A community is a room with a profile that people can find and ask to join. It has the same members and messages as any other room. In the sidebar, go to Connect › Communities. You need to be signed in to see communities.
Find and join a community
Browse Discover or search by name or summary. Mine lists the communities you belong to. Open one to see its profile: name, summary, category, tags, member count and whether a person, company or organization runs it.
What you can do next depends on the community:
| Joining | What happens |
|---|---|
| Open to join | Choose Join community to become a member straight away. If the room’s access review finds resources you can’t read, joining is blocked until that’s resolved. |
| Request to join | Add a note if you like, then choose Request to join. An owner or admin reviews your request. |
| Invitation only | You can’t join on your own. An owner or admin has to invite you. |
Once you are a member, Open room takes you to the messages and resources.
Start a community
Open the form
Go to Connect › Communities and choose Start a community.
Name it
Enter a Name. Sureshake suggests a Handle from it, which becomes the address
/communities/your-handle. A handle must be unique and use at least 3 lowercase letters, digits or hyphens.Describe it
Add a Summary, a Category and comma-separated Tags so people can find it.
Choose who can find and join it
Set Discovery, Joining and Member list. New communities default to discoverable, request to join and members only.
Create it
Choose Start community. You become the owner, and you can change these settings later.
Who can find it
| Discovery | Who can see the profile |
|---|---|
| Private (members only) | Members only. To anyone else, the handle looks as if it doesn’t exist. |
| Unlisted (link only) | Anyone signed in who has the link. It isn’t listed in Discover. |
| Discoverable (signed-in users) | Anyone signed in, through Discover. |
| Public profile | Today this works like Discoverable: people still need to be signed in. |
Open to join works only in rooms that use private security mode, which is the default for a new community.
Manage a community
Owners and admins see Community settings on the community page. From there you can change the handle, summary, category, tags, discovery, joining and member list setting.
Everything else, such as members and invitations, is handled in the room itself. To close it, open the room and choose Close room. A closed community disappears from Discover and Mine, and Reopen room brings it back.