Take a tour of Aurora
Welcome to Aurora. We've put together this video training course to help you get familiar with key features and concepts about Khoros' re-imagined Community Experience. This 12-video series is grouped by four community roles: Managers Moderators Developers Members The entire course takes about 1 hourto complete. Note: We will be updating these videos and adding new ones as we continue to roll out new Aurora features. Subscribe to this article to be notified when new videos are available. Community Managers Community Overview Building your community structure Designing your site Configuring feature settings Roles and permissions Gamification Measuring success Community overview (3:49) Building your community structure (6:03) Designing your site (7:54) Configuring feature settings (4:52) Roles and permissions (4:51) Gamification (4:23) Measuring success (3:08) Community Moderators Moderating your community (9:14) Community Developers Getting Started as a Developer Getting Started with Handlebars Creating Handlebars GraphQL API Getting Started as a Developer(4:58) Getting Started with Handlebars(6:56) Creating Handlebars(4:20) GraphQL API (3:54) Community Members Personalize your community experience Getting around and finding the content you want Contributing to the community Using your inbox Personalize your community experience (3:45) Getting around and finding the content you want (1:54) Contributing to the community (4:55) Using your inbox (2:46) What to read next: Getting Started as an Administrator Getting Started as a Community Manager Getting Started as a Site DesignerWhat's changed in Aurora from Community Classic
This article captures some of the high-level changes (terminology, features, and concepts) that have changed (or will be changing) in Aurora from Community Classic. Terminology changes For Aurora, we have updated several terms that were previously used in Community Classic. Kudos are now called Likes. Subscriptions are now called Follows. Discussion Styles are now called Content Types. Content Types is the collective term used to describe the different types of boards community supports (forums, knowledge bases, blogs, etc.). Group Hubs are now called Groups. Tags and labels have been combined are now just all called Tags. There are two types of tags (preset and freeform). Tool changes and enhancements The site-building tool Studio has been replaced with Designer and Dev Tools. In Aurora Designer, you can edit your site’s Theme and manage Page Templates. In a future release, you'll also use this area to manage Email Templates and text strings. In the Dev Tools, you will find the tools needed to develop and customize your site. The Content Editor has been enhanced with several new features and meets accessibility requirements. Auto-save is enabled by default for all content types. Members have access to full version history of content with the ability to Delete, Edit, Compare, and Restore versions. Integration with Unsplash image libraries for Blog cover images and Page Template sections. Community Analytics is no longer a separate tool and now is built into the Community application. Where did it go? Not sure where something moved to? Here’s a list of some of the bigger things that have moved to a new place in Aurora: Admin Settings: Several of the settings pages have been simplified (or removed) and grouped differently. Settings pages that used to be in the “Community Admin” or “Admin” area are now available under Settings. Each card (tab) groups related settings into a new page. As we continue to build out more Aurora features, more cards/tabs will be added to the Settings area. Content Management Areas: Most content-related management tasks (find and edit drafts, review and manage reported abusive content, Spam Quarantine, and Moderation) are now performed from the Manage Content space: Developer Experience Aurora is built on the philosophy that internal and external developers should have access to the same development tools, empowering everyone involved with your community's user experience while providing a seamless, simple, and powerful SDK to help you get the most our of Khoros Communities. Why React? We chose React to power the web layer of our technology stack because of its ubiquitous nature and powerful built-in toolset. React, coupled with React Bootstrap, offers developers the ability to create powerful customizations to the user interface without losing out on the popular Bootstrap DLS that has been a part of the success of Khoros Communities over the years. Add the powerful Apollo Client state management library makes takes the communication between your React components and your community's data to the next level. It provides GraphQL call management, a catchable data store that monitors and responds to data updates. This update gives developers a better toolkit without taking away some of the most popular time-saving capabilities our developer community has come to appreciate. Why GraphQL? GraphQL is the query language for all of Aurora's APIs. This solution is consistent across our entire user interface, giving external developers the same backend experience we use to create Aurora's built-in features. REST API served us well in Khoros Communities for many years, but in Aurora, we wanted to give developers access to a more precise, flexible, and capable API to make data more accessible across the board. Where communities once relied on custom REST endpoints or multiple individual calls to retrieve necessary data, GraphQL can handle multiple operations at one time, and return only the data you need when you need it.About Khoros Community: Aurora
Aurora is Khoros’ re-imagined Community experience that leverages more than 20 years of experience and learnings in the digital community space.Aurora delivers a sleek, modern, high-performance UX framework that adheres to community best practices while still giving brands complete flexibility to make changes or updates to address their specific needs.While built on the same platform as Khoros Community: Classic, Aurora includes significant changes in the new framework.Community Aurora 24.2 Release Notes
