Joinup.

What is a community?

A community is a dedicated area in the platform for a group of users who share a common interest in a particular topic. The members of a community have the authorization use the community’s communication and collaboration tools to share and obtain information. A community can be open or closed:

• Closed Community: Users need to request membership, which is subject to approval by the Community Facilitator.
• Open Community: Users can become member without requiring approval.

Each open-source software (OSS) and semantic interoperability asset has its own community of users and developers, which is called a project. 

What is the difference between community "member" and community "facilitator"?

• A community member is a user registered on the platform who has the role ‘Member’ in the context a particular Community. Within her/his community, a member can publish content, and edit and delete her/his own contributions. He can also create, edit and delete user comments on content. A member can also highlight content. A member can leave a community.
• A Facilitator is a role that can be attributed to a user of the platform in the context of a particular community. It gives the user the responsibility and authorisations to manage the community membership (in case of a closed community) and to review the content that has been created within the community (highlights, forum topics, wiki page, news and blogs). In particular, a Facilitator can edit or delete content within the community, he can approve or reject membership requests, invite or remove members and authorise other members to become community facilitators.

What is displayed on this page?

On a community’s page, you can find the following:

• a list of the 3 latest news & blogs published or highlighted in this community;
• a list of the 3 latest topics published or highlighted in this community;
• a list of the 3 latest documents & wikis published or highlighted in this community;
• a list of the 3 latest members joining the community;
• a list of the 6 users who most recently became community facilitators and who manage the community.

Join a community

Who can join a community?

Any registered user of the platform can join a community.

How to join an Open community?

Joining an open community does not require any validation.  To join an open community:

1. Click on the "join this community" and confirm;
2. Once clicked and confirmed, you are a member of that community.
3. You will be redirected back to the community main page with your membership already activated.
4. You are now a member of the community. (See the green icon in the bottom left corner)

How to join a closed (Moderated) community?

Joining a closed (moderated) community requires a community facilitator to validate your request.   To join a closed community:

1. Navigate to the community you want to join:
2. Click  on the "Request membership";
3. Once clicked, you have to fill in the form requesting you to explain your motivation for joining the community;  
4. The community facilitator will be notified of your request and evaluate it;
5. The community facilitator will inform you about the approval.

Leave a community

Who can leave an open community?

In an open community, any members of this community can leave the community.

Who can leave a closed community?

In a closed community, only a community administrator can take away your membership;

How do I leave an open community?

1. Click on the Community that you are belonging to;
2. Click on "Leave Community" which should appear in the right column of every community you are a member of;
3. A confirmation note will be displayed. Confirm that you want to leave the community.
4. You will be redirected back to the main page of the community from which you have just unsubscribed yourself.
5. You are not a member of this community anymore. The green icon in the bottom left has disappeared.

How do I leave a closed (Moderated) community?

To leave a closed community, contact one of the community administrators and ask for being unsubscribed from the community. The list of the community administrators can be found on the "Members list" page.

How do I leave a community for which I am the owner?

As owner of a group, you have to contact the platform administrator to leave the community.
When requesting to be unsubscribed, you have to inform the platform administrator about the new owner.

How to rate a community?

Click on the stars next to the community title for rating the community. The rating levels vary from ‘Poor’ (1 star) to ‘Awesome’ (5 stars).

How to highlight a community?

1. Click on “highlight this Community" link in the right-hand menu;
2. A list of communities of which you are member is displayed;
3. Choose the communities [by checkboxes in front of them] where you want to highlight the Community and click on the "highlight content" button;
4. If the content has already been highlighted, either by you or by somebody else, the checkbox in front of the community's name is already checked;
5. If you want to remove the highlight, uncheck the check box in front of the community's name and click on the "highlight content" button.

Note: Once the community is highlighted, you can go on the page of the community (ies) you are a member of and find the highlighted community by clicking on the ‘Communities’ button in the left column of the page.

Please click here to know more about the Highlight functionality (?)

How to find other members of a community?

All community members have a public profile on the portal.

To view the list of other members of a community:

1. Click on ‘Member list’ in the left sub-menu.
2. You are now on the member list page of the community.
3. On this page, you can search for a specific name or sort the list using the drop down menu ‘Role’.
4. Did you find the member you were searching for? Simply click on the name and a ‘User Profile’ page will appear.

Note: The contribution of members and their level of involvement in their community are reflected in the amount of ‘Kudos’ they are given.

How to get involved in Community’s forum?

1. Click on "forums" in the left-hand menu;
2. At this point, you are in the list of pre-defined forums
3. Click on the forum for which you are interested in ; or
4. In case you don’t find a topic of your interest, you can introduce a new topic by clicking on the ‘Create a Forum Topic’ button at the right side of the page.

Click here (?) to know more about how to create a forum topic

How to create News Items in a community?

Share your own news with other community members by posting a news item.

1. Click on the "Create a news item" action, displayed in the right-hand side menu;
2. At this point you have to fill in the form to create the news item;
3. Once the form is filled in click the button “save”;
4. The news item is created and immediately visible within your community or project under the left sub menu item “News & Blog posts”.

Note:

• The maximum file size is 32 MB
• The following extensions are allowed: ‘pdf’, ‘doc’, ‘docx’, ‘odt’, ‘xls’, ‘xlsx’, ‘ods’, ‘ppt’, ‘zip’.

How to subscribe to the Community RSS feed?

Stay updated with all the latest content and posts in your communities by subscribing to the communities RSS feed.

You can find the ‘Subscribe to RSS’ button in the ‘communities’ main page.

Keep your community active!

Writing new blog posts and sharing documents with the community members is an excellent way of keeping your community members interested in the community. Other ways for keeping your community active are:

• Organize a workshop
• Highlight the most relevant content (?)
• Highlight cases using the Blog tool
• Promote RSS Feed subscription

The community administration team maintains the right to remove any inactive community from the portal (new content being: blog posts, community news, events, shared documents).