Hello, Community Admins!
July has been a busy month for us. We continue to improve the Cloud Community experience for you, your Members, Guests, and Website Visitors.
We are excited to share what’s new and what’s changed in this July release. With that, here’s some of the changes we have made:
What’s New
Access Levels
With this new feature, all content and members are assigned an access level. When this feature is turned on, a Member can see Community Shares, Groups, and other Members that have the same or lesser access level as they do.
Here is what you should know:
- Community Shares, Groups, Documents, and Members all have an access level.
- A Member can see all Community Shares, Groups, Documents, and Members that have the same or lesser access level as they do.
- Access Levels are determined by the Community Membership. There are 5 default Access levels: Private, Group, Guest, Member, Professional, and Custom. You can also create custom membership levels too.
- Private – Only accessible to the member that added it
- Group – Accessible to everyone within the selected Group no matter the assigned Membership Level.
- Guest – Accessible to everyone with this membership level.
- Member – Accessible to everyone with this membership level.
- Professional – Accessible to everyone with this membership level.
- Custom – Accessible to everyone with this Custom membership level.
- Membership Level Access Hierarchy – Membership level access is determined by the order of the membership levels when viewing the membership level grid. The lowest level is on the right, and the highest level is on the left.
- By default all content added to the media library has an access level of Private. This Private Access level is only visible to the content creator.
Getting Started
Before you get started, tell your Cloud Community your Membership level hierarchy. To do this, go to Membership levels and order your membership levels from lowest (left) to highest (right) by dragging and dropping them in order.
Then go to the account setup screen, and turn on membership level visibility. That’s it.
Working with Membership Level Access
When you turn on the Membership Level access, your Cloud Community will present content, shares, groups, documents and pricing for Workshops, Event Tickets, Services and products that match the Members access levels. Check the things you should know for a refresher.
We have updated the below items to support membership level access.
Community Roles
Community Roles have been updated to allow you to turn on or off Membership Level access. When the Membership Level access switch is turned on, then all members that are assigned this Role will only see content that matches their Membership Level. When it is turned off, then members can see all content no matter what their assigned Membership Level is.
Media Library
Content uploaded to the media library is assigned an access level of Private by default. The Member has the new capability to share it with other Members at the same Membership Level as them, or with members across the Locations and Groups they are a part of.
What’s Changed?
Community Management can be time consuming. This month’s improvements will give you back some of that time and make things a little easier. With that, we have made changes to the Website Builder and Media Library.
Website Builder
We have reimagined how admins build websites. We have improved the Navigation, the Component Editor, and added new Components that will make it easier to tell the story of your community to your website visitors.
Navigation
One of the changes we did was to customize the first level of navigation. For one, you should be able to see the Component Library as we have made it always visible. Plus, we also included the Logo, Title, Add Page Icon, Publish, Cancel, and a 3-dot Icon that houses the Preference and Brand Menu on the first level of navigation.
Component Editor
Component editing just got easier. Click the component image, header, text or button, and work within the newly redesigned content editor.
New Components
We are working to get the creative juices flowing in an effort to match your creativity. There are new components that you can use to create custom pages.
New Achievement Components
The Timeline component is used to create an ordered sequence of events or milestones. When editing it, you can change the title and summary text. The colors of the timeline are the primary and secondary colors of the Community brand.
There are two types of Timeline components: one in vertical view, where sequences of events are viewed from up to down; or the horizontal timeline, which allows you to view the milestones from left to right.
Another Achievement component we have added allows you to include the Sponsors on your website. When editing this, you can change the images to logos or photos of your sponsors.
New Feature Components
The Feature Spotlight component makes it easier to communicate a benefit, feature, or to highlight a product, service, or mission. When editing it, you can change the header, it’s text, and the call to action button.
Meanwhile, the Feature Serve component allows you to clearly communicate who you serve, or your target audience. When editing it, you can edit the headline, the text, and the image to better suit your community.
We have also added the Two Option component under the Feature section that allows you to communicate options to your website visitors. When editing this component, you can edit the title, edit each milestone title, turn the overlay on or off, along with its transparency, and colors of both the overlay and the background.
New FAQ Component
The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) component allows you to answer the most common questions your website visitors have about your community. When editing it, you can set the number of questions, edit the text, and change the background color of the component.
New Slider Components
Images can make your website more exciting, so we have added another Slider component that allows you not just to show off behind the scenes of your organization, you can also communicate your community’s vision and mission, goals, or what you’ve been working on lately. When editing the component, you can edit the images, the text, and the call to action button.
Another Slider component you can add is a Gallery of images you want to flaunt on your website. It’s a good way to share images from past events you’ve had, or behind the scenes. When editing it, you can set the number of images, change image icons, and change slider images.
Activities
In June we added the concept of teams to Meetings, Events, and Workshops. Adding someone as a Team member of your activity grants them administrative access to the activity. For example, when you add someone as a team member to your event, then they can be assigned responsibility for managing the event check in. When adding a team member to a workshop, they can be assigned responsibility for publishing documents or feedback to the participants while you deliver instruction.
This month we made a simple change that will allow you to add and remove team members, so that you can scale your ability to deliver in excellence.
Events
Another change we have done on your side of the platform is with regards to Offering Cards.
For this update, you can now quickly see the status of Offering Cards. With this change, you can take action as soon as possible to administer the Offering quickly.
Invite Member
Growing a Community is one of the main goals of a Cloud Community. We are investing in creating the best possible first impression. So, we have made the invite process more user-friendly.
Here is a quick video that explains the invite process that you can share with existing Members when migrating a Cloud Community.
Summary of the Impact to your Membership
Now that you know what’s new to the Cloud Community experience, here is a summary of how these improvements will change your members’ experience.
Membership Level Visibility
If you decide to turn on this feature, members will only see other members, posts and groups that match their membership level. You may be contacted by members letting you know that they cannot see some content or members.
Navigation Changes
We have also redesigned the referral tree, so your members could now easily navigate the referrer branches of a fellow member they are trying to check out. They can check the branches up and down to see the impact of a fellow member to the Community.
Directory
You can also communicate to your members that they can now see the Member Profile of Users as third-level navigation when they are checking out the Member Directory. This should give them a more seamless browsing experience.
Offerings
As you can now remove or add members as presenters in meetings, your members may contact you regarding these changes.