A forum is an area where your community members can share thoughts, ideas, or solutions. A forum maintains perpetual information in a structure that is contextually organized and easy to engage with.

WorkOutLoud forums are organized under “Groups”. A group is a community usual based on a special interest or a common need.  After the group, they are further “categorized” by the end user.  Enhanced search can be achieved by the further use of hashtags (#) to provide even more detailed context and organization.

Finally, your WorkOutLoud forum can be public, private, and/or moderated.  Your members can “rank” their value and up or down vote if applicable.

Forums offer a simple and great way for your customers to learn and share with each other.

Posting to forums

Post a question or idea

Posting a question or sharing an idea is simple and can be accomplished either on your “Feed” page or a group “Feed” page.

The entry fields are pretty self-explanatory.  Basically the question or idea is a topic “How do you do something?”

1. Add an optional description if applicable and your question needs further elaboration
2. Choose the “Group” to organize into (Your feed page only – if you are in a group, it already assumes you are posting to the group.  Note: You must be following a group to post to it.  You may have to first follow the group to post to it.
3. Categorize your post – you can either choose from the available list or simply  start typing how you want to categorize.  The system will help you by giving you available categories based on what you are typing.  If it doesn’t find a match for you, the system will simply add a new category based on your entry.
4. Click the “Post” button.  That’s it.

How your post is organized

As mentioned earlier.  Posts are organized as follows:

Group-->Category-->Topic

For searching purposed, posts are also organized by:

Category-->Topic-->Group

Finally, you can add user defined hashtags(#) to create even more nuanced searchability.  All hashtags are integrated into the common search bar option found at the top of the page.

Enhancing the searchability with forum categories

Categories are simple and powerful.  They are user defined – you can use an existing category or create a new one.  Below is an image that shows where you would add a new category (12 speeds) by entering into the category box and hitting the (+) sign.  Once added, it will show as the “12 Speed” blue button is showing.

Tagging your post with hashtags (#)

As depicted in the above image, simply adding a hashtag (#) in the content will further provide search options for your post.

Notification Flow

Email (or text) Notification

Once posts to the forum post is added, the system will now begin to notify interested parties.  There are several rules that are used that will get the new post (or reply) to the right people at the right time.  Typically by email, but also on the site, and possibly a text message to your phone if your implementation supports text messages.

Default notifications based on Group Rules – Based on the notification rules on your profile (Notification digest).  You will receive a communication either immediately, daily, or weekly.  This is the default option.

Category subscriptions – explicit subscription – Once categories exist, you can add “subscribe” to a category and receive immediate notifications regarding the post.  This includes all new posts (not replies).

Engagement based – auto subscription/Explicit subscription – You can further define your notification rule either by being the poster of the topic or replier to the topic.  Your “engagement” tells the system to communicate immediately to you based on any change to the topic “thread” (Topic+replies).  You can also manually subscribe to a topic without “engaging” simply by pressing the “Subscribe” button found to the right of the topic.

Response options

Reply in your feed – once you see the post either in your “Feed” or in the group, you can reply immediately.

Reply w/in your group – Same as posting a reply to your feed, except  that you reply in the group.

Reply via email – If you receive an email regarding the notification, simply “reply” to the email and a message will be sent to the system, and your reply will be recorded into the topic. 

PDF Version: https://win.workoutloud.com/Cloud/27303