Creating communities

Set up a teamspace to encourage people in your organization who have similar interests or goals to collaborate with one another.

About this task

Communities can be public, moderated, or restricted. Public communities are visible to everyone in the organization and depending on the level of access that you specify, can be available to everyone. Moderated communities require ownership approval before you can join. Restricted communities are available only to those people who are added to the community as members. The contents of restricted communities are not visible to people who do not have community membership. Restricted communities can have external access. That is, community owners can invite people from outside your organization (external users) to join this community.
Note: Communities that have external access cannot work with the CCM Library and Linked Library apps. Therefore, if your IBM Connections® implementation is configured to work with CCM, the Library and Linked Library apps do not appear in the app palette of communities with external access.

Procedure

To start a community, complete the following steps:
  1. Log on to IBM Connections and access any of the Communities views (for example, I'm a Member).
  2. Click Start a Community.
  3. Required: In the Name field, type a name for the community. Choose a name that identifies the purpose of the community.
    Note: You cannot have multiple public or moderated communities with the same name, however you can have multiple restricted communities with the same name. This naming system allows a public and a restricted community with the same name, or a moderated and a restricted community with the same name.
  4. Required: Specify the level of access that you want for your community as follows:
    Table 1. Community access level options
    Option Description
    Public to my organization Select this option if you want the community to be public with anyone within your organization able to join.
    Moderated Select this option if you want the community to be public but for users within your organization to request membership.
    Restricted Select this option if you want the community to be restricted. Restricted communities are available only to those people who are added to the community as members or invited to join by a community owner.
    Note: To create a restricted community that people can discover and can request access to, select Let anyone in my organization see the community's title, description, tags, and owners. People in your organization but who are outside the community can then see the community's name, description, tags, and owners in the My Organization Communities view; these details also appear in search results.

    A subcommunity cannot be more visible than its parent. Therefore, if a parent community does not have Let anyone in my organization see the community's title, description, tags, and owners. selected, then the subcommunity cannot have this set either.
  5. If you are creating a restricted community and you want to allow community owners to invite external users to join the community, select the External access check box.
    Note: Only certain people with specific privileges can see and select the External access check box.
    Note: If you create a restricted community and you do not select the External access check box, the restricted community is created as an internal community. In addition, no external users can be added to it.
    Note: You cannot invite external users to join public or moderated communities.
  6. Type a description of the purpose of the community in the Description field. Be as specific as possible. Use rich content features, for example including links and images to highlight your community's goals.
  7. Optional: Enter one or more tags in the Tags field. Tags are keywords that you define to provide users with more ways to identify what a community is all about. Tags must be a single word or multiple words that are connected with underscores or hyphens. For example, a community that deals with accessibility issues might have the tags accessibility and low-vision. Tags give users more than one way to find a community of interest. The tags that you define here display with the community in the My Organization Communities view.
  8. Click Access Advanced Features and enter the names of the people that you want to add as community members. You can search for names from your organization's directory. predicts the name that you are typing by comparing it to names in the directory that your administrator specified. If it proposes the name that you want, click to add it.
    Note: Hover the mouse over a person's name to see whether they are an external user External user icon.
    If you do not want to add community members now, you can add them at a later stage. For more information, see How do I add community members?
    Note: To add community owners, click the Down arrow next to Members and select Owners, then repeat the process that is described in this step for adding community members.
  9. To generate a web address for your community, enter a one-word, unique term that identifies the community in the Web Address field.
    You and other community members can use this web address to access the community. These terms are case-sensitive, so community members must use the correct case when they access the community with the URL. If you do not want to create a community web address, leave this field blank.

    Because web addresses must be kept unique, other users might learn that a particular web address is in use even if it is for a restricted community. Avoid web addresses that are sensitive or confidential in nature.

    Tip: Be sure to bookmark the full web address that displays when you complete the Web Address field to save the direct URL to the community.
    Notes:
    • Certain keywords with a technical meaning, such as html or Atom, are reserved and cannot be used in community web addresses. If you enter a reserved keyword, an error message is displayed, and you are prompted to enter a different keyword.
    • If your web address contains a non-alphanumeric character, such as an ampersand (&), you must escape the character by using a forward slash ( / ) before the character.
    • If you do not see the option to create a web address for your community in the user interface, your administrator disabled this option.
  10. Click Upload a Community Image to browse for an image to associate with the community on the overview page. The image must be 155 x 155 pixels in size, and it can be in .jpeg, .gif, or .png format.

    There are no file size restrictions. However, because the image is resized to 15 KB to fit the allocated space in the user interface, the server takes more time to process larger files.

    Image resizing does not support all image formats. If you encounter problems with uploading an image, converting the image to a different format often works.

  11. If moderation is available and editable at your site, you can select from the following options:
    • Owners must approve all content (apps) where apps might be one or more of the following apps: Blog, Files, or Forums. When this option is enabled, community owners can review unpublished content that is submitted for approval and decide whether to publish it to the community or reject it.
    • Viewers can flag inappropriate content (apps) where apps might be one or more of the following apps: Blog, Files, or Forums. When this option is enabled, community owners can review content that is flagged as inappropriate by other users. Community owners can then decide whether to keep the content or remove it from the community.
    For more information about moderation in communities, see Moderating community content.
  12. Click Save.

What to do next

You can now add content to the community. You can also change the community access level. For more information, see Editing communities.