The Socialcast team is proud to introduce the highly anticipated ‘Share’ and ‘Skills Finder’ feature this month. We are also continuing to enhance our External Contributor feature from both a usability and administrative perspective. Read more about our updates for January* below:
1. Share
Interesting or important posts within the Stream can stir up lots of conversation, and sometimes you may want to continue that dialogue amongst a different network of colleagues, such as your followers, a specific group, or an individual.
With our new “Share” feature, users can now share a message already in their Socialcast community with their Colleagues (followers), a Group, or in a Private Message. This feature allows you to add a personalized message to a shared post, while maintaining all the relevant information in the original post such as the text, links, and attachments. You can continue @-mentioning people and groups by commenting on a post, but Share allows you to branch off into a separate conversation and reach a broader audience.
To share a message, simply click on the “Share” link below the post, where you would normally Like or Comment on a message. Any post that doesn’t have the “Share” option means that message type is not currently supported for sharing; however, we will be adding and iterating this feature over time so it may be available in the near future.
To learn more about his feature, please visit our Developers site here.
Note: Viewing shared messages on mobile devices is supported on Android 3.2 and iOS 3.5.2, our two latest releases.
2. Skills Finder
One of the key strengths of Socialcast is the ability to tap into the collective knowledge and expertise of the organization. We are working towards improving how we surface the skill set and expertise of individuals and in our first phase, we are introducing Skills. Skills are defined by administrators. Users can choose Skills to add to their profile from the admin-defined list.
Admins can define Skills and Skills Categories by going to Admin Settings > Setup > Profile Fields > ‘Add a new skill’. Input the category (e.g. Education) and optionally provide a description. Click Save.
Add values for that Skill category (e.g. ‘Bachelors of Science’, ‘Masters of Science’ etc.), hitting enter after each skill. Once you click Save, these skills will be available to all users in your community.
Users can edit their profile and pick values from the predefined list under the Skills section. This Skills will appear on the right-hand side of the user’s profile, under the ‘About’ section.
Community members can now search for people within their community based on a specific skill. Simply type the skill that you’re searching for in the Search Bar, and click the Skill from the suggestion drop-down. The Search Results page will return all people that have that Skill.
Administrators can also export Skills (in CSV format) to get an idea of the skills distribution for the entire community. To export, go to Admin Settings > Community Management > Import/Export > Skills Export > Request Export.
3. Why Am I Seeing This Message?
In an effort to better explain to our users how we populate their Home Stream, we have added a new option under the settings gear for all posts. The option labeled “Why am i seeing this message?” will show a dialog that describes the relationship the user has with the message. It will indicate specific users and groups based on the following relationships:
- You posted, commented on, or were mentioned in the discussion
- Users you follow
- Groups you are a member of
External Contributor Updates
4. Home Stream for External Contributors
As we continue to improve the experience for External Contributors, we thought it would be important for them to have an aggregated Home Stream, where they can view all the messages from the External Contributor groups that they are members of. This Home Stream will not be their default view, but will be available to them by clicking on the new Streams button. This view will only show messages and comments for groups they are members of.
5. Expanded Permissions around External Contributors
This new setting enables easier collaboration for community members with External Contributors. Community Admins now have the option to extend the ability to create External-Facing Groups and invite External Contributors to those groups, to all members of the community. This removes the bottleneck of requiring an External Contributor Admin to manage these settings. To enable this feature, go to Admin Settings > Features > External Contributors > Permissions > ‘Allow community members to create and manage external contributor groups’
6. External Contributor User Export
Admins can now export External Contributor data by going to Admin Settings > Community Management > User Management > Filter: External Contributors > Export all users: CSV
This export produces an email with a link to a CSV file with the following fields of information:
- Name
- Role
- Status
- External Contributor Group Name
- Sponsor
- Invited Date
- Accepted Date
*Please note that On-Premise clients will receive these features in a future release.