New Features

• Group Hubs (Early Access)
• Q&A Syndication GA
• Synonym Search in Community
• Bulk download of community member metrics
• Revoked kudos reflected in Community Analytics
• Community Analytics (formerly called LSI) branding update
• Salesforce Connector 4.2 updates
• Case Portal notifications
• Add comments to cases by replying to case emails
• New setting to allow Case comments on public Community Cases
• Warning message displayed when Salesforce cannot connect to Community
• Custom case comments
• Field-specific error messages in Community settings
• API updates
• Filter and sort boards, categories, and nodes by creation date
• Filter and sort by update activity time
• Improved support for filtering by ID on Users and Messages collections
• Filter users by registration time and last visit time
• Sort messages and users by ID

Group Hubs (Early Access)

We’re excited to announce Group Hubs, now in Early Access. Group Hubs expands the idea of Groups to deliver an even better experience for Community users to engage with each other around a common theme or purpose. Each group hub has its own configurable set of discussion styles (forum, Q&A, blog, knowledge base, contest, and idea exchange) to organize content and communication. 

You can imagine group hubs for everything from special interests within the community to focus groups to product launches and more. Group Hubs can be visible and open to anyone in the Community, closed -- requiring a request to join, or hidden -- invisible to the public and accessible by invitation only. 

Community Administrators can share Group Hub management with Community members by giving a user the Owner role, which enables the user to edit group hub details, manage membership requests and invitations, and assign and change group hub roles for members. 

Users discover and browse group hubs on the Group Hub Listings Page.

The Group Hub Page provides quick access to discussion styles and recent activity.

Administrators and users can perform most group hub management actions directly in the Community UI without access to Community Admin. Here is a preview of Group Hub configuration options.

Here is a preview of the group hub member management options.

Other important Group Hub capabilities include fully functional search within the hub and group hub subscriptions. 

Everything seen here for Group Hubs is available in EA with Community version 19.8, and it requires a Responsive skin. Features still in development include Group Hub metrics in Khoros Community Analytics (formerly LSI), public Community API v2 support, and the migration path from Groups to Group Hubs. Our intent is to EOL Groups within the next 12 months, but the current focus is parity between Groups and Group Hubs and a proper migration path. More details on potential EOL plans will come in 2020.

Q&A Syndication GA

In April 2019, we announced the Early Access of our first Community Syndication component: Q&A Syndication, which enables you to share content between your community and your brand site. The Q&A Syndication component renders from JavaScript placed in the external location where you want customers to see it. After a successful EA period, we’re happy to announce the General Availability of Q&A Syndication.

The Q&A Syndication component creates an interactive Q&A board that maps to questions across your community or to a specific Q&A node. Users can ask a question in the Q&A Syndication component and then follow and continue the conversation directly in the brand page where the component is placed. Other customers can answer or comment on the question directly in the component.

The thread is mirrored in your community. Community members will see the question in the community and can answer the question there. The question author can edit their question, reply, and comment either in the community or in the Syndication component. Activity in one location is echoed between locations.

You can configure the component so that only messages with specific metadata, such as a product association, appears in the Syndication Q&A list.

Note: Khoros Communities supports a legacy Q&A ActiveCast component. Learn about the differences between ActiveCast Q&A and Q&A Syndication. 

Here is a quick look at the component. This example uses basic styling. You can use your own CSS to customize the look and feel.

Q&A Syndication requires that the Q&A discussion style is enabled for your community. Q&A is a paid feature at this time. Contact Khoros Support to enable Q&A.

Learn more about Q&A Syndication in these guides:

Stay tuned for more Community Syndication components. Our Khoros Autumn Release, to be revealed during the September Khoros Engage event, will show a preview of the next Syndication component: Message List. Message list will let you select content across your community within any discussion style node and feature it in your brand site. Exciting stuff!

Synonym Search in Community

When people search for content on your community, they don’t always use the words you might expect them to use. Even if you craft your article titles meticulously in ways that seem like the obvious words to search on, users will inevitably use different words. 

