Site Configuration Guide

This document is a great example of how a wiki page can serve as an FAQ, training, or instruction document for just about anything.  The beauty of using a wiki is you can update it anytime and it is immediately current.  Plus, you can involve others (if you want) in updating and creating the document.

Configure your site

The first decision to make is if you want your site to be public or private.  Public allows anyone to browse your group but a reader must register in order to contribute.  Private sites are invite only and the content cannot be searched or viewed by anyone without an invitation.

You can customize these permissions under the "Site settings" tab at the top of the main page and click on "Privacy and access permissions".

As you can see, there are many other things you can change from this page including:

• The name and description of your site
• Customize the site appearance - you can pick from one of our color themes for your site or add you own HTML to the header
• Announcement - this is where you can add an announcement that everyone who logs into the site will see.  You can add HTML and widgets in here as well and change it as often as you like
• Customer web address - you can change the URL address of your site here
• Tag training - this is where you can train the software to focus on the tags and relationships that apply specifically to your group
• Enable available features - everything is turned on for your trial, but you can turn-off files and email integration if you like
• Customize site terminology - you can change the way the site names things.  For example, you can call Groups something else like Forums
• Manage members - this is where you manage your users and their roles
• Invite new Members - this is one of the many places you can use to invite new members

Add Content

You may want to add content to your site before you invite users.  This gives them something to respond to versus a blank slate.  You can add content by adding wiki pages like this one, emailing content into the site, or add files to the site (upload directly, attach to discussions, or add through email).

At this point, you can also delete the "Getting Started" group you are in now if you like.  Deleting groups and their associated content is easy.  Click on the group from the main page, click "Group settings" at the top of the group page, and then click on "Delete this group".

Invite users

Now that your site is ready, you should invite some users.  You can click on the action "Invite new members" from the home page or in "Site settings."

Once you are in the invite members page, simply type or paste the emails of the people you want to invite into the top box.  The email addresses should be separaed by commas.  You can personalize the welcome message to these users and then hit the "Invite members" button; it is that easy.

Train Your Tags

Auto tagging is one of the most unique features of GroupSwim.  As you type a discussion, create a wiki page, email content into the site, or upload a document, the software reads what you write and suggests or adds tags.  Our software is really good at guessing, but the more you teach it, the better it will do.  This is important as it allows you and your users to categorize the information you put into GroupSwim with great accuracy.  This makes search and discovery of infomation in the future a snap.  You can train tags in 2 places.

1. You can add preferred tags when you click on tags from the tag cloud on the main page or even within a discussion or wiki page. 

Once you are on the tag browse page,  you will see the action "Make this a preferred tag".

This prioritizes this tag for the software. The next thing you can do is add some definition to the tag.  You can tell the software if the tag is an abbreviation of something, if it is the same as other words, etc.  This really helps when you or your users search in the future.  The definition link is right under the preferred tag link above.

2. You can perform tag training from the "Site settings" tab on the main page.  Click on "Site settings", then click on "Tag training" and start training.  Each time you add tags, the software will also prompt you to add definition but you can skip this step you like.  Make sure to Save when you finish.

Set-up Email-In

The first step for turning on email-in is to enable it for the site:

Check the box to turn it on:

Now that you've turned it on for your site, you'll need to turn it on for each group where you want to use it.  Click into a group to turn it on (Welcome on the screen shot below):

 Then go into the group settings for the group:

Then go into the setting for email and web address:

Finally, turn it on for this group.  You can also see what the email address is for this particular group:

Each group in your site will have a unique email address.  The format is always [groupname].[yoursite]@mailgroupswim.com

The default for email-in is to allow managers only.  This means someone needs to be a group manager in order to email in to a group.  You can either go with this setting and make sure you promote anyone to manager of a group who you want to use it.

Or, you can change the setting for the site to allow anyone to email-in.  In this case, you'll need to go back into the site settings (see the first step up top).  Then, go into the privacy and permissions settings:

Finally, you'll need to chose the "Custom" option and change the "Post via email" setting to Group site members:

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.  Thanks.