Managing a community

Communities are managed by the community managers, i.e. the managers of the associated community workspace. The basic management functions include:

o  inviting users to a community,

o  changing the community role,

o  changing the community admission policy,

o  removing members from a community,

o  removing the community as member from the community workspace, which also de­stroys the community.

For accessing a community you

•      click the icon  in the ‘Share’ column of the community workspace entry. This dis­plays the members of the community workspace including the community.

As a community manager you may now invite other users to the community by

•      selecting   Access    Invite Member  in the action menu of the community.

If you want to turn members of the community workspace into members of the community,

•      select these members by ticking the check boxes in front of the respective member en­tries and click  in the multi-selection toolbar or select  Edit    to Community  in the top menu. This action may change the access rights of the members concerned if their role as workspace member is different from the community role. Note that workspace ow­ners cannot be turned into commu­nity mem­bers this way; they have to be additionally invited as community members.

The info page of a community does by default not show its members for reasons of per­for­mance and privacy. Also, a com­munity is per default not accessible to its members, i.e. com­mu­nity mem­bers cannot open a community to view its list of members; this is reserved for the managers of the community work­space. As a community manager you may remove this re­striction by editing the com­mu­ni­ty member role to allow the ‘Open’ action (see 4.2.4 Defining and re-defining roles).

You can change the admission policy of a community by

•      selecting   Change    Properties  in the action menu of the community.

The community role, i.e. the role in which the community members access the community workspace, may be changed by

•      selecting   Access    Assign Role  in the action menu of the community or the commu­nity workspace and inviting the community in a different role.

Note that communities cannot become owners of the associated community workspaces.

You may remove members from a community by

•      first clicking on the community entry to have its members’ page displayed and

•      then selecting the community members to be removed by ticking the check boxes in front of their entries and clicking  in the multi-selection toolbar.

You may remove the whole community as member from a workspace by

•      selecting   Access    Remove  in the action menu of the community. This action also de­stroys the community. If the community has members, you are asked in the ‘Re­move Member’ form whether you prefer to remove all members from the community before deletion or to move them to the member group of the associated community workspace, i.e. make them members of this workspace in the community role.

Note that not only managers of the community workspace can remove the community from the workspace member group, but also members of the community workspace in the role Mem­ber.