Aurora: Start a discussion
From a Forum, members with appropriate permissions can start a discussion. Anonymous users can neither start a discussion nor comment on existing discussions. Note: Members must have Start discussions and new content permission to start a new discussion. Learn more about forum-specific permissions. To start a new discussion, view the below walkthrough: 1. On your Forum board, click Start a Discussion. 2. Enter a Title. 3. Enter the content for your discussion. 4. Use the editor tools to modify the look and feel of your content. 5. Let's take an example of adding an image. To add an image, you can either drag and drop the image directly to the editor window or click Insert Media drop-down. 6. Click From Computer to select an image from your computer. You can also upload image From Image URL. 7. You can also copy-paste the image. Use the re-size options to resize the image. 8. Add a Caption, if required. 9. Scroll down and click Attachments to attach a file to the discussion. Click the information icon to know more about the supported formats, maximum file size, and maximum number of attachments. 10. Add tags to categorise your content and make it more findable. 11. You can select from the available preset tags. The preset tags are configured in Community Settings for tags. 12. To add new tag, Click + Tag. 13. Enter the tag name. You can either add a new tag or select the existing tags based on your search text. 14. Click New tag "season" to add the tag. 15. Here, you can view the newly added tag. 16. Under SEO Content section, you can define search engine properties to attract more readers. 17. Here, you can view the last autosaved date and time of your content. Your content gets autosaved while creating the discussion. 18. Click Publish. 19. Now, you have successfully published your discussion to the respective forum. Here's an interactive tutorial https://www.iorad.com/player/1979272/Start-a-Discussion After you publish the discussion, other members can view and read the discussion in the respective forum. They can also like or reply to the discussion. In discussions, Moderators or members who post the first message in a discussion can mark one of the replies as an accepted solution. After a solution is accepted, the original message is marked as solved, and the reply is marked as a solution. Learn more about Accepted Solutions. Note: You can use markdown syntaxes while writing the content instead of formatting the text using toolbar options. Also, you can use other keyboard shortcuts to work quickly and efficiently. Learn more about keyboard shortcuts. While creating a discussion, the content added gets auto-saved in edit mode. Upon reloading the page, the content is auto-recovered and you can continue editing the discussion. Admins and members who started the discussion can add or remove tags. Learn more about tags. By default, members who started or replied to a discussion are auto-subscribed to the discussion. Learn more about following content. Admins can edit the forum information and set various forum-specific options such as enabling the Accepted Solutions, modifying the file attachment size, and so on. Learn more about forum settings. Edit Discussion Members who started the discussion and members with elevated permissions (Admins and Moderators) can edit the discussion whenever they find that the content needs to be updated. Note: Members must have the Edit own posts and Edit any posts permissions to edit their own posts and others' posts in the community. To edit a post: From the discussion page you want to edit, click the Settings icon > Edit. The discussion opens in an editor. Update the content and click Publish. Manage published discussions Members with elevated permissions (like admins and moderators) can perform a variety of content management tasks on published content. These tasks include: Move the post to another location on the community Delete the post Reject the post as spam Block new replies to the discussion Most of these tasks are available from the Options menu: Note: If you don’t see any of these menu options, you do not have the required permissions to perform these tasks. Related topics: Reply to posts Add tags to posts Report inappropriate content Set forum permissions Edit forum settings1.3KViewsSign in to react to this post6CommentsImprove solution display in topic layout
If a topic is solved then Atlas shows the reply marked as a solution right below the first message. But there's no UX element introducing this fact. It's just a text box following the topic start message with the only indicator that after that text box the same "Marked as solution" indicator is shown like further down in the thread. See example on the right. Can we please get a section / panel title for the solution list, e.g. either "X solutions" or "Showing solutions first" and also get a CSS class name for this PaneledItemList so customers can style this section differently.ViewsCommentAurora Upgrade Playbook