This release comes with enhancements on Badges, Events, reporting inappropriate content, bypassing moderation, automatically and manuallyescalating forum discussions and replies to Salesforce, and moving content within the community. We've introduced metrics for Events and new metrics for Ideas. It also includesAPIs to escalate cases to Salesforce, report abuse on User profile, and APIs for Badges and adding custom fields.Community Aurora 23.12 Release Notes
This release includes Events GA, analytics for Events and Ideas, the Featured Idea Statuses widget, updates to other widgets, new default ranks, permissions updates, Salesforce integration, and more. It also includes Events, Salesforce integration, multi-authentication support, and bulk data API updates for the Developer Experience.About Aurora Community site structure
One of the most important aspects of setting up your community is choosing which content types to include and how to organize them. Communities are structured hierarchically—they’re broken down into Places, which are divided into Containers and Boards. Containers consist of Categories and Groups, while Boards consist of Forums, Knowledge Bases, Blogs, Ideas, and Events. Typically, Categories and Groups are made up of Boards—these boards are the areas where community members can post and reply or comment on what they read. Categories can also be broken down into other Categories as necessary. Containers Boards Containers Containers are higher-level Places like Categories and Groups. Categories are areas that can house several types of Boards that are broken out into different types of content. Groups are similar to Categories, but they are designed for specific groups of Community members who want to collaborate on a particular subject or project. Create a Category Create a Group Create a Category Go to the Community Structurepage. Click Add(plus icon) at the level of the community where you want to add the category. On the window, enter a Name and ID. The ID displays in the URL for the category. Note: The ID must be a single word made of only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores with no spaces. It cannot be changed later. Optionally, enter a Description and add an Avatar for the category. Click Create. For more information, see About Categories. Boards Create a Forum Create a Knowledge Base Create a Blog Create an Ideas board Create an Event board Boards are Places that are subsets of Containers. The types of boards available in your community are Forums, Knowledge Bases, Blogs, Ideas, and Events. Boards enable members to post content, write comments, and reply to other members’ comments. The process for creating a board is similar for all content types. To create a board: Go to the Community Structurepage. Click Add(plus icon) at the level of the community where you want to add the board. On the window, enter a Name and ID. The ID displays in the URL for the board. Note: The ID must be a single word made of only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores with no spaces. It cannot be changed later. Optionally, enter a Description and add an Avatar for the board. In theTagsarea, specify the types of tags to use, add preset tags, and/or indicate whether you want to require tags for the board. Click Create. Related topics Community Structure Best Practices Community site structure hierarchy and terminology Manage Containers or Boards Container and Board permissionsAurora Analytics Metric Definitions
This article provides definitions for all the metrics available in Aurora Analytics. Aurora Analytics approximates user behavior and therefore these metrics exclude almost all nonhuman requests (Web crawlers, robots, RSS feeds, REST API calls). About how Community visit metrics are calculated When viewing visits metrics, you might see small variants in the reported numbers. This is expected when you compare visits metric for a period within a month versus a sum of months in that period. The main reasons for these differences include: Overlapping visits across months "Visits" are defined as the number of unique user sessions. A session is defined as a group of interactions one user takes within a given time frame. Sessions time out in the case of 30-minute inactivity. Assume someone browsed through a community during the last hour of a month (Month-1) and continued browsing through the first hour of next month (Month-2). In this scenario: When we measure visits for Month 1, this session is counted as 1 visit. When we measure visits for Month 2, this session is counted as 1 visit. So, when you sum up visits for Month 1 and Month 2, you see 2 total visits, whereas, if you measure visits over the 2-month period, this session is counted as a single visit. Algorithm approximation "Visits" and "visitors" metrics are an approximation algorithm in their calculations. As such, there might be a 1-2% variance in the calculations. Elastic search documentation mentions that sometimes the variance could be up to 6%. Aurora Analytics metrics and definitions Widget/Metrics Definition Page Views A page view is counted each time a browser requests a page regardless of the device type or whether the page is cached. Page Views approximate user behavior and therefore exclude non-human requests (web crawlers, bots, RSS feeds, REST API calls). Page Views (Trend graph) Page Views trend graph is a line graph that shows how the Page Views are trending for the selected time frame. Visits A visit is one or more page views over time by a uniquely identified visitor. A cookie set in the browser identifies visitors (anonymous or registered), so if a visitor has cookies turned off, each page view counts as a new visit. The visit counter increments as soon as the visitor views any community page; the visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. After the 