Help

Discussion Forum Help

Subscribing and Posting to a Discussion Forum

To post to a Discussion Forum, you must first subscribe to the forum. To do this, find “My Subscriptions” under the Discussions Tab. This will provide you with a list of communities you may subscribe to.

You can choose to receive e-mail notifications daily in a digest form, in real time as they are posted, or you can opt out of receiving e-mail notifications altogether and just read the postings when you wish.

Legacy is a discussion forum subscription option which is real-time and presented in plain text format and allow you to reply from your email client using the standard email message functions "Reply" and "Reply All".

If at any point after joining a community you want to change your e-mail notification settings, roll your mouse over the Discussions tab at the top and click the My Subscriptions option from the drop down menu that will appear. From there you can change your settings.

Click “Save” at the bottom of the page.

Once you have subscribed you will find the community in your drop down list when you post a message.

Click on "Post a Message" under the Discussions tab; click Discussions in the Click 'n Go section, then click "Post a Message"	or click one of the Quick Post links in the Point & Post section.

Select the group you wish to post to, enter a descriptive subject, then enter your message using the WYSIWYG editor. Click send.

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Replying to a Posting

You may reply to a post from email or online. From the email you select the Reply to Discussion link on the right side. Online you select the Reply to Discussion link on the left side.

You have the option to reply to the sender directly, without adding your input to the discussion thread. We discourage this unless your response is truly private. Your answers and insight add to the robustness of the discussion forum.

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Attaching a File

To attach a file to your posting click Attach on the bottom left of the Post A Message window.

Click Browse, then select the file you wish up attach.

You can pick multiple files by clicking each "Browse" button. If you want more than 3 files in your document click "Add Another File".

Once you have selected your files click Upload File(s).

When the upload is complete you will see the file(s) listed under "Existing File(s)". Then click Next.

You must then add a title and may add a description and tags as needed. (See User Guide: Library Help: Sharing/Uploading a File)

Be sure to click Finish to return to your posting. (Finish means "Finished Attaching", not truly finished!)

Then click Send to send your posting with attachment.

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Find a Posting

Using those now familiar left and right hand links you may search for a posting.

Your options on searching are keyword, author, a range of dates when the posting was made or even the poster's email.

Don't forget to click the blue question mark for additional search tips.

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Email Options & Links

You can control notifications regarding Contact Requests, Community Invitations, Regular Messages and Comments so that you receive email from the various forums and study groups at the email of your choice. Or you can opt to have these messages left in your Online Community Inbox.

To update your Online Community notification preferences select My Privacy Settings (1) from the My Profile tab.

By default your Online Community notifications and messages are sent to your primary business email address. You may elect to have your notifications and messages sent to a different address or kept in the Online Community (2).

You may update the email address here that impacts notifications and messages only, not your profile. (If you wish to change your email address everywhere you update it through the My Profile page, via the "Update My Contact Information" link. This will change your email throughout the ACA Online Community, including your profile.)

You may select which items are sent to the notification address and which items remain in the Online Community (3).

Any items you do not have sent to your notification address will be in your My Inbox (4)area of the Online Community

You must scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save". Otherwise your changes will be lost.

For e-mail from communities and their respective forums, you can select your e-mail preferences when you join each community.

Your email will be a great gateway to the Online Community. Below is a guide to the various links within the email you will receive:

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Signature

You may edit the signature that is attached to your messages created in the Online Community. The default fields included will be:

First Name
Last Name
Designation(s)
Job Title
Company Name
City
State
Telephone

The additional fields you may select to include are:

Email Address
Second Phone Number
Country

You may also add any additional information you wish by typing it in the Signature box.

Click "Save" when you have the signature formatted as you wish.

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Viewing Options - Thread vs. Date

Have you been missing the option to browse the discussion forums for interesting threads? We are very happy to announce that a new beta version of thread view functionality is available on the online community. You can now choose between a chronological view of discussions, or a view by thread topic.

This issue has been a hot topic for many of our members. After much discussion we decided that getting this functionality to you in beta form was better than waiting for the official release. Please give us your candid feedback on what is great, what isn’t and if you see anything that might be a bug.

In the thread view you will see the thread subject, the number of replies each thread has had posted as well as when the last post was made within that thread. The default is listing from most recent reply to oldest reply, but you can reorder the list by thread subject or number of replies. As with the other pages you can select to display 10, 25 or 50 entries.

Clicking on any thread topic will take you to that thread, where you can browse through the original posting and all the responses. Clicking on the name of the member who last posted opens a Reply window so that you can reply directly to them.

If you prefer the chronological view you may switch back and forth via a toggle labeled “View Postings by Date”. Please contact Arlene Moss at arlenem@acaplanners.org if you have any questions or feedback.

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