Getting Started What is Aurora? "Aurora is a game-changing update to the industry-leading Khoros Communities solution, with a set of transformative capabilities that make it easier to deliver an exceptional member experience." Aurora is the major upgrade for Khoros Communities (Classic). First released officially on July 31st, 2023, Aurora is a total transformation of our top-notch community platform. We've completely revamped it, utilizing cutting-edge technologies and adopting a modern headless architecture. We have intentionally bolstered Aurora with powerful APIs that provide flexibility and robustness. From the very beginning, we've focused on creating an exceptional user experience, designing it with mobile-friendliness, performance, SEO, and accessibility in mind. It's a fresh start with a foundation built for the future of online communities. Jump to Features. Discovery: Am I ready for Aurora? The first step is to determine your readiness for upgrading to Aurora. There is no rush to move from Classic as of 2024, so it is essential to review where you stand and what you need in order to upgrade successfully. Secondly, it's good to remember that any change to your community presents an opportunity to revisit what success means and how your community experience supports success today and in the future. With this in mind, we encourage you to challenge yourself at each step of planning and ask, "How does this align to and support our business goals?" Getting started Understand Your Goals: While Aurora improves drastically upon the day-to-day community design, admin configuration, moderation, and end-user experience, in evaluating your readiness to upgrade to Aurora, ask yourself: What are your plans for the community in the coming year? How do they align with your business goals & strategy? Do you require certain features or integrations to support your community strategy and day-to-day management? How do you use them? Do you use SSO authentication? How does the authentication process work? (You may need to gather this information from the team that manages SSO at your organization.) How long will it take to gather resources to help you in the upgrade to Aurora? Evaluate Customizations: As a best practice, customizations should be limited to those where there is a clear business value and no alternative feature. With this in mind, we recommend you evaluate existing customizations in line with your community goals, and as part of your upgrade plan, consider your path to sunset any customizations you use today that do not provide measurable value to the community experience and its success. You may have custom features today (like widgets, special pages, etc.)—many of these can now be replaced with Aurora's built-in features. Where you can, we recommend switching to Aurora's features. It will not only save you the cost and effort to rewrite those components using new Aurora development tools but also help maintain your technical debt to that which is absolutely required. You can refer to the feature table on available features in Aurora. If you need help in this step, reach out to your development team, development partner, and/or your Khoros account team for assistance. Scope Customizations: If upon completing evaluation of your existing customizations you identify key customizations you need to maintain when moving from Classic to Aurora, send a request to your Khoros account team to start the process on scoping the Aurora upgrade work and cost for updating your customizations. Structure Changes: The community structure informs the user path through community and supports their ability to find content relevant to their need. As best practice it should be reviewed annually or whenever a change occurs in community or the business (e.g., redesign, product/service changes, etc.) Simply upgrading to Aurora takes your community structure, content, and members as is. As part of your upgrade planning, we recommend that you review the effectiveness of your structure in its current form, identify opportunities to improve, and plan to implement those changes. Structure changes can be made in advance of an upgrade. In fact, we highly recommend that you identify any opportunities to make these changes ahead of time—it can only positively impact the existing experience. If you would like structure changes to be included as part of your Aurora upgrade, this requires a migration to be added to your upgrade scope, which is an additional cost. Please review this need and communicate to your Khoros account team. Consider Previewing Aurora: If you think you might be ready to upgrade to Aurora in the next few months, you can request a temporary Aurora Preview instance with your CSM. Read on for more info on Aurora Preview instance set up. Engage with Khoros: If you have questions, please ask in this forum: Community Aurora Discussions Aurora Upgrade Tasks Overview & Recommended Actions When a community is upgraded to Aurora, automated tasks run in the background to ensure the data from Classic is now supported in Aurora. Here is a run-down on how that works: Upgrade Task What happens