Matt

If you run a busy community, you'll know how important Achievements and tagging are to encourage member activity and to keep a large amount of content organised. We've had a lot of feedback on two areas. First, some members quickly worked out that they could boost their points by repeating the same action over and over, like liking post after post. Second, the tagging system we rebuilt in Invision Community 5.0 keeps your tag list focused and tidy, but it needed more flexibility. Some tags should be reserved for staff, and members have no way to suggest one that's missing. Invision Community 5.1 gives you more control over both, with point limits and staff boost for Achievements, and restricted tags and tag suggestions. Keep points fair with limitsAchievements have rewarded members with points, badges and ranks for years, and for most communities they work great. However, every so often a member discovers that reactions earn points, and suddenly every post in the topic has a like from them. Their rank climbs, and the members who've spent months answering questions slip down the leaderboard. In Invision Community 5.1, you can cap how many points a member earns from any achievement rule within a set number of days. For example, you might allow a maximum of 50 points a day for giving reactions. This will make the Achievements system fairer and more accurately show who offers the community the most value. Give staff reactions more weightA like from a moderator or someone on your team may mean more than most. It tells the author that someone who knows the community well thinks their post is worth reading. Staff boost lets you recognise that. When a staff member reacts to a member's content, you can award extra points on top of the usual amount. Control who can use each tagSince Invision Community 5.0, your team decides which tags are created, which keeps the list clean. However, once a tag exists, any member can apply it, and a tag like "Official" or "Announcement" only means something if the right people are using it. You can now choose which member groups can apply a specific tag. Want "Official" or "Staff pick" to stay with your team? Restrict it to those groups. Everyone can still see restricted tags and browse content by them. The tag picker only shows members the tags they're allowed to use. Let members suggest new tagsYour members often spot what's missing before you do. The trouble is that open tagging lets them instantly add duplicates, misspellings and similar phrasing, and closed tagging leaves them with no way to fix it at all. With a new group permission, members can suggest a tag straight from the tag field when the one they need doesn't exist yet. Suggestions arrive in the AdminCP with a notification. Approve one and the tag is created and applied to the content in a single step. In addition, if your community has built up a long list of tags, the tag field now switches to autocomplete once you pass 100, which loads faster and saves members scrolling to find the one they want. A few ways to use itProtect official labels. Restrict tags like "Announcement", "Official" or "Staff pick" to your team, so members can filter by them with confidence. Curb reaction farming. Cap points for giving reactions at a sensible daily amount, so ranks reflect real participation. Reward great answers. Use staff boost so a reaction from a moderator gives the author a noticeable lift. Grow your taxonomy with your members. Let trusted groups suggest tags, then review them weekly and approve the ones that stick. Put together, these changes help your points and tags keep their meaning as your community grows, so the members doing the real work get the credit, and your content stays easy to find. These features are coming to all package levels, and we're looking forward to seeing how you put them to work in your own community.

Courses have been part of Invision Community since 2023, giving communities a way to run structured learning with sequential modules and lessons, quizzes, required courses for specific groups, and paid courses through Commerce. In Invision Community 5.1, Courses get many new features and improvements that turn it into a proper learning space. Courses can now be organised into categories and run entirely from the front end; each course can have its own discussion forum and files; members can leave reviews and ratings; and anyone who finishes earns a badge and a printable certificate. If you run staff onboarding, paid training, product education or a volunteer programme, this is the release where Courses really come into its own. Organise Courses into categoriesCourses now live in categories, each with its own name, description, cover photo and permissions. You can keep staff-only onboarding separate from public training, or put free introductory courses in one place and paid advanced tracks in another, without piling everything onto a single page. The Courses home page lists your categories first, and members with permission can add a course straight from there. Build and run Courses from the front endCreating, editing and publishing courses, along with managing modules and lessons, all happens on the community itself now. Instructors don't need AdminCP access to build and maintain a course, while admins keep control of settings, categories and enrolment tools in the ACP. You can assign instructors to each course, the same way you assign organisers to an event. Instructors manage the content and enrolments, and everyone enrolled appears on a Members tab. Keep course materials with the courseEach course can now have its own files library. Instructors upload worksheets, slides, templates or whatever else the lessons need, and enrolled members can download them. If someone withdraws from the course, they lose access to the files too. Everything stays in one place, rather than sending learners off to a separate Downloads category and hoping they find the right thing. A discussion forum for every courseEach course can have its own dedicated forum, open to enrolled members and instructors. It's a full forum with topics, replies and all the usual tools, so questions and conversation stay right next to the lessons instead of getting lost in your main forums. This makes a big difference for courses that run over weeks or months, where a group of learners is working through the material together. If you switch on files or discussions for a category that already has courses in it, you'll be asked whether to add them to existing courses or only to new ones. Reviews and star ratingsMembers can now rate and review courses. The average rating shows on course listings and in the course header, and a reviews tab lets people sort by newest or most helpful. For someone deciding whether to enrol, social proof is useful. For instructors, it's honest feedback from people who've actually taken the course. You decide whether reviews are allowed in each category, whether they need approval before going live, and which groups can leave them. A Course page that feels aliveThe course overview can now show a recent activity sidebar with the latest reviews and discussion. It appears only when there’s something to show, so a brand-new course won't look empty. New learners can see that people are engaged, and returning learners can catch up on what they've missed. Celebrate completion with badgesInstructors can upload a badge image on the course form, and anyone who completes the course automatically receives it. Badges appear on the member's profile. Certificates members can printOnce a member has completed at least one course, a Courses tab appears on their profile. It shows the badges they've earned, a list of completed courses, and a certificate of completion for each one, including the course name, badge, number of modules, lessons and quizzes, and the completion date. Members can print any certificate, complete with your community name, their name, the course title and the completion date. A finished course becomes something people can point to, which demonstrates trust and ability. Learning where your members already arePut together, these updates take Courses from a place to work through lessons to a complete learning experience, from browsing a category to printing a certificate. Your members learn alongside the people they already know, and your instructors run everything without needing administrative access. Courses is available from Creator Plus