Novi AMS





Create a Group in Novi AMS

So your community is almost ready and now you want to create groups and add your members. The best way to create groups and assign members is to first make the changes inside of Novi AMS.

You should know that as of now sync changes from Novi to your online community usually take place overnight. This applies to creating a group and adding people, on the other hand, minor changes such as updating someone’s profile or interests, can take place in about 5 minutes.

Also, there is no ability to write back to Novi from the community. Any changes that you make in the community will not change in Novi.

To allow someone admin (Super User) privileges go to Admin> Organization> Manage Staff>

Look up the person's name, add it and change their permissions to Super User. The staff member should log out and log back in for changes to take place.

Go to Admin> Organization> List All Groups to see all groups coming from Novi.

This list contains all groups: including ones that are marked as Deleted. This provides the opportunity to Undelete them to re-enable them in the system.

You may see some random names or cryptic names which may serve a purpose in Novi but don't apply to the community. If you don’t want them to be visible go to the group’s profile and make sure it is set to Delete- Yes and Allow Finding-No. Default is set to Delete: Yes. Change to No if you want to undelete.  

If Allow finding is set to Yes, the group will be visible for members in Find Groups to Join.

You have the opportunity to change these settings in your group’s profile.

Group>Update Profile> General Tab

  1. Parent Group- assign a parent group and this will become a subgroup.
  2. Group Name
  3. Group Description- add a mission statement, instructions, or what your group is about.
  4. Vanity URL- Find your group at this URL
  5. Vanity Email- your members can create a post by emailing to this address, so make it something easy to remember  The important part is that you match the subdomain of the community. For example mygroup@connect.sengii.com 
  6. Background Image
  7. Group type- will automatically be committee, it is recommended to leave as is.
  8. Special handling- Open forum will add all members. .The option Main Forum type makes it the default group. For interest groups set to normal.
  9. Delete - No to make the group visible.
  10. Allow Finding- Yes to show group in Groups to Join.

Access Tab

  1. Group Discussion Approval- Set someone to approve or reject posts before they are live.
  2. Moderator- type the name or names of people to approve posts.
  3. Teaser Options, 4. View Options and 5. Show Member/Leader Tabs- Here you have the option to go Public: allows anyone to see the homepage of the community and post titles but cannot access any content without login credentials.  Private: only approved members. Or Members Only for a closed group.

      6.  Join Options- for a private group set to closed so no one can join.

      7.  Asset Protection- Public, private or members only. For private they will have to login to access these.

     8.  Require Opt in for emails- If set to Yes, the system will send an invitation to the user to receive emails. For example, if  you add a lot  of people in one group maybe some don’t want to receive emails so sending an invitation is the way to go.

Usually you want to set No because if the user signs up for a committee or special interest group they are expecting to receive emails about it. Also if you want to gain a lot of traction or engagement turn off opt in requirement.

9. Auto Send Invites-  Set to yes if you are requiring opt in for emails. This way members will receive invitations automatically.

Because opt in is required if you switch it to No it will opt everyone out. To see the group’s roster go to the left menu> Manage Group> Roster

Usually you want to opt everyone in and set a digest. Immediate emails are best for people who are expecting your email; daily digest are for people who may not be expecting emails and may not want to receive too many; weekly digest is more for users to set for themselves if they feel they are receiving too many emails..

An option we have for Novi customers is the Add only for the roster sync.

Again if you want people to fluidly join through the community again is not able to write that back to novi.

In order to work go to legacy and select ADD only

Contributions Tab set permissions on who can post different resources in the group.

  1. Discussion Options: Anyone, members only or group owner only.
  2. News Updates: Public, private or association members.
  3. Event Updates: Public, private or association members.
  4. Link Updates: Public, private or association members.
  5. Resource Updates: Post or manage group resources.
  6. Archive attachments as resources:  Do you want every (document, picture, video) attachment in to be saved under resources?
  7. Enable Feedback: Allow members to leave feedback.

In the Content tab, import the RSS feed to automatically update news and events directly from a website. You can also manage advertisements or custom content on different sections of the site.

Going back to the group’s profile page, you have different tabs to add and organize your content

  • News can be manually entered or automatically with an rss feed.
  • See all members that belong to that group, by clicking  the member tab,
  • Same as with news, Events can be added manually or through a feed. Both news and events will be shown in the user’s calendar.
  • Under Resources you can create folders and upload resources, like Youtube videos or other media. You can also add multiple attachments with Bulk Upload.

When creating posts, news or resources, the WYSIWYG editor easily allows you to attach media, multiple files and even translate.

If you insert a youtube link in the Link field, it will embed into the post.

The Legacy CRM code field is for support documents and attachments to be pulled within the ams itself. This support may end in the future.

Personal discussions can work in a few ways:

People can use the vanity email to send a discussion and create a new topic.

Or create on the web by going to Post New Discussion. Find Post Discussion on the homepage or in each group’s page.

  • Assign a Feature End Date to make your post the featured post, that is it will stick at the top of the list until that end date
  • Use the File Manager to add videos, pictures, YouTube links.
  • The Youtube Player can pull in any video from Youtube and embed into the post.
  • You can also edit the source code.
  • Drop in emoticon
  • There is also a Language translation button.

On the homepage, users can drag and drop the blocks to rearrange them, rename the titles of each section and change the color of the tabs.

You as an admin can click the Customize button to configure the home panels to a default for the community.

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