in the upgrade? Required Actions for Khoros Customer Tags and Labels Tags and Labels both merge into "Tags" in Aurora. Similar to Labels in Classic, you can set pre-defined and freeform tags. Root-level labels and tags are carried forward as is, but reply-level tags are not. Pre-defined labels are carried forward and set in the Aurora admin as "pre-defined tags." If a particular Tag and Label have names identical to each other in Classic, these will merge into one collective tag in Aurora. Before Aurora upgrade, it is recommended (but optional) to clean up tags and labels as they will come over to Aurora as is when you upgrade your community. If you decide to clean up tags after the Aurora upgrade, you will still have the options to replace and remove tags. URL Redirects URLs to pages in Classic have 301 redirects automatically set to the corresponding pages in Aurora. None Images & Videos Images and videos are now associated with content in Aurora. Images and videos contained within galleries (and not attributed to content) will not be moved to Aurora, but all images and videos within content will be moved forward. User avatars are kept on the upgrade to Aurora. Any custom avatars collections in Assets within Studio are not moved forward into Aurora. If you plan to move forward your custom user avatars, save these assets. Once your stage community has upgraded to Aurora, upload your custom user avatars in Designer. Roles & Permissions All existing roles and permissions configurations will be moved forward to Aurora. None Community Settings (Nodes, Content, Users) All applicable community settings in Classic will be applied in Aurora automatically. Certain settings are not available in Aurora, so expect discrepancies between Classic and Aurora. None Ranks All ranks and existing criteria will be moved forward. The icons will not be moved forward, you will need to add icons back in Aurora. There are new options for visual styles in ranks for the customer to choose. Review ranks and set the new visual style for the ranks that you'd like after the upgrade. Badges All "live" badges and existing criteria and badge icons will be moved forward. Badges in the "Create" tab in Classic will not be moved forward. Badges will be unorganized and placed in a single set right after the upgrade. Badges can now be organized into "sets." Review badges and organize badges into newly created sets after the upgrade. Idea Statuses All predefined idea statuses are carried forward. Statuses will be unorganized and placed in a single set. Idea statuses can now be organized into "sets." Review idea statuses and organize them into newly created sets after the upgrade. Upgrade Process Overview During an Aurora upgrade project, you can expect these steps: Customer Preparation: Use your temporary Aurora Preview environment to configure and design your community. You can request that Khoros import your existing stage admin settings (Structure, Roles/Permissions, and Ranks are supported) to this environment. Upgrade Stage to Aurora: Once you kick off your project, your Stage environment is upgraded first, and Khoros moves your configurations over from your Aurora Preview environment. In this step, configure Stage with structure, ranks, designs, customizations, etc. Test and validate everything on this instance primarily. In this step, you no longer have access to your Aurora Preview instance. Important Note: You are no longer able to use Studio Self-Publish after Stage is upgraded. Testing Your Data in Aurora (optional): Khoros Services team sets up a special temporary environment for you to test your Aurora configurations & designs with a scrubbed (no PII) copy of your production data (with content & members). This step may not be available if you upgrade on your own or with a partner. Final Validation and Launch: After testing and approvals, your Classic Production environment is upgraded to Aurora. Upgrade tasks are run in the background to make your data compatible with Aurora. In this step, you perform final validation and testing for go-live. Completion and Cleanup: Once the upgrade is complete and validated, you have successfully upgraded to Aurora! Aurora Preview Environments Once you have an Aurora Preview instance set up, you can collaborate with your Khoros account team on steps you can take before your Aurora upgrade. We recommend starting to complete these tasks when you first gain access to your preview environment: Explore Aurora features and capabilities. Collect assets, style guide, and taxonomy from your brand. Once you have an admin account, begin to customize the look and feel using the Theme editor (colors, fonts, design). Set up the community structure and create test content as needed. Add badges & ranks, and adjust designs if necessary. Review and validate preset tags. Customize pages using the Page Templates builder (page layouts, widgets, text). Review roles and permissions, and test user access levels. Fine-tune miscellaneous settings such as Robots.txt and Content Settings. We are confident that you will