Intro to Admin Panels and Features in the Admin Console

Overview

The following categories make up the admin console: Site, Content, Users & Groups, Analytics, and Plugins. We organize this section in descending order of the categories displayed in the admin console UI. This section is not all-encompassing. Other sections will cover menu items not discussed here.

Navigating to the Admin Console

• The admin link on the user Avatar drop-down: Administration and Moderation options display depending on group memberships and permissions. We won't walk through every control panel in this session, but we will touch on the important ones. The doc site contains descriptions and setting guidance for all the panels/menus.
• Composition of the Admin page: Dashboards, left-side navigation prompts, license button (if you have the site owner role granted). We break down the admin console in to categories with menus and sub-menus.

SITE

General Menu

• Site > General > Settings page:
  • Site Privacy: Note the Public/Private selection and keep in mind the earlier discussion on how this affects registration and access to the site. You should keep the staging site private. The production site should be private until launch.
  • General Settings Page: You can name your site, manage the company logo and favicon, select the editor and the site-wide default language option.
  • The REST API Status: Can control what groups of users can make use of the API. We will cover this in more detail in the configuration and permissions training.

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NOTE:

Set the status of The REST API Status to Enabled to allow access to REST web services such as analytics and other capabilities.

• Site > General > Navigation: You can make changes to the default values for the number of discussion threads shown in a space before pagination and default sorting options for content.
• Site > General > Custom Header & Footer: Place where you can apply CSS overrides for basic changes to the site UI, changing colors, fonts, some styling elements.

Layout Menu

• Site > Layout > Manage Themes: The theme controls the UI appearance and template layout. Customers can develop their own themes, and they can upload and select these on this page.
• Site > Layout > Theme Variations: This page allows toggling between Facebook style "Likes" for voting or stack overflow style "Up/Down" voting.
• Site > Layout > Manage Static pages: You can create static pages for use in your community. These do not have to follow the standard content templates and provide a great way to include custom content. You will need to include links to these pages within your navigation in the theme, through custom header/footer or Custom Web Panels.
• Site > Layout > Manage Static Pages: You can use the static pages for About, FAQ, Contact and Privacy pages.
• Site > Layout > Customer Web Panels and Display: These allow you to create custom web panels that target containers above and below the main content feed, or above and below the right column area. There are four possible locations per space. The Display Options menu allows you to select a Custom Web Panel and apply it to a space. You can even set the web panel to be specific to logged in users or just anonymously browsing. For example, you could have a panel on the home page that outlines the benefits of registering on the community and becoming a member. You can configure this to only display to users who are not logged in (anonymous users).

Notifications Menu

• Site > Notifications > Default settings: When you configure outgoing email and make it active, these are the community wide settings that define the conditions under which email notifications will be sent out. Remember that each user can override the defaults through their preferences page shown during the user-facing frontend overview. We provide more depth during configuration & permissions training.
• Site > Notifications > Site Notifications: This feature allows you to craft simple text messages which have a programmed start and end date. Once activated, they will display on the site during the scheduled period. This works great to announce new products at a scheduled time, or to advise of site maintenance work, upcoming events, etc.
• Site > Notifications > Outgoing email: You need to configure this and test it as a priority since it enables notifications, account verification, and password reset email communications to users. The settings for outgoing email are configurable & testable.
• Site > Notifications > Incoming email: Allows you to configure email aliases to post structured emails to the community as new content. It also allows replies to notifications to post back to the community. Mapping allows an email alias to map to a particular space. There is more depth on this in the configuration & permissions training.

CONTENT

• Content > Site Structure > Spaces: Create and edit spaces to manage the structure of the site. This includes child spaces, space description and image, advanced settings to hide the space from navigation and to hide the content from feeds, and weight which sets the order it appears on the pulldown list. If you enable the SEO plugin, a Meta Descriptions drop-down appears below the Advanced Settings drop-down, and displays additional meta data panels.
  • Content > Site Structure > Spaces > Select Space: The description text field creates static side panels to provide in-context guidance while using the community. You can change out the content to customize the tips presented.
• Content > Node Structure > General Settings: Panels in this section affect the types of attachments, the characteristics of the different content types such as min and max message lengths, whether you require topic tags, etc. You can create and manage Extended Properties (additional question fields) in this section. Idea Configuration and Idea Workflow are also under this menu. We'll dive deeper in these areas during configuration and permissions training session.
• Content: We will cover the manage content page in moderation, along with spam protection found in the control section. More details discussed during content and moderation training.

USERS & GROUPS

• Users & Groups > Manage Users: This page shows all the users in the site. You can search by user name or email to find the user, you can reset passwords, place or remove the user in a group. You can create new users manually, or upload lists of users and during the upload, select one or more groups to place those users in. You can manage permissions on an individual user basis, but this is not recommended, as there is no auditing. We recommend managing permissions based on groups.
• Users & Groups > Manage Groups: There are five out-of-the-box groups in the system:
  • Anonymous: Provides permissions for those just browsing the site.
  • Users: The default group when you register.
  • Moderators: You have permission to manage users and content.
  • Super Users: This is for site administrators.
  • Network Administrators: You can manage plugins and licenses.

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TIP:

You can and should create additional groups. We discuss the kinds of groups your community will need and configure those during the Permissions and Configuration training.

• Users & Groups > Identified Experts: Panel for finding those who the system has identified as an expert or through manual identification in the user profile preferences. This sorts by reputation points in descending order. This ties to the expert system which we will delve deeper in to in the content and moderation training.
• Users & Groups > Users > Select Specific User > Wrench > Deactivate: Deactivated users cannot sign in and do not count in the user license. Internal sites with set user limits may wish to deactivate users who leave the community to free up the user license. There is an option to hide content from deactivated users. This is generally not a common practice.

ANALYTICS

Analytics: Site, Content and User are the sub-menus to see those specific types of analytics. Advanced analytics allows you to create a more tailored report based on several parameters. The type of parameters available to select from depend on the first parameter you select in the Data drop-down menu.

PLUGINS

Plugins: As you enable plugins, new admin panels will apply, and features will become available. For example, enabling the Ideation and Knowledge Base plugins will change what is available from the CREATE button. We will discuss more details for plugins during the config and permissions training. Note that you must be a member of the Network Administrator group to see the plugin control panel in the admin console under Plugins > Manage Plugins.

Next Steps

• You should begin thinking about how you want to organize your community with a limited number of spaces to expand, and a starting set of topics.
• You should think about who you will assign as moderators, who may be technical subject matter experts and, who will help answer questions and post expert articles.
• You should configure and test outgoing email and create user IDs for the rest of their your and begin trying out the site.