Key Terms

Outlining the key terms of the community platform will help new users understand the platform a lot quicker. Remember, you can add or remove terms to this list!

Key Terms Template

Activity Stream
The community activity streams allows you to keep track of the activities of the entire online community, of a group, and of individual community members. Activity streams can be found in several areas:

Home Stream shows the activities that are relevant to each user.
Explore Stream shows the activity of the entire community.
Profile Stream shows all activities of a member.
Group Stream shows all activities of a group.

Group
Groups allow you to share ideas and organize events with other community members around a specific subject. They can be seen as smaller communities within the broader community.

There are three types of groups in the online community:

Public Group: this group content is visible to anyone who visits the community, even if they are not logged in.
Open Group: this group content is visible to anyone who logs in to the community, and anyone can join these groups.
Closed Group: this group content content is only visible to members of that group, who can only join by being added by the group managers.

Topic
Topics allow you to share information and organize discussions with other community members. Each Topic is associated with the Profile of the member who created it. Topics can also be associated with a Group. For more information, you can watch a video about using Topics.

Event
Events allow you to organize, enroll in, and discuss activities with other community members. Each event is associated with the profile of the member who created it. Events can also be associated with a group.

Profile
You have a community profile where you can share a picture, contact details, a self description, and expertise, and interests. Information in a profile is used when searching for community members.

Account
Your account contains the information that is used to communicate with the system such as your email address, login information, and how you want to be notified by the system.

Main Navigation Bar
The main navigation bar is the header at the top of each page of the online community. You can use it to quickly navigate to pages of interest and see your private messages and notifications.

Secondary Navigation Bar
Some pages, such as Profiles and Groups, have a secondary navigation bar that links you to the description of that page, and topics and events associated with that page.

Notifications
When new activity in the community happens that relates to you, you will receive a notification in the main navigation bar. In your account settings, you can also choose to receive email notifications when you are not logged in to the community. You can adjust these settings of notifications easily in the account settings as well (frequency, etc.).

Comment
Share your thoughts about a topic or event by entering a comment at the bottom of the page. You can also reply to comments that other people make.

Post
You can leave a message to the community, to another member, or to a group by posting a message on any activity stream.

Mention
You can attract attention from or notify another community member about your activity using the mention function Enter the @ symbol in a comment, post, or reply, and then start typing their name. Select the community member from the dropdown list that appears and they will receive a notification about this activity.

Like
You can indicate agreement and appreciation for a topic, event, comment, post, or reply using the like feature. Click any open heart icon to like content, and the content creator will receive a notification.

Private Message
Send another user or a group of users a private message, away from the activity of the community. Turn to envelope icon in the main navigation header to send messages and view notifications.