become comfortable with using Admin and Designer tools as you progress through this list, but feel free to leverage the Aurora educational material in Atlas: Getting Started in Aurora. Features Feature Description Accessibility WCAG 2.1 AA VPAT (in progress) Admin & Permissions Content Features, Audit Logs, Roles & Permissions Analytics Dashboards, Reports, Bulk Data API, Analytics APIs Authentication Registration, Sign-In, MFA**, SSO (SAML, OAuth), Multi-Auth (multiple SSOs) Blogs Blog Posts, Content Workflow and Approval, Co-authoring & Contributors, Version History Developer Experience GraphQL APIs, SDK, GitHub, Metadata, Custom Components (Handlebars & React**), Endpoints, Custom Pages, Forms Events Events, Zoom Integration Follows & Notifications Follows, Notifications, Email Templates Forums, Threading & Comments Forums, Solutions, Replies, Comments, Likes, Deep Linking Gamification Ranks, Badges, Top Members Privacy Cookie Banner, Terms of Service, GDPR/CCPA Ideas Ideas, Statuses, Filtering, Reporting Inbox & Private Messaging Inbox, Private Messages, Broadcast KBs Articles, Content Workflow and Approval, Co-authoring & Contributors, Version History Localization** Localized Text, User/Node Settings, Navigation, Text Overrides, Localized Community Rich Media & Video Images, Videos Embed, Video Hosting/Streaming Message Editing & Posting RTE, Attachments, emojis, Embedly, Autosave Content Moderation Abuse/Content Reports, Spam Management, User Bans, Content Filters, Flood Controls, Moderation, DSA Site Structure & Navigation Community Structure, Header, Footer, Breadcrumbs, Hover Cards, Navigation Links, Featured Places & Content, Recent Top Content, Custom Text/HTML Designer Page Templates, Widgets, Theme Editor, Custom Fonts, Avatars, Design Language Elements Search Spotlight, Embedded Search, Auto-Suggest, Related Content SEO Page level SEO, Sitemap, Robots.txt Groups Groups (Open, Closed, Hidden), Group Membership SFDC Integration User Sync, Case Portal, Escalations Tags Preset, Freeform, Management of Tags, Tags Widgets User Profile & Settings User profile, settings **In development The improvements to community in Aurora help community managers easily manage the day-to-day community with low hassle, are more intuitive for building customizations in the community, and allow for greater extensibility to bring outside platforms closer to your Khoros community via integrations. To discover more, check out the following resources: Aurora 2024 Roadmap (Now, Next & Future) Getting Started in Aurora Aurora Release Notes Developer Documentation Frequently Asked Questions Am I able to migrate data into or within my community during an upgrade? In the scenario where you need to migrate another community into your community, it is an option to engage with Khoros Services for migration during your Aurora upgrade project. Consult with your account team to discuss further and define your requirements. Can I update my structure or do a re-structuring during my upgrade to Aurora? When you upgrade your community to Aurora, it will upgrade it 1 to 1. There is no need for a migration map as the upgrade process is not a migration. All content, members, structure, and settings remain in place as your community is upgraded. This means that if you need to move content around in your structure or do a re-structuring during an Aurora upgrade, it is recommended that you do this prior to the Aurora upgrade. If your restructuring is extensive, it may require a migration, which will require scoping with Khoros and additional cost. Will I retain access to Classic Community Analytics (also known as LSI - Lithium Social Intelligence)? After you upgrade to Aurora, you will have access only to Aurora Analytics (metrics definitions can be found here). Though you will no longer have access to Classic Community Analytics dashboards, up to 2 years of historical data will be available in the Aurora Analytics Dashboard. Also, Bulk Data API v3 is available in Aurora, so you will be able to continue usage of the API for your own internal analytics needs.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAbout Content permissions
You can adjust permissions related to content at the community, container (category & group), and board level. Some permissions are set to Deny by default while others are set to Grant by default. At the container level and the board level, permission defaults and role permissions are inherited from the parent level. In those cases, the Inherit button is displayed in green to indicate that the permission was set to Grant at the parent level or red to indicate that the permission was set to Deny at the parent level. As an admin, you can manage these permissions. To manage content-related permission defaults at the community level: Note: To manage this permission at a lower level, go to the [Place] Permissions page and edit the permission defaults for that level. To manage this permission for a particular role, go to the [Place] Permissions page at the desired level of the community and edit the permissions