While Khoros Communities provide several features (Spell check, Auto-suggest, Promoted Search, Places) to aid in serving up the best search results, sometimes the words entered into the search query just don’t quite work.

To help improve search results in these scenarios, we have released a new Search Synonyms feature. Using Search Synonyms, you can create up to 20 synonym rules to expand search queries to include results that use words similar to the ones used in the search query. 

Note: Search Synonyms is enabled for all communities by default.

For example, you can create a rule that defines “mistake” as a synonym for “error” so that when someone searches for "Printer mistake", the results would include results for "Printer error", too.

Tip: You can use Search metrics in Community Analytics (formerly called LSI) to identify words that might be good synonym candidates. Use the Searches without Results table to find out which words your community users are using most that haven’t yielded any results.

When creating your list of synonyms, you must follow these rules:

• Synonyms must be alphanumeric and include at least 2 characters.
• Each Synonym list must include at least two words.
• Comma-separated words are bidirectional (for example, "big, large" searches for "big" when you search for "large" and vice versa).
• Colon-separated words are unidirectional (for example, "big : large" search for "large" when you search for "big", but searching for "large" does not include results with "big").
• Each synonym word can be used only once.

Tip: Excessively large or complex synonym rules will take more time to parse and could impact query latency. Be thoughtful when creating your rules to minimize excessive query time.

To create a synonym rule:

1. Sign in to Community Admin.
2. Go to System > Search.
3. Click Synonyms tab.
4. Click Add Synonyms.
   
5. Enter your synonym rule and click Add.
   
   Note: You cannot have more than 12 synonyms per rule.

Your new rule displays in the list:

To edit a rule, click Edit next to the rule in the list, change your rule as needed, and click Save.

To delete a rule, click Remove next to the rule you want to delete and click Yes to confirm.

You can add up to 20 synonym rules in your list. However, if you use the same word in multiple rules, you will receive an error. 

For example, entering a second synonym that uses the word “boo boo” like this:

produces this error:

See synonym search in action

Let’s say I created the synonym rule “badge, award” and then searched for “missing badge” on the community. 

The search results display the “How do i see my community awards I’ve received?” article. Note that the word “badge” does not display anywhere in this topic.

Tip: To search explicitly for the terms you’ve entered in the search field, you can bypass the synonym search by clicking the “Search instead for your exact query”, where your exact query are the exact words you entered in your search.

Bulk download of community member metrics

Community Analytics (formerly called LSI) now enables you to download user/member data. Previously, you could only obtain this data via the old Admin Metrics.

Update: We are currently investigating options to provide addition permission controls for this feature. Until then, we are holding off rolling out this feature and will communicate the plan soon.

To download member data:

1. Sign in to Community Analytics.
2. Go to Members tab.
3. Click Bulk Download Member Data.
   

Depending on the size of your data set, the download could take several minutes to generate. Click the View Progress link to view the status of your download.

Check out the community member metrics documentation for a complete list of the fields in this download.

Revoked kudos reflected in Community Analytics

Starting with 19.8, when a kudo is revoked, a member deletes a kudo, or a moderator moves it to another location, the updated Kudo count is reflected in your reports. 

Note that the kudo count is updated in the time frame in which it was revoked, not in the time frame the kudo was originally given.

Community Analytics (formerly called LSI) branding update

As part of our ongoing effort to rebrand legacy Lithium products to reflect the new Khoros brand, we have finished our rebranding and renaming of Lithium Social Intelligence (LSI) to Community Analytics.

Links to Community Analytics from your Community dashboard component on your site have also been updated to reflect the new name:

Note: All supporting documentation referring to Lithium Social Intelligence or LSI will be updated soon to use the new name.

