General Settings

Learn about General Settings, Attachment Settings, Custom Node Metadata, Idea Configuration, and Idea Workflow.

Access from the Admin Console

Location: Content > Node Structure > General Settings

Overview

You can configure how users can interact with Questions, Comments, votes, and other content for your AnswerHub community.

Configure Settings for Different Nodes

There are five tabs to choose from on the General Settings page:

• Question Settings
• Comment Settings
• Vote Settings
• Articles
• Ideas

Remember to click SAVE CHANGES button after making changes

Configure Question Settings

We list the following checkboxes and text fields in the order displayed on the admin console:

• Enable Private Questions: This checkbox enables the community to use private and public questions. To make use of this feature, users must have the "switch privacy on own node" granted.

• Allow Editing After Answered: This checkbox allows users to edit their questions even after answers are provided. This is generally useful for most communities to allow this as the user posting the question may receive comments or answers that ask for clarifying details on their original question in order provide a best and complete answer. As a result, the user may wish to simply edit and update their question with these details. In rare cases, this box to could be unchecked if a community were having problems with users editing and changing context of their questions, or changing the question altogether after answers are provided. Some spammers will create reasonable content that will be answered, pass moderation review, and then they will come back and edit the question to incorporate the undesired content / links they want to promote.

• Allow editing minutes - If edited is allowed, a timeframe in minutes may be specified. This might reasonably by days or a week in many communities.

• Use relative time for dates (eg. 7 minutes ago): This checkbox uses a relative time for the time since a user added the Question instead of a simple date.

• Use original creation date instead of publication date: This checkbox uses the original date that a user created a Question instead of the date published.

• Min Characters in Title: The number you enter, sets the minimum number of characters allowed for a Question title.

• Max Characters in Title: The number you enter, sets the maximum number of characters allowed for a Question title.

• Question Body Required: This checkbox requires users to fill out the body of a question before they can post their Question.

• Min Characters in Question Body: The number you enter, sets the minimum number of characters allowed for a Question body.

• Min Topics: The number you enter, sets the minimum number of topics allowed for a Question. All Questions must have at least 1 topic.

• Max Topics: The number you enter, sets the maximum number of topics allowed for a Question. Consider a practical limit of 3-5, especially if your community is making use of the ask an expert feature and earned expertise. The system will award expert status upon a user providing a certain number of correct answers for a given topic within a period of time. Use of too many topics will reduce AnswerHub's ability to more accurately deduce the expertise of users as they may then become experts in too many topics. This will dilute the value of the ask an expert function in suggesting experts that are most likely to be able to answer the question.

• Regular Expression for Topics: The Java pattern that determines the regular expression that Topics must conform to; for example, the number of characters a Topic can have.

• Min Characters in Answer Body: The number you enter, sets the minimum number of characters allowed for an Answer body.

• Number of Allowed Accepted Answer Per Question: The number you enter, sets the total number of allowed accepted Answers per Question. Most communities allow one to create focus on the best answer or an official answer, but some communities may wish to allow multiple correct answers.

• Number of Answers per Page on Single Question View: The number you enter, sets the total number of Answers displayed per Question.

• Treat 'unanswered' as questions without accepted answers: This checkbox makes AnswerHub treat the unanswered Questions and Questions without accepted answers the same way in the UI when reviewing lists of unanswered questions.

• Exclude 'closed' items from unanswered lists: This checkbox makes AnswerHub leave closed Questions out of the unanswered Questions list.

• Auto Fill Question Space: This checkbox will autofill the Question space with Questions posted.

Configure Comment Settings

We list the following checkboxes and text fields in the order displayed on the admin console:

• Enable New Style Comments: This is a legacy feature and we will remove this in the near future.

• Comment Body Required: This is a legacy feature and we will remove this in the near future.

• Min Characters in Comment: This text field sets the minimum number of characters a user can enter for a Comment before posting.

• Max Characters in Comment: This text field sets the maximum number of characters a user can enter for a Comment before posting.

• Show All Comments: This checkbox ensures all Comments will show for content by default in an expanded form.

• Enable Threaded Comments: This checkbox creates a "reply" link on Comments, allowing users to reply to Comments.

• Collapsed Threads Format: This text field accepts comma separated numeric values. The first numeric value represents the first level of Comments initially seen by a user. The second value represents the sub-comments initially seen by a user. The third value represents another level of sub-comments initially seen by a user. All other Comments will automatically collapse.

Configure Vote Settings

There are two rows to configure votes in the Vote Settings tab.

• Users can vote on their own posts This determines whether AnswerHub will allow a user to give themselves an upvote. Generally this is not checked in most communities to avoid self promotion.

1. The first row allows users to vote on their own posts if you select the Users can vote on their own posts checkbox.
2. The second row sets the Amount of time until votes become unchangeable by entering in numeric values in the text fields for days, hours and minutes.

Configure Article Settings

• Alphabetical Nav Tree: This determines whether the dynamical navigation widget for articles that is generated by parent / child article relationships will be displayed in alphabetical order. This should be unchecked for most use cases.

• Enable Private: This checkbox enables articles to be managed as public / private. As with Questions, the Switch Privacy on Own Nodes permission must also be granted for users to make use of this feature. A possible use case would be for a space to be used only for articles (a knowledgebase) and a custom group created for the article contributor team and that group granted the switch privacy on own node permission. Members of this group could draft articles and mark and publish them as private and then once they completed peer review or finished updating the articles, they could be toggled to public so that the community could view them.

