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Building your first community

Summary

A community is your first line of support when dealing with customers.  It allows them a place to view information on your products or services, creates a way to interact with other members, and allows them to submit and manage their cases.

Settings

Name
A friendly name to your community.  You can have multiple communities so make this name something that distinguishes it from others.

URL
Your URL is how others will find you.  You can choose any name which is available.  Once choosen, you can point your custom domain to this one so that it looks like its coming from your site. 

Description
A description of the community helping you to remember what community this is for.

KB Containers
By seleting the option "All public containers", all knoweldge base containers that are set as publically viewable will be visible in the community.  If you do not enable this option, you can manually include the containers by clicking on the list box.

Include Forums
By seleting the option "Show all forums", all active forums will be visible in the community.  If you do not enable this option, you can manually select the forums to include by clicking on the list box.

Template
This is the current community template you are using.  By clicking on the template, you can change the site to a new template.  

Warning: Selecting a new template will overwrite all previous customizations to your site pages.

Auto Update
If you have choosen a community template, if there are new changes, bug fixes to that community, they will automatically be uploaded to your site.  

Warning: This will overwrite all previous customizations to your site pages when a new update occurs.

Logo
You can upload your custom logo here. Your custom logo can be displayed within any page layout or email template by referencing the tag {{logo}} .

Active
Disable the community from customers being able to access the site.

Sections

Attachments

You can upload attachments to your community here.  

Attachments are a great way to keep files that you would like to share that are not nessesarily within a knowledgebase article.  This could be a logo, or style sheet, or even an exe.

Pages

How its built

All the pages and email templates are built using Liquid which is a templating language. 

Each page can be customized, and you can make it look and feel how ever you want.  The various sections of the site are built by including specific liquid tags for the various sections.  These special tags are referenched by including the {{}} parameters. 

Page header

The page header is where your main navigation goes.  This includes things like your logo, links to your other sites, and a login / logout button.  The header page will always be displayed on all of the other pages.

SignIn

This is the main sign in / sign up page.  Users can login from this page to access their cases, submit new cases, and access restricted forum content.

The URL to get to the signup page is : /signin

Landing

The landing page is the fist page that is displayed when entering your community.  You can use this as an introduction to your community, send them to different places or by default show all of the KB containers in the system.

The URL to get to the signup page is : /

Knowledge base

The knowledge base is where users can come and view all items of your knowledge base.  The knowledge base items comprise of 3 items:

Containers

The URL to view the knowledge base containers: /knowledgbase
The URL to view a specific knowledge base container: /container/

Article

The URL to view the knowledge base article: /article/

Search results

The URL to search within current container: /search/

Forums

The forums is a place where users can come and interact with each other.  You can create new forums and restrict who can post on these forums. 

The URL to view the forums: /forum
The URL to view a specific forum: /forum/

Case Creation

This is the case creation screen.  Users can submit new cases from here.  You can customize individual categories via case policies within the case setting section to restrict what they can view and enter here.

The URL to submit a new case: /submitcase

Case List

Once the user is logged into the system, they will be able to view their case histories from here and submit new cases.

The URL to view your cases: /cases

Case View

The user will be able to view their case and submit case updates.

The URL to view your cases: /case/

Customer Survey

The customer survey is where the user is directed to when surveyed.  A user is sent to this section from a survey email when the case is closed.  Please see the article how to setup your first survey for more information on how to set this up.

Page Footer 

The page footer is where your site navigation goes and any copywrite text.  This includes things like your contact information, links to your other sites.  The footer page will always be displayed on all of the other pages.

CSS

You can insert custom CSS here for your site.  To use custom CSS, you can specify tags to override any style currently there just as any other style sheet.

For example, to make all H1 headers red you would save the following.

h1 {color:red}

Email

Signup Verification

This email template is sent when a user registers for the first time in the community.  Users must verify their email addresses to ensure they say who they are.  Once they verify themeselves, they will be directed to a password reset site.

Within this template, you must include a hyperlink with the id of "{{password_reset_url}}".  This hyperlink will insert the correct security information enabling the user to confirm their identity. 

Password Reset

This email template is sent when a user requests a password reset.  This could occur if the user has forgotten their password or if it has expired.

Within this template, you must include a hyperlink with the id of "{{password_reset_url}}".  This hyperlink will insert the correct security information enabling the user to confirm their identity and reset their password. 

Customer Survey

This is the email sent to a customer when a case is closed.  

Within this template, you must include a hyperlink with the id of "{{csr_url}}".  This hyperlink will insert the correct security information enabling the user to view and submit a rating to their case. 

 

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