• Member Experience
• Co-authoring for blog posts and knowledge base articles
• Ideas
• SEO: Structured markup for blog posts and knowledge base articles
• Rich Text Preview
• Administrator Experience
• Engagement drill-down views for Forums, Blogs, and Knowledge Bases
• Analytics for Ideas
• Global Header & Footer page template
• Ideas Page Templates
• Ideas support on widgets
• Ideas icon color support in Theme
• Google Fonts support in Theme
• Custom Avatars
• SVG support for Ranks
• Developer Experience
• Ideas
• Page Overrides

Member Experience

Co-authoring for blog posts and knowledge base articles

Recognizing co-authors along with the main author is a way to acknowledge everyone who contributes to a piece of content and enhance the overall quality and credibility of the content. It also encourages collaboration and fosters a sense of community among contributors and readers.

With this release, we’ve introduced co-authoring, where multiple members can co-author knowledge base articles or blog posts. Authors and Co-authors can recognise members who have contributed to the knowledge base articles by adding them as Contributors. While Co-authors have authoring rights, Contributors cannot edit the article. 

Adding co-authors to blog posts

If you have the BlogAuthor or Admin role, you can add members as co-authors for published blog posts or to drafts. All co-authors automatically receive editing permissions for the blog post they are added to.

After you publish the blog post, the author and the list of co-authors is displayed. 

 

Learn more about adding and removing co-authors to blog posts.

Adding Co-authors and Contributors to knowledge base articles

While Authors and Co-authors can directly be involved in writing knowledge base articles, Contributors can be involved in other aspects of writing like sharing knowledge, providing solutions to discussions, technical assistance and so on . 

You can add co-authors and contributors for published articles or to drafts.

If you have the KBAuthor or Admin role, you can add co-authors and contributors using the Contributors section in the edit page of the article. 

Use the drop-down menu next to the member names to set the member as a Contributor or a Co-Author. All co-authors automatically receive editing permissions for the article they are added to.

Published articles display a View Contributors link. 

Click the View Contributors link to view all the people who contributed to this content.

 

Removing co-authors or contributors from blog posts or knowledge base articles

To remove co-authors from blog posts and co-authors or contributors from knowledge base articles, click the remove icon next to the member name. All edit rights for that blog post or article are removed for that member.

Learn more about adding or removing co-authors and contributors to articles.

Ideas

From time to time, your customers might have ideas about how to make your products or services better. These ideas could be minor enhancements or a completely new feature.

With the 23.9 release, we’ve introduced a new content type called Ideas. Ideas enables you to collect ideas from your community members, let other members vote on these ideas, and share these ideas with your internal product teams for consideration.

By enabling members to submit their own ideas, you are encouraging them to be thought partners with your company and stand out among their community peers.  

Members can vote on ideas they like and even discuss the idea by posting comments. 

The submitted ideas are reviewed and assigned statuses by your internal teams. When working with ideas, statuses play a key role in organizing ideas and letting idea contributors know where an idea is in the approval and delivery process.

Statuses communicate where an idea is in the workflow. By updating the status, your company publicly lets members know which ideas are being reviewed or are in the process of being implemented. The statuses you create depend on the purpose of the Ideas board. If you’re soliciting product ideas, for example, statuses should reflect a progression from new idea, through review, to eventual implementation, or to indicate that an idea has been declined. Learn more about idea statuses.

Here’s an example of an Ideas board showing which ideas are trending among your community members.

Learn more about setting up and configuring Ideas.

Ideas follows and notifications

You can now follow Ideas boards and individual ideas posted on those boards. When you follow an idea, you’ll receive both in-app and email notifications of updates or other activity on that idea. The process for following Ideas boards and ideas is similar to all other content types.

To follow an Ideas board or a specific idea, click Follow (bell icon) at the top-right corner of the page.

To unfollow an item, click Follow again. See About Following for more information about following places and content. Learn about managing your follow and notification preferences.

SEO: Structured markup for blog posts and knowledge base articles

With this release, Khoros optimizes blog posts and knowledge base articles across the community to provide rich results on search pages. This helps people easily find the right information and drives more people to your site. Learn more about SEO.

Rich Text Preview

With this release, you can generate previews for external URLs and preview content within the community itself. These URLs must be from a supported Embedly provider.

To enable Rich Text Preview:

1. Open the Account menu.
2. Go to Settings > Content Features > Rich Content.
3. Enable Display rich previews.
   

Note: We have taken security measures to prevent the previewed content from generating pop-ups, downloading content, and uploading forms.

Here’s a short guide on how you can preview a CodePen URL (a supported Embedly provider) before you publish your content.

Administrator Experience

Engagement drill-down views for Forums, Blogs, and Knowledge Bases

With this release, Analytics users can view engagement data for Forums, Blogs and Knowledge Bases. 

Let’s take a look at how to view engagement data for Forums. In the Forums Details dashboard, click the point on the graph for the date you want to see the drill-down view of Discussions, Replies, and Likes.