30-minute timeout, the next page view counts as a new visit. The Mobile Visits metric is a subset of the Visits metric and includes requests from mobile web browsers only. Unique Visitors The number of unique visitors over the specified time interval. When a visitor (registered or anonymous) views a page, the application looks for a visitor cookie. If no cookie is found, a new cookie is created, and the visitor counts as a new unique visitor. If a visitor cookie is found, the Unique Visitor counter is not incremented. If cookies are cleared after a visit, the next visit sets a new cookie and counts a new unique visitor. Since cookies are browser dependent, so are unique visitors. Users who access the community from different browsers count as a unique visitor. The Mobile Unique Visitors metric is a subset of the Unique Visitors metric and includes visitors who used mobile web browsers only over the specified time interval. Page Views /Visit The average number of Page Views per Visit for the time frame selected. Visits vs. Unique Visitors The trend of the number of visits to the community site against the number of unique visitors for the selected time frame. Visits by User Type The number of visits made by anonymous users and signed-in users. Anonymous users also refer to community members who have not logged in. Learn more about Visits by User Type. Visit Referrals The number of community visits that originated from specific URL domains. This metric helps you understand how much traffic is coming in from different search engines, social networks, or links on your company website. Completed Registrations The number of member registrations completed during the selected time period (excludes partial/abandoned registrations). A registration is considered complete when the visitor finishes the sign-up flow and is given a unique user ID. If the visitor leaves the sign-up flow before being granted their unique user ID, the registration is considered to be abandoned, and the completed registration counter is not incremented. If the community uses Single Sign On (SSO), Khoros increments the completed registration count the first time it receives an authentication token that contains a unique User ID. Partial Registrations The number of user registrations abandoned during the selected time period. Completed and Partial Registrations The line graph shows how the completed and partial registrations are trending over the selected time frame. DAU/MAU DAU (Daily Active Users) is the number of unique members who engage with the community in a one-day window. MAU (Monthly Active Users) is the number of unique members who engage with the community over a month or 30-day window. The ratio of DAU to MAU is the proportion of monthly active members who engage with the community in a single day window. Member Time on Site The Member Time metric indicates the total number of minutes from first page request to last page request for each visit of all registered members in your community during the date range of the report. Member time does not capture the time of actions, such as likes, unless the member requests a new page after the action. Nor does it include the last 30 minutes after the last page request before the session times out. Member time is calculated from the time of the first page request, such that a session that started at 11:50pm on day 1 and ending at 12:15am on day 2 is counted as member time for day 1. New vs. Returning Members New members are members who have never visited the community and are visiting for the first time. Returning members are members who have visited the community before. This line graph shows the trend of new and returning members over the selected time frame. Note that this widget will show data for the last 30 days only, irrespective of the selected date range. Depending on the time range you choose in the dashboard settings, you may get partial data or no data. New vs. Returning Anonymous Users When a user views the community without signing in, the community looks for cookies saved on their device. If there is no cookie present, then the user is treated as a New Anonymous User. If cookies are present, then the user is treated as a Returning Anonymous User. Since members can also view the community without signing in, they are also considered Anonymous. Note that this widget will show data for the last 30 days only, irrespective of the selected date range. Depending on the time range you choose in the dashboard settings, you may get partial data or no data. Forum This widget shows the engagement on the selected Place for the date range selected. Shows the number and trend line of the number of discussions created, number of likes received, number of replies for the time frame and selected Place. Click View Detailsfor further insights. Blog This widget shows the engagement on the selected Blog for the date range selected. Shows the number and trend line of the number of posts created, number of likes received, and the number of comments for the time frame and selected Place. Click View Detailsfor further insights. Knowledge Base This widget shows the engagement on the selected Knowledge Base for the date range selected. Shows the number and trend line of the number of articles created, number of likes received, and the number of comments for the time frame and selected Place. Click View Details for further insights. Places - Follows The total number of followers for the selected Place. Topics - Follows The total number of followers for the selected Content. Observing vs. Participating vs. Contributing This widget shows the engagement between members who are observing, participating and contributing in the community for the place and time frame selected. Observing members are those who have signed into the community and their engagement is limited only to viewing the contents. Participating members are those who reply or like posts in the community. Contributing members are those who create content or provide solutions in