Hi Everyone, we've just posted our May Product Round Tables. This month we want to talk about the YM Online Community.We'd love to hear your feedback if you're able to join us on May 24th or May 25th.

The topic for each session is the same, we just host multiple meetings to allow for more Admins to join in on the conversation. Please register for only 1 of the events.

In the meantime, if you'd like to get a conversation going, feel free to chime in on any of the following questions:

• Is your organization using it? If not, why?
• What features or functionality would you like to see added?
• How important is it to your Organization that you provide an online community for your members?
• Does your organization engage with its members regularly?

We'd love to hear any kind of feedback you're willing to share with us.

You can find the upcoming meetings here.

 

Great topic Chelsea!

We just started using the Online Community on March 2nd. Though it's gradually getting more activity, a common issue relates to not getting notifications when comments are made on a thread unless they come from the Forum where you can sign up for instant updates. Most people look at the interface and everything tells them at a "sensory" level that they should post to the feed. But only your connections will see your feed posts and only when logged in to the community with the exception being Ambassadors.

We'd love to see it work more like ASAE Collaborate where you could sign up for notifications and even get instant emails.

Great topic - we would like more notifications, especially when people post within a group. We would like some sort of auto opt-in functionality for groups. We engage with our members constantly but revert back to email because that's easy, everyone gets the message (in the email group), and we don't have to try to explain notifications, connections, feeds, etc.

Hi Chelsea,

As the others have mentioned, great topic! Honestly, I don’t think you’ll be able to go wrong with topics 😊 Below are responses to your questions, including feedback for the community.

• Is your organization using it? If not, why?
  Yes, my organization is using the online community.

• What features or functionality would you like to see added?
  1. An edit button. It would be great to edit a post instead of having to delete it and repost.
  2. When commenting on someone’s post, most folks would like to be able to write in paragraphs. Unfortunately, the way the system is now, when you hit “Enter” to start a new paragraph, the comment posts, which frustrates members. It would be great to enhance this by being able to press “Enter” to start a new paragraph.
  3. If I had a choice, I think I’d like to see the “Accounts & Settings” area linked to the “My Profile” tab OR added as its own tab in the menu bar. I get confused sometimes as to where to go to get this information and if I’m confused as an Admin, I’m sure my members are even more confused.
  4. I know that the online community is hard-coded in English, but if this can change so that translation widgets could do their thing for non-English-speaking folks, that would be helpful and increase member engagement.
  5. Auto opt-in functionality for groups, as was mentioned, would be super beneficial!
  6. If we are talking with Forums within Groups, I’d suggest the following:
     1. I understand having Forum Categories, but I think this causes too many clicks. A member has to click on “Forums”, then on the “Forum Category”, then on the actual thread they want to read. What about taking out the second step and removing the “Forum Category” altogether?
     2. I suggest making the “+ New Topic” more pronounced. It seems like it gets lost right now under the breadcrumbs, so maybe making it look like a button would help?
     3. Another suggestion due to confusion is actually replying to a message in a forum thread. Right now the default is a quick reply using a simple editor. However, when a member wants to use the full editor, it takes the member to another page where the original thread/message disappears. And this also asks for a subject? If you’re replying to a thread, why do we need to put in a new subject line? My suggestion is to make the full editor the default manner to reply to a message. This would eliminate the going to a new page (the thread disappearing), needing to create a new subject line, and would eliminate confusion between the functionalities of the simply vs. full text editor if the full text editor were the only option.
     4. In the threads, too, attachments are very small and easily missed. Can they be enlarged a bit?

• How important is it to your Organization that you provide an online community for your members? 
  Very important. We are an organization built on networking and connections. Our members are from various walks of life and backgrounds across the Western Hemisphere and the online community is crucial in helpful members continue to connect.

• Does your organization engage with its members regularly?
  We do the best we can with limited human capital resources. We model our engagement off of what has been done here with YM Unity by commenting with a welcome message as new members join the community.

Let me know if I can provide any additional feedback or clarifications! Thanks as always for being so open-minded and willing to take feedback!!

I'm late to the party, but I'd like to offer our organization's feedback.

Is your organization using it? If not, why?

It's slow going with our community members. Most frequent comments, it's confusing or I can't find the stuff I want. Since we admins also have a difficult time finding stuff, it's pretty difficult to wave a cheerleading banner to draw folks in.

What features or functionality would you like to see added?

I would like the Reply to a post feature to automatically bring up the full editor. Performance of the editors makes YM forums second rate IMO. Just now when I hit Reply here in this forum, I received a blank text box and clicked on Reply using full editor; which then brought up yet another blank text box with Switch to full editor underneath. So, a total of THREE CLICKS to reply to a simple forum post. This is just one of the things that discourages people from using our forums.

Additionally, if a person takes too long typing in a response to the reply window, it sometimes simply goes away into cyber netherland and nothing posts.

How important is it to your Organization that you provide an online community for your members?

VERY! This is the primary reason we chose YourMembership. Neither a members only listserv nor Facebook group for members reach all of our members. We would LOVE to see YM replace those, but it's not going to happen as long as the editors have so many problems.

Does your organization engage with its members regularly?

Yes, we do. Now we have THREE places to post everything - once to the Facebook group; once to the listserv at groups.io, and now in our Members Circle group forum. And then, to make members aware that we've made a post to the forum, we Message all members of the group sending a brief description and the direct link. It's the ONLY way we've found to make members aware that there has been a new post added to a forum in their Member's group.

Anita Crafton
NADOI