A window appears that displays the number of discussions created during the selected period and their location in the Community, the number of discussions created during the previous period selected in the dashboard settings, and the percentage change for the number of discussions created between these periods.

You can also view these metrics at the board level:

Select Replies to see the number of replies received for the selected period and location along with the number of replies received during the previous period and the percentage change between these periods.

To view these metrics by board, select View by boards.

To view these metrics at the discussion level, click View by discussions.

Click Likes to see the number of likes a discussion received for the selected period and location along with the number of likes received during the previous period and the percentage change between these periods.  

Similarly, you can see engagement data for Blogs and Knowledge Bases. 

Learn more about viewing community engagement data.

Analytics for Ideas

With the introduction of Ideas in Aurora, we’ve now included metrics and reports for Ideas. 

To view metrics for Ideas boards, click Ideas Boards under Analytics > Ideas Board.

The report page for Ideas boards includes a summary of the total number of page views, visits, ideas, votes, comments, and follows. The page also shows these numbers per board.

To view reports for ideas in an Idea board, click Ideas under Analytics > Reports.The report for ideas provides a summary of the total number of page views, visits, ideas, votes, comments, and follows. The page also shows these metrics per idea in that board.

Learn more about reports.

Global Header & Footer page template

To provide a more cohesive experience, we’ve added the ability to create a global Header & Footer that is applied across all the pages of your community.

The Header portion of the page template is made up of the Navigation widget, the Breadcrumb widget, and the Banner widget. You can adjust the overall Header portion of the page template as well as the individual widgets.

By default, the Footer portion of the page template is made up of one uneditable widget that you can remove and replace with a widget you want to have in the Footer. You can use this space to add quick important links, copyright information, and anything else you want to include. There are settings available to adjust the overall Footer portion of the page template as well as the individual widgets.

Migrating page template changes from previous versions

If you’ve already adjusted the navigation bar, the breadcrumb trail, or the banner on page templates prior to 23.9, be aware of the following changes and behavior in this release before using the new Global Header & Footer.

Navigation widget

• Previously, the Navigation widget was set on the Community Home page template and any changes were applied to the navigation widget across the community. Now, the Navigation widget is available for editing only on the global Header & Footer page template.
• If you have customized your Navigation bar previous to this release, these changes are now present in the Navigation widget of the Header in 23.9.
• Any changes you make to the Navigation widget on the Header & Footer page template now apply to all other pages in the community.

Breadcrumb widget

• Previously, the breadcrumb trail could be moved above or below the banner on individual page templates. If you adjusted the breadcrumb placement on individual page templates previous to this release, they maintain their placement on those templates until you reset the individual page template regardless of how you alter the Breadcrumb widget on the global Header & Footer template.
• If you reset the page templates with Breadcrumb widgets that had been adjusted before 23.9, you can never adjust the Breadcrumb widget on individual templates again. From that point forward, the Breadcrumb widget can be adjusted only on the global Header & Footer template, and when you make changes there, they will apply to all other pages in the community.

Banner widget

• The Banner widget available in the Header portion of the new page template is a placeholder for the Banner on other page templates that have one—you can override this widget on individual page templates even if you adjust it on the Header & Footer template.
• Any changes you made to the banner previous to this release remain in place. If you change the banner on a different page template, at this time you cannot revert it to the banner set on the Header & Footer page template unless you reset the individual template’s page layout.
• Known Issue: If you previously set a banner image on a page template prior to 23.9 and now choose a new banner image on that same page template in 23.9, the old banner image continues to show through the Breadcrumb trail and the Navigation bar. At this time, the only way to remove the old image that shows through the other parts of the header is by resetting the page layout for that page template. Otherwise, on the global Header & Footer template, you can add a completely opaque image or color to the navigation bar and breadcrumb widget in order to hide the old image. The banner image you choose on the individual page template will cover the old image in the banner portion of the header.

Update your Header & Footer template

1. Go to Designer > Page Templates.
2. Hover your cursor over the Header & Footer template and click Edit.
   
   
   
3. In the Page Overview panel, click Header and Footer as necessary to update those portions of the template.
   
   

    

4. Make the desired changes to any aspects of the Header (Navigation, Breadcrumb, and Banner widgets) and the Footer.
5. Click Save and Publish.

To learn more about customizing your global Header & Footer, see Header & Footer Configuration. For more information about widgets, see Getting Started with Widgets.

Ideas Page Templates

We’ve provided two new page templates to enable you to customize your community members’ experience with the new Ideas feature. Refer to the following articles to learn more about how to use these page templates:

• About Page Templates
• Using Page Templates
• Create and arrange sections in a Page Template
• Getting Started with Widgets

Ideas Dashboard Page Template

This page template is similar to all of the other content type (Forum, Blog, Knowledge Base) dashboard templates you’ve already been using in your community. It is the landing page members see when they go to an Ideas board. By default, an Ideas widget and an Ideas Board Information widget are provided.