• Max Topics: This value sets the maximum number of topics that can be used per article. Articles could potentially have a higher or lower number of max topics than questions since the ask an expert and earned expertise features are not tied to articles.

• Min Body Length: This defines the minimum characters in the body of an article in order to publish.

• Min Title Length: Defines the minimum number of characters for an article to have a properly descriptive title

• Min Topics: Sets the minimum number of topics for articles. Note: all content must have at least 1 topic tag.

Configure Idea Settings

• Enable Private: Checking this box will allow users to create private ideas and to change their ideas from public to private. As with Questions and Articles, the Switch Privacy on Own Nodes permission must also be granted for users to make use of this feature.

• Max Topics: Allows the admin to configure the maximum number of topics an Idea may have. The number could be larger than used for questions since the expert system is not involved with Ideas, however over use of topics may make it more difficult for a product team to group ideas easily.

• Min Topics: Allows the admin to configure the minimum number of topics to include for an idea. As with Questions and Articles, all content requires at least one topic so the minimum will be 1 or greater.

Manage Extended Properties

The admin can create additional fields for Questions, Articles and Ideas for the user to populate when posting a question. These are very configurable and visibility to, and editing of the fields is configurable to support many use cases. Fields could be hidden from anonymous view on public communities, or visible only by users with certain roles which could allow an internal community team to make use of additional fields to add additional information that only they could see.

You can access QUESTION Extended Properties by clicking the MANAGE QUESTION PROPERTIES button on the right side of the page.
You can access IDEA Extended Properties by clicking the MANAGE IDEA PROPERTIES button on the right side of the page.
You can access ARTICLE Extended Properties by clicking the MANAGE KBENTRY PROPERTIES button on the right side of the page.

From the Question Extended Properties page you can perform the following actions:

• Create a New Property
• Enable or Disable a Property
• Edit a Property

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Naming Conventions for the Text Fields:

Names including dashes (-) will produce an error message. Thus, avoid using dashes for any names entered in the text fields.

Create a New Property

1. Click the CREATE NEW PROPERTY button.
2. Under the Main tab, fill in the following text fields:
   a. Name
   b. Label
   c. Weight (higher values "weigh more" and drop towards the bottom)
3. Under the Content tab, complete the following fields:
   a. Type: Select the data Type from the drop-down and whether to allow users to revert to previous versions by selecting the Versioned checkbox.
   The fields that display below the Type row, depend on the data Type selected. For example, if you select Simple Text, then you would select or fill out the subsequent fields. See below for a full list of available selections.
   b. Validation: Select the Validation checkbox if you want to require this extended property before allowing a user to post a Question.
   c. Minimum and Maximum Length: Enter the minimum and maximum characters allowed.
   The options for the Type drop-down menu to select the new extended property type are as follows:
4. Simple text: The system adds a field for a single line of text to the Question UI.

- If selected, the **Minimum length** and **Maximum length** fields display.
   - For **Minimum length**, enter the minimum characters a user can enter in this field.
   - For **Maximum length**, enter the maximum characters a user can enter in this field.

2. Multiline text: The system adds a field for multiple lines of text to the Question UI.

- If selected, the **Minimum length** and **Maximum length** fields display.
   - For **Minimum length**, enter the minimum characters a user can enter in this field.
   - For **Maximum length**, enter the maximum characters a user can enter in this field.

3. Number: The system adds a number field to the Question UI.

- If selected, the **Minimum length** and **Maximum length** fields display.
   - For **Minimum length**, enter the minimum characters a user can enter in this field.
   - For **Maximum length**, enter the maximum characters a user can enter in this field.

4. Date: The system adds a date field to the Question UI.
5. Boolean (true/false): The system adds a Boolean (true or false) checkbox to the Question UI.
6. Value selection: The system adds a single-selection drop-down menu to the Question UI.

- If selected, the **Selections** field displays. Enter the values that a user can select in this menu (one value per line).

7. Multiple Value selection: The system adds a multiple-selection drop-down menu to the Question UI.

- If selected, the **Selections** field displays. Enter the values that a user can select in this menu (one value per line).

4. Under the Security tab, you can specify who can view or modify the extended property as follows:
   a. Permissions to view field: Select either Deny, Must be logged in, or Must have role.
   b. Permissions to edit field: Select either Deny, Must be logged in, or Must have role.
   c. The options for the Permissions to view or edit a field are as follows:
   1. Deny: Users cannot view this field.
   2. Must be logged in: Only users who are logged in can view this field.
   3. Must have role: Only users with a specific role can view this field.

   - If selected, a second drop-down menu with a list of all of the permissions for your AnswerHub site displays.
   - Select the permission that a user must have to view this field.
   

Enable or Disable a Property

Select a property from the list of properties on the left-hand side navigation.

• Enable: Click the ENABLE button to display the new extended property as part of the required text fields to fill out before posting a Question.
• Disable: Click the DISABLE button to remove the new extended property from the required text fields to fill out before posting a Question.

Edit a Property

The edit button (pencil icon) is located in the top right corner of the extended property panel once you select an extended property. Selecting this icon will display the modal window that you saw earlier to create the extended property.