Salesforce Connector 4.2 updates

Salesforce Connector 4.2 includes these new features:

• Case Portal notifications
• Add comments to cases by replying to case emails
• New setting to allow Case comments on public Community Cases
• Warning message displayed when Salesforce cannot connect to Community
• Custom case comments
• Field-specific error messages in Community settings

Learn how to install/upgrade to the newest Khoros Salesforce Connector Package.

Case Portal notifications

Version 4.2 of the Khoros Salesforce Connector provides new in-application notification options for case activity. Specifically, community members can now opt to be notified via the community notification system if their cases have been created, updated, or commented on.

Note: The new case activity notification options are supported for both the Salesforce Classic and Lightning UI.

Community admins can set the default settings for these notifications, and community members can choose to keep or change those settings in their personal settings.

Case activity notifications display like all other community notifications in the notification (bell) menu at the top of the page:

Clicking the notification bell opens the notification page. Notifications related to your cases have a suitcase icon, and the notification text indicates the activity that has occurred.

Prerequisite: Before you can enable these notification settings on your community, you must add these fields to the Community User object in Salesforce.

Add case activity fields to the Community User object in Salesforce

1. Login to Salesforce as the admin user connected with your Khoros community.
2. Go to Community User page > Edit Layout > Fields.
3. Drag and drop Subscribe_to_Case_Create_Notifications, Subscribe_to_Case_Update_Notifications, and Subscribe_to_Case_Comment_Notifications
   
4. Click Save.

By default, notifications are enabled on the Salesforce side. You can, if needed, disable all Salesforce notifications in Salesforce by going to Custom settings > Feature Settings > Edit > check Disable Notifications:

Enable default and personal case activity notification settings

To set default notification options for case activity:

1. Sign in to the community as an Admin.
2. Go to Users > Default Notifications.
3. Enable any of the three case-related notification options:
   
4. Click Save.

To change your personal notification options for case activity:

1. Sign in to the community.
2. Click your avatar and select My Settings from the drop-down menu:
   
3. Go to Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings.
4. Enable or disable any of the three case-related notification options:
   
5. Click Save.

Add comments to cases by replying to case emails

Whenever a case is created, updated, or has comments added to it in Salesforce, an email is sent to the contact associated with the case. Now, users can reply to these emails and have their comments added to the Case Comments in Salesforce. 

Note: This feature is supported for both the Salesforce Classic and Lightning UI.

New setting to allow Case comments on public Community Cases

Salesforce admins can now configure whether Salesforce Case Comments get added to public Community Cases. Up to now, both Case Comments and Community Postback Comments were allowed on public Community cases. With this new configuration, Salesforce admins can choose to disable Case Comments on public Community Cases.

Note: This feature is supported for both the Salesforce Classic and Lightning UI.

To enable Case comments on public Cases:

1. Sign in to Salesforce as an admin user who is connected to the community in Salesforce.
2. Go to Custom Settings > Feature Settings > Edit.
3. Enable the Allow Case Comments for Public Community Cases option.
   
4. Click Save.

Warning message displayed when Salesforce cannot connect to Community

If a user is performing a federated search task in Salesforce that interacts with the community, but the connection to the community has failed, a warning message is now displayed indicating the connection failure.

For example, here’s the warning message that is displayed when performing a federated search that is unable to connect to the community:

Note: This feature is supported for both the Salesforce Classic and Lightning UI.

Custom case comments

The native Salesforce Case Comment Component includes a public checkbox field that Salesforce no longer supports. 

To fill this gap, we built our own Custom Case Comment component in for Salesforce 4.2 which looks and functions like the native Salesforce Case Comment Component did. When used, Case Portal shows all case comments that are marked as public.

Note: This feature is supported only for Salesforce Classic, since the Case Comments component used in the Lightning UI already supports this.

To enable this feature:

1. Sign in to Salesforce as an admin user connected with the community.
2. Go to Setup > Cases > Page Layouts.
3. Click Edit Case Layout - Community.
4. Click Visualforce Pages.
   
5. Drag and drop LTI_CustomCaseComments to wherever you want them to appear in the layout.
6. Click Save.

Note: To remove any existing Case Comments from the layout, click the minus sign (-) and then click Save. 

