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Create a Community forum

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In Customer Service Community, a forum is a container of ideas and the entity where security boundaries are applied. The user who creates a forum automatically becomes the owner, and can assign community roles and membership in the forum, as well as other metadata, like categories and groups.

Create a forum

  1. On the left-side navigation panel, select Forum, and then select New.

    Create a new Community forum.

  2. Enter a Name, then select the Forum Settings and Website Settings you want to apply to the forum. Settings are managed by your administrator.

    Select forum and website settings.

  3. Select the Categories tab, and then select + New Category. Categories you define here will be available for end-users to select when they create a new idea in this forum.

    Select the Categories tab.

  4. Enter a Name for the category, and then select Save.

    Quick create details for a category.

  5. To add more categories, repeat steps 3 and 4 above.
  6. When you are finished, select Save and Close.
  7. Go to the Groups tab and select + New Group. The groups you define here will be available for end-users to select when they create a new idea in this forum.
  8. Enter a group name, and then select Save.
  9. To add more groups, repeat steps 7 and 8 above.
  10. Go to the Membership tab to add members to your forums. You'll see that you are already added as owner. The Membership tab is where you add forum owners and moderators.
  11. Select + New Forum Member.

    Select New Forum Member.

  12. In the Role dropdown menu, select Owner or Moderator, then in System User, search and select the user you want.
  13. Select Save.

    Save your settings for the new member.

  14. To add other owners or moderators, repeat steps 11-13.
  15. (Skip this step if your forum is public.) If your forum is private (for example, accessible to "by-invitation" members only), you'll need to add those individuals as contacts. Select + New Forum Member, select Member in Role, and then either search for the existing contact in Contact or add information for a new contact in Contact Email, Contact First Name, and Contact Last Name. Repeat this step to add all by-invitation members.

    Search for and select an existing contact or create a new one.

  16. To publish your forum to the web, go to the Web tab, and then select Yes in the Publish to web dropdown menu.

    Select Yes to publish to the web.

  17. Under the User Access Level, select the access level for your users in public forums. The default values are None for all three configurations. Important: For private forums, leave the default settings set to None.
    • Internal Authenticated Users: Select the access level for users who are authenticated with email domains specified by your admin.
    • External Authenticated Users: Select the access level for non-internal authenticated users.
    • Anonymous Users: Select the access level for non-authenticated users.
  18. Go to the Quick Links tab to define links that show to end-users in the forum. You can choose whether to include quick links that the admin added to the portal home page.
  19. To add a forum Quick Link, select + New Quick Link, and then enter the following values:
    • Display Label: Refers to how the link will be displayed in the portal.
    • URL: The webpage URL.
    • Description: An optional field where you can provide additional information to describe this link to users.
    • Group label: An optional field where you can specify the name of the group under which the link will be listed.

    Add a forum quick link.

See also

Community overview
Get started with Community
Content moderation and management
Create new websites in Community
Community FAQs