the community. Private Messages This widget shows the number of private messages sent, its trend line and the messages per conversation in the community for the time frame selected. Messages sent The number of private messages sent from the inbox by all the community members during the selected time frame. Messages sent (trend graph) The trend line graph showing the number of private messages sent from the inbox by all the community members during the selected time period. Discussions The number of Discussions in the selected Place during the selected time frame. Likes The number of likes received for the Discussions and replies in the selected Place during the selected time frame. Replies The number of replies received for the Discussions in the selected Place during the selected time frame. Engagement Shows the trend line for number of Discussions, likes, and replies in the Place during the selected time period in Forums Details. Shows the trend line for number of Blog posts, likes, and comments in the Place during the selected time period in Blogs Details. Shows the trend line for number of articles, likes, and replies in the Place during the selected time period in Knowledge Base Details. Shows the trend line for number of ideas, votes, and comments in the Place during the selected time period in Ideas Board Details. Time to First Reply The time taken (average) for Discussions in the selected Place to receive its first reply after it has been initially submitted. It is typically measured from the moment the Discussion is published to the moment someone replies to it. First Replies The total number of first comments on all the Discussions in the selected Place during the selected time frame. If for the selected time frame there are 10 Discussions in the selected Place, and only 4 have received a reply, then the total number of first replies is 4. If for the selected time frame there are 10 Discussions in the selected Place and only 1 Discussion has replies, even if that one Discussion has 5 total replies, the First Replies is 1. Marked As Solved The number of Discussion replies that are marked as an accepted solution for the selected Place and for the selected time frame. There is only 1 solution per Discussion. Marked As Solved Trend Shows the trend line for the number of replies that are marked as an accepted solution for the forums in the selected Place and for the selected time frame. Time to Solution The average time taken for the replies in Discussions for the selected Place to be marked as an accepted solution. It is measured from the moment the Discussion is posted until one of its replies is marked as an accepted solution. Solution Views A count of page views of Discussions with an accepted solution after the Discussion has had a reply marked as an accepted solution. Forum - Follows The total number of followers for the selected Forum during the time frame selected. Discussions - Follows The total number of followers for the Discussions in the selected Place during the time frame selected. New and Trending Discussions The total number of new Discussions and trending Discussions in the Forum selected during the selected time frame. The metric values for Trending Discussions depends on the minimum number of views set in the Engagement dashboard settings. Posts The number of blog posts in the selected Place during the selected time frame. Comments (for Blogs and Ideas) The number of comments the blog posts or Ideas in the selected Place received during the selected time frame. Articles The number of Knowledge Base articles in the selected Place during the selected time frame. Blog - Follows The total number of followers for the Blog in the selected Place during the time frame selected. Posts - Follows The total number of followers for the Blog posts in the selected Place during the time frame selected. Knowledge Base - Follows The total number of followers for the Knowledge Bases in the selected Place during the time frame selected. Article - Follows The total number of followers for the Knowledge Bases articles in the selected Place during the time frame selected. TTFR Time to First Reply TTFS Time to First Solution Helpful Votes The number of votes the Knowledge Base board or article received stating that they were helpful. Unhelpful Votes The number of votes the Knowledge Base board or article received stating that they were unhelpful. Members Joined The number of members who joined the Group. Members Left The number of members who left the Group. Invitations Sent The number of invitations sent to members to join the Group. Invitations Accepted The number of invitations that were accepted by members to join the Group. Ideas Snapshot (widget) This widget contains the metrics related to Ideas Board. The metrics are number of ideas, number of comments received, number of votes received during the selected time period for the Place selected. Ideas Total number of ideas created during the selected time period for the selected Place. Votes Total number of votes received during the selected time period for the selected Place. Lead-up to the Event. This widget shows metrics on all the activities that occurred on the event before it started. Note: In Classic Analytics, a summation of all posts in the community (root topics and replies across discussion styles) is presented as the 'Posts' metric in the Categories report. However, in Aurora Analytics, the root topics and replies across content types (Forums, KB, Blog, Idea and Events) are presented as specific/independent metrics, instead of adding them together and presenting as 'Posts' metric. Related topics: About Aurora Analytics Dashboard Settings Aurora Analytics ReportsCommunity Aurora 23.9 Release Notes
This release includes the content type Ideas and related features, co-authoring, the new global Header & Footer Template, Analytics engagement content type drill-down views, support for custom avatars, and more. It also includes Ideas and custom pages for the Developer Experience.
