletin-board systems long before rich text editors were common use. It's 2020; we should no longer be asked to type in special codes in square brackets to format text. BBCode is still functional in Invision Community 4.5, but it is likely to be removed in a future version.
    Now that primary development has finished, we move onto the beta testing stage. This is where you get to try it out and evaluate the new features before scheduling your own upgrades.
    As always, we do recommend that you only test early betas on staging sites or simple test sites. Many a weekend has been ruined by over-enthusiastic upgrading of live sites; so we don't recommend that.
    You'll also notice that we're running Invision Community 4.5 on our own site. If you do spot an issue, please let us know in the bug tracker.
    I've been creating and releasing products for close to twenty years now, and I still get a real buzz out of hitting the release button. It's always a pleasure to see the result of hundreds of hours of coding, dozens of meetings and numerous passionate exchanges among the team.

    You can access the beta in your client area.
    We hope you enjoy Invision Community 4.5!
  24. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Stuart Silvester for a blog entry, 4.5: One More Thing...   
    Almost ten years ago we launched the Marketplace; a place to connect Invision Community owners with talented developers creating new functionality.
    Over the decade, the Marketplace has grown to hold thousands of applications, large and small. For many Invision Community owners, the Marketplace has become an essential resource.
    Our aim was always to have the Marketplace available inside your Admin Control Panel to make it even easier to purchase and install extra functionality.

    I'm pleased to say that as of Invision Community 4.5, this is now a reality. You can browse the Marketplace and install new add-ons without leaving the Admin Control Panel.

    Obtaining Resources
    Paid resources can be purchased directly from the Marketplace and are available to install immediately after the payment is complete. You no longer need to download and install the files yourself.
    You may also notice some additional information with the resource listing, we'll be introducing a new 'tab' to marketplace resources to allow the authors to provide more useful information such as answers to frequently asked questions, or configuration instructions etc.

    The video below takes you through the purchase and installation of a Marketplace application.
    marketplace-install.mp4
    Installing an Application
    Updates
    Some of the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in the first screenshot that there are more 'bubbles' showing in the menu on the left. These are supported for Applications, Plugins, Themes and Languages.
    In Invision Community 4.5 every resource available via the AdminCP is automatically versioned, you will see update notifications for everything you have installed (previously, you would only see update notices if the resource author supports them).
    Installing an update is as simple as clicking on the update notice, then clicking 'update' on the Marketplace listing.

    Installing Updates
    Downloads Changes
    Our Marketplace is built on our Downloads application, during development of this feature we needed to add new functionality. We have included as many of these improvements as possible in our software for the benefit of our customers, some of these are:
    Custom Fields can now be set to only show to members that have purchased a file. Files can now be set to accept a single file upload instead of multiple. New file versions can now be moderated without hiding the current version from view. Downloads REST API Performance Improvements New /download endpoint that counts the download Added more data to the /downloads/file/{id} response Ability to sort file results by last updated date We hope you're as excited about this feature as we are.
  25. Like
    IPCommerceFan reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Beyond the support desk   
    If your brand sells a product or service, the first thing that comes to mind as a benefit to building your community is support deflection.
    And it's easy to see why. It's something you can quickly calculate an ROI for. Let's say every 20 hits to a public question with a solved answer from a client or team member equates to one less ticket. If a ticket costs $10 to solve on average, it's straightforward to see the value by calculating deflected tickets. Let's say your busy public support community had 20,000 hits a month; you've just saved $200,000 a month in support costs.
    Great! But before you finish there, I want you to consider the rewards a brand community can offer.
    A public support desk isn't a community. It's likely most of your customers join because of an issue with your product. They tap in some keywords on Google and come across your site. They see a bunch of solved questions like theirs, and they either get the fix and bounce out, or post and wait for a reply. With nothing to get them to come back, once they have the answer they'll likely bounce out then and only come back when they hit a new problem.
    That's not a community. A community is a place where people return multiple times to collaborate, learn and grow together.
    "[A brand community is] a group of people who share an identity and a mutual concern for one another's welfare - who participate in shared experiences that are shaped by a brand." - Carrie Melissa Jones
    For that, you need to look beyond the support desk and expand into more use cases, and there are compelling reasons to do this.
    Shared experiences
    Allowing your customers to share their experiences with your products can lead to unique brand stories that reinforce bonds between members and creates social solidarity in the community.
    A few years ago, I remember reading a post on a travel community. A family were flying with Delta and their son who has autism was becoming more and more distressed with the change in routine for that day. A Delta employee saw this and came and spoke with the family, helped settle the boy and ensured they boarded early to avoid the crush of passengers.
    It's a small moment of kindness that wouldn't make headlines, but it was very memorable for this family; enough so that they posted about it. This post had numerous replies in praise for the airline and no doubt made many of them think of Delta when booking their next flight.
    "[Social solidarity is] not just passive tolerance but felt concern for what is individual and particular about the other person." - Alex Honneth "The Struggle for Recognition"
    All those stories, connections and moments build social capital and loyalty for your brand.
    Feedback
    Your customers are already talking about your product. Some of it will be good, and some of it won't be good. They are already talking about it on social media, and in numerous communities, they belong to.
    If you do not have space within your community for your customers to leave feedback, then you're missing out on a massive benefit. You get a chance to address negative feedback before it spills out further into the public domain. Likewise, positive feedback makes for compelling customer success stories.
    Feedback is a great way to crowdsource innovation and to guide sales and marketing on how your customers are using your products and where the gaps are.
    Owning your niche
    Allowing space for conversations relating to your product makes good sense. If you sold a fitness tracker, then it makes good sense to have areas for discussions revolving around wellness areas such as sleep, diet and exercise. 
    Likewise, a mobile phone network will do well having areas related to the various brands of mobile phones.
    "There is status that comes from community. It is the status of respect in return for contribution for caring for seeing and being in sync with others. Especially others with no ability to repay you." - Seth Godin 
    Creating these spaces encourages return visits beyond direct support for the product.
    Those return visits are what makes your community a community.
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