of the individual roles. Go to the Roles and Permissions page for the community. Beside Community Permissions Defaults, select Edit. Review permissions in the following areas: Blogs Content Events Ideas Knowledge Bases Select Deny or Grant as required. Unless you have specified different permissions for certain roles or levels below the community level (a category, group, or board), these selections affect all members of the community. Content permissions While Forum permissions are granted by the Content permissions, Blogs, Event Boards, Ideas boards, and Knowledge Bases have distinct permission sections for content type-specific tasks. The Content permissions are provided for general content access and tasks and relate to all content types. Follow the links in the table below to learn more about the tasks granted by these permissions. Permission Default Related permissions in content type sections Read discussions and content Grant Blogs: Read posts and Read comments Ideas: Read ideas and comments Reply to discussions and content Grant Blogs: Comment on posts Events: Comment on events Ideas: Comment on ideas Knowledge Bases: Comment on articles Start discussions and new content Grant Blogs: Start new posts Events: Post new events Ideas: Post new ideas Knowledge Bases: Create, edit, publish, and manage articles Edit own posts Deny Blogs: Edit own published posts Events: Edit own events Ideas: Manage ideas and comments Knowledge Bases: Edit own published articles Edit any post Deny Blogs: Edit any published post Events: Edit all events Ideas: Manage ideas and comments Knowledge Bases: Edit any published article Move content Deny Blogs: Manage any posts and Manage own posts Delete own post Deny Blogs: Manage own posts Events: Delete own events Knowledge Bases: Delete own articles Delete any post Deny Blogs: Manage any posts Events: Delete all events Ideas: Manage ideas and comments Upload file attachments Deny Embed external content Grant Turn on link hyperlinking Grant Use simple HTML in posts Grant Use advanced HTML in posts Deny Use full HTML in posts Deny Make content read only Deny Post read-only content Deny Bypass moderation Deny Blogs: Bypass comment moderation Events: Bypass comment moderation Ideas: Bypass moderation Knowledge Bases: Bypass comment moderation Related topics: About Aurora Community site structure About Aurora Content TypesViewsSign in to react to this postComments
Can't find members IP adress anymore since Aurora upgrade
Hi. Before the Aurora upgrade, we could see members IP adress in there profile to check the location. That was useful when we had a doubt about some post that could be either from a real member or a spammer (bot). Most of the time, when we saw that the IP adress was from India or Pakistan, as example, we blocked the profile for spam reason. Now with Aurora, I only can see IP adress in the Audit log section, in Settings, but we can't see all members we want there. I'd like if we could consult members IP adresses like it was in Forum Classic. 🙃ViewsCommentsAurora: Set forum permissions
In the community, you can set forum-specific permissions to control who can read, start, reply to, and manage discussions. At the community, category, group, and board levels, Aurora includes these forum-specific permissions: Read discussions and content: Members can read forum discussions. By default, this permission is granted to all community members. Start discussions and new content: Members can start a new discussion in a forum. By default, this permission is granted to all community members. Reply to discussions and content: Members can add replies to discussions. Also, members must have Edit own posts and Edit any posts permissions (common permissions for all the content types) to edit their own and other posts. This permission is recommended for Admins or Moderators and denied by default. Learn more about managing community permission defaults. You can modify these permissions at various levels or assign permissions based on role. We recommend not altering these permissions unless you have a particular scenario where you want to modify the default permissions for specific members. Let’s take an example in which you want to deny Start discussions and new content permission at the category level. This is granted by default at other community levels. In this scenario, the permission you set at category level overrides the default community permission. To modify permissions at a category-specific level: Note: To manage this permission at a lower level, go to the [Place] Permissions page for that forum and edit the permission defaults. Sign in to the community as an Admin. Open the Account menu and select Settings. Go to the Community Structure and select the category whose permissions you want to modify. Go to Category Permissions, and then select Edit next to the Category Permission Defaults. Scroll down to the Content section and set the permissions. Grant forum-specific permissions to a role Sign in to the community as an Admin. Open the Account menu and select Settings. Go to Users > Roles and Permissions. Use the place picker at the top left to select the desired place and level of the community (such as a specific forum) where you want to edit a role's permissions. Select Edit next to the role you want to assign a forum-specific permission. Scroll down to the Board (board level) and/or Content sections and set the permissions.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAbout Aurora Forums