Field-specific error messages in Community settings

We have improved the error messaging for Community settings on Salesforce forms. Now, instead of getting a generic, one-size-fits-all message, field-specific messages are displayed to better inform you about the problem.

Note: This feature is supported for both the Salesforce Classic and Lightning UI.

API Updates

We’ve added constraint and sort options to several Community API v2 collections:

• Filter and sort boards, categories, and nodes by creation date
• Filter and sort by update activity time
• Improved support for filtering by ID on Users and Messages collections
• Filter users by registration time and last visit time
• Sort messages and users by ID

Filter and sort boards, categories, and nodes by creation date

You can now filter queries to the Boards, Categories, and Nodes collections by a new creation_date constraint, the datetime that the node was created. Supported datetime formats: ISO 8601 and epoch milliseconds.

Examples

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM boards WHERE creation_date > 2019-08-19T16:23:23.000-07:00

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM categories WHERE creation_date > 1566239058288

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM boards WHERE creation_date > 2019-08-19T16:23:23.000-07:00 ORDER BY creation_date DESC

Filter and sort by update activity time

You can now filter queries to the Boards collection by a new constraint: message_activity.core_property_change_time (update activity time).

You can sort queries to the Boards, Categories, and Nodes collections by message_activity.core_property_change_time as well 

Update actions are: 

• A new message is posted to the board
• A message in the board is edited
• A message is moved to the board
• A message's moderation status is changed to approved 

Note: Hidden boards are not included in the result set. Group boards are hidden by default when created unless set to 'public' in the Group properties settings. Closed groups (when not hidden) appear in the result set to all users.

Examples

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM boards WHERE message_activity.core_property_change_time > 2019-08-19T16:23:23.000-07:00

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM categories ORDER BY message_activity.core_property_change_time DESC

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM nodes ORDER BY message_activity.core_property_change_time DESC

SELECT id, title, view_href, href FROM boards ORDER BY message_activity.core_property_change_time DESC

Improved support for filtering by ID on Users and Messages collections

In addition to = and IN(), you can now use the <, <=, >, and >= operators when filtering by id in queries to the Users and Messages collections.  

Examples

SELECT login FROM users WHERE id <= '50'

SELECT subject FROM messages WHERE id <= '20'

Filter users by registration time and last visit time

You can now filter by users with new registration_data.registration_time and last_visit_time constraints on the Users collection. Supported datetime formats: ISO 8601 and epoch milliseconds. Supported operators: >, <, >=, <=

• registration_data.registration_time filters by by the datetime of community registration.
• last_visit_time filters by the datetime of the user’s last community login

registration_data.registration_time Examples

SELECT id, login FROM users WHERE registration_data.registration_time > 2019-08-19T16:23:23.000-07:00

SELECT id, login FROM users WHERE registration_data.registration_time > 1566239058288

last_visit_time Examples

SELECT id, login FROM users WHERE last_visit_time > 2019-08-19T16:23:23.000-07:00

SELECT id, login FROM users WHERE last_visit_time > 1566239058288

Sort messages and users by ID

You can now sort queries to the Messages and Users collection by id.

Examples

SELECT subject FROM messages WHERE id < 10035 ORDER BY id DESC

SELECT login FROM users WHERE id < 1050 ORDER BY id DESC

You Found It. We Fixed It.

• We have fixed the issue where the message editor toolbar was not loading for blogs on French-language Communities.
• Issues with the site navigation menu (hamburger menu) not displaying the items in the correct order or being rendered empty have been fixed. Now, menu items display as intended.
• The messages.widget.reply-inline-button component no longer throws an error when previewed on a message in a forum.
• We have fixed the issue where questions in the Value Analytics surveys were not being translated to the appropriate locale.
• On occasion, when you inserted or edited a link in the message editor, additional text you typed after adding the link was appended to the URL instead of being added as simple text. This issue has been fixed.