Background

In December 2015, the Commons launched the first version of Social Paper (Beta), an exciting networked writing environment that enabled students to compose and share all forms of their written work across across courses, disciplines, institutions and academic terms. It was designed to solicit peer feedback, on both a paragraph by paragraph level, and on the paper as a whole.

It was challenging project to develop, and our development team did a great job to get