Forums tap into the most basic level of human interaction: conversations or discussions. Khoros forums generate activity to keep people coming back and generate traffic in the community. This traffic creates a large base of content. Khoros offers features such as accepted solutions, likes, and Top Content widgets to surface the best content in a community. Using these features, you can identify the jewels of your customer network: your superusers. Generally, superusers are 1% of the community population who make communities work. They are your deepest advocates, product experts, and often your support problem solvers. Typically, superusers spend hours per day on a community. In fact, we’ve seen superusers who spend 40-50 hours a week in the community, primarily in the forums. Helping others, a natural passion for the community topics, and being part of the community are all important to superusers, but they also like recognition and rewards for their efforts with special ranks and privileges. The forum is the heart of your community and an essential place to start identifying superusers who play a key role in building your customer network. With forums, you are creating a social fabric. As part of your pre-launch process, you must discuss your forum strategy with your Community launch team. Generally, you can start out with a small number of forums in the community. You want forum traffic to be active and lively, and creating too many forums to start can dilute the activity and leave some of your forums looking abandoned. Most of your forums will be public, but you will most likely have some private boards as well. This can be useful for internal communication among employees, and also to allow select community members to communicate access to special areas. Here’s how a forum looks: From a forum, you can: Start a new discussion Search for a discussion Follow/unfollow the board Those with admin permissions have additional tasks they can perform related to the following: Forums Create a forum Delete a forum Set forum permissions Edit forum settings Discussions Delete a discussion Move a discussion Comments and Replies Comments and replies on posts About threaded replies and comments Block or allow comments and replies Move a comment or replyViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAurora: Edit forum settings
In the community, you can configure various options specific to forums. When you create a forum, the default options are set and you can modify the settings as required in Forum Settings. To configure forum settings: Sign in to the community as an Admin. Open the Account menu and click Settings. Go to the Community Structure and click the forum whose settings you want to configure. The Forum Settings page is displayed. To edit the forum's information, click Edit Info. In Content Features, you can edit the following options: Enable Accepted Solutions to have solutions in forum discussions. Learn more about Accepted Solutions. In the File Attachments section, click Edit to adjust the file attachment extensions you want to allow in the community, the maximum file size for each upload, and the maximum number of attachments per post. In the Forums section, enable SEO canonical URL overrides for discussions to override the SEO title, descriptions, and canonical URLs of the discussions. In the Media section, turn on or off the image uploads, video uploads, and embed external videos options. In the Tags section, you can enable community members to tag posts; choose whether to allow Preset tags, Freeform tags, or both; and enable the requirement that an author use at least one tag to publish content. Learn more about tag options. In Moderation, enable Spam management and set Content moderation defaults for the board.ViewsSign in to react to this postCommentsAurora: Create a forum
Forums are essentially conversations or discussions. To create a forum: Click the add icon at the community level where you want to add a forum. On the window, enter a Name and ID. The ID displays in the URL for the forum. 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 forum. In the Tags area, in the Tag types drop-down menu, select Preset and Freeform, Preset, or Freeform. Learn more about Tags here. (Optional) If you selected Preset and Freeform or Preset, in the Preset tags area, click + Tag to add the tags members can choose from. (Optional) Select the Require tags on posts checkbox if you want members to always add tags to content. Click Create. For more information, see About Forums.ViewsSign in to react to this postComments
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