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Overview

The discussion board is a community space on the members portal where customers start conversations, follow threads, like replies, and share files. Two pieces work together:
  • Discussion boards hold the conversations (threads) themselves.
  • Discussion groups are named subsets of customers that control who can see and contribute to a board.
Use groups to scope a board to a relevant audience — for example, members of a particular plan or a specific cohort — and to decide whether outsiders can read it, reply to it, or both.

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How to access

Navigate to Community → Discussion Groups for the groups themselves, and Community → Discussions for the boards and their threads. content community groups

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Key concepts

  • Group. A named set of customers you define. Groups are created by admins and applied to boards.
  • Access level. Each group has an access level (Public, Restricted, or Private) that determines who can see the board and who can post to it. See Setting the access level.
  • Following and muting. Customers follow threads to get notified of new replies, and can mute threads they no longer want to hear about. See Notifications.

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Creating a group

1

Open Discussion Groups

Go to Community → Discussion Groups and click Add group.
2

Fill in the details

Set the Location, give the group a Name that reflects the audience (e.g. “Wellness members”), and add a short Description. Assign an Administrator — the group’s admin can always post to the group and invite other users to it.
3

Choose the access level

Pick Public, Restricted, or Private — see Setting the access level.
4

Add members

Where the access level requires it (Restricted or Private), add the customers who belong to the group from the Members list.
5

Save

The group is now available when creating or editing a board.

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Setting the access level

Each group has an Access level that decides who can see the board and who can post to it. It sits in the Access section of the group form. Notes:
  • Restricted and Private expose a Members picker so you can choose exactly who is covered. Public does not need one.
  • The group’s Administrator can always post to the group and invite other users to it, regardless of the access level.
  • Change the access level at any time to widen or narrow the audience.
Name groups by audience, not by topic (“Office 2 members” rather than “Parking talk”) — the topic lives in the thread title, the group defines who’s allowed in.

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Discussion boards

A discussion board is where the conversations happen. Threads on a board inherit the access level of the group the board belongs to, so choosing the right group is what scopes the conversation.

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Starting a discussion

Customers (and admins who have a customer profile) start a discussion from the members portal:
1

Go to the board

Open Community → Discussions on the members portal.
2

Start a discussion

Click Start discussion.
3

Write the message

Add a Subject (this becomes the thread title) and your Message.
4

Choose the audience

Under Send to, pick Everyone in this group or specific customers. Select the Group the discussion belongs to — this is what applies the group’s access level. Leave it on the general board for a public conversation.
5

Organise and deliver

Add up to three tags to help people find the post, attach up to five files (each up to 10 MB), and enable Instant delivery if you want people notified as soon as you post rather than in the daily digest.
6

Publish

Click Start discussion.
Admins also need a customer profile in order to post messages to discussion boards.

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Joining a discussion

On the board, customers can search by keyword or filter by group, inbox, or tag. To take part, open a thread, click Join this discussion, add a comment, and click Send reply. Participants are then notified according to their notification settings.

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Notifications

Discussions surface to customers in a few ways:
  • Daily digest. Once a day (around 8 a.m.), every customer who is part of at least one thread gets a digest summarising new conversations and replies since the last notification.
  • Instant delivery. If you turned on Instant delivery when posting, people are notified straight away instead of waiting for the digest.
  • Mentions. Anyone @mentioned in a message gets a push notification (via the Passport app, if they use it) and an email. Being mentioned also means they automatically start following the thread.
  • Every message. Customers who switch on Receive every message in their notification settings get a notification for every message posted to a thread they can access.
Within a thread, customers can:
  • Like a message — this does not trigger a notification.
  • Follow a thread — they get notified of every new reply.
  • Mute a thread — they stop receiving notifications about it, even if someone mentions them.
About 30 seconds after the last reply on a thread, the poster and everyone following it receive a summary of the recent conversation by email, plus a push notification via Passport if they have the app.
  • Announcements — one-way notices, as opposed to two-way discussions
  • Members — the customers groups are built from