To access and update your Ideas Dashboard page template:

1. Go to Designer > Page Templates.
2. Hover your cursor over the Ideas Dashboard page template and click Edit.
3. Start organizing your page and adding sections and widgets as desired.

Idea Page Template

This page template is similar to the Forum Discussion, Blog Post, and Knowledge Base Article page templates you’ve already been using in your community. It is the page members see when they post a new idea or comment on an existing one. The Idea page template has a widget that contains the text editor for an idea. This cannot be deleted, but you can add more sections and widgets as desired.

To access and update your Idea page template:

1. Go to Designer > Page Templates.
2. Hover your cursor over the Idea page template and click Edit.
3. Start organizing your page and adding sections and widgets as desired.

Ideas widgets

The new Ideas page templates also provide two new Ideas widgets:

• Ideas widget: Provides a list of ideas in the related Ideas board. You can add filters by status sets and other sorting options by which members can organize published ideas. Like other individual post widgets, you can select the desired list or card items to show on the widget. See Ideas Widget Configuration.
• Ideas Board Information widget: Displays basic information about the related Ideas board. This widget is similar to other content type board widgets that are already available in the community—you can select which elements to include on the widget. See Ideas Board Information Widget Configuration.

Ideas support on widgets

With the release of Ideas, several widgets have been updated: Top Content, Recent Content, Featured Content, Places, Featured Places, Related Content, and Top Contributors.

Some notable changes (depending on the widget you’re configuring):

• Discussion styles to include menus now contain an Ideas only option.
• In List/Card Item Elements toggle lists, Sort By menus, and additional filter options, the Like Count option has been updated to Like/Vote Count. Additionally, Likes Received has been updated to Likes/Votes Received.
• In the additional filter options, a Trending option is now available for Ideas.
• In the community, individual ideas on filters now appear with “vote” icons instead of “like” icons.
• If the configuration of the Recent Content widget Discussion styles to include list is set to Ideas only, when the Recent Content widget is displayed in the community, instead of a Most Likes tab, a Most Votes tab is available.
• The Places and Featured Places widgets can now contain Ideas boards.
• In Place types to include menus, Ideas boards are now included.
• For the Top Contributors widget, when a person’s total metric includes a count of votes and likes, the “like” icon is displayed.

For general information on widgets, see Getting Started with Widgets.

Ideas icon color support in Theme

With the release of the new Ideas content type, you can now customize the color of the Ideas icon across the community. This icon appears on Ideas boards and other areas where individual ideas are listed.

To set the Ideas icon color:

1. Go to Designer > Theme.
2. In the left Theme panel, click Colors.
3. Scroll down to the Content type icons.
4. On Ideas, click Edit (pencil icon).
5. Enter the hex code for the desired color. The default is orange (#FF8000).

 

 

For more information about setting Theme colors, see Manage site colors for a theme.

Google Fonts support in Theme

Site designers can now use Google Fonts in the community site theme.

To add Google Fonts to your theme:

1. Go to Designer > Theme.
2. In the Theme panel, click Fonts.
3. Click the menu for Headings or Body text.

    

4. Click Add Custom Font.
5. In the field, insert the text for your Google Fonts font family.
6. Click Add Custom Font.

Learn how to set the font style and size for your community.

Custom Avatars

Administrators can now add custom avatars to the default avatar set. When members go to update their avatars from their settings, they see the custom avatars along with the avatars provided out of the box.

To add custom avatars: 

1. Go to Designer > Theme.
2. In the Theme panel, click Avatars.
3. Click Add custom avatars.
4. In the Add Custom Avatars window, upload as many images as you want in upload as many images as you want in SVG, JPG, or PNG formats. A square image is required with a minimum of 300px by 300px recommended.
5. Click Add Avatars.
   
6. Click Save and Publish.

Members can now select the newly added custom avatars when they choose their profile avatar.

Learn more about managing avatars for your community.

SVG support for Ranks

Admins who upload images for Ranks can now upload images in SVG format.

Learn more about creating a rank.

Developer Experience

Ideas

With the introduction of the Ideas feature, Ideas page templates, and Ideas support, we are also providing Ideas GraphQL APIs.

Use these APIs to:

• Create an Ideas board
• Edit Ideas board settings
• Create, Update, and Delete an Idea
• Create, update, and move Idea comments
• Create an Idea status
• Fetch an Idea status
• Fetch Idea statuses by Node
• Edit an Idea status
• Update the status of an Idea message
• Move an idea status
• Delete an idea status
• Retrieve status list for an Idea board including deleted status
• Create an Idea Comment
• Update an Idea Comment

Page Overrides

Pages, aka Page Descriptors (overrides to default Page JSON files), enable you to build custom pages that override default page properties in your Community. Developers can now create these new overrides directly through their Git repository either manually or via a GraphQL mutation.

Learn more about Page Overrides in our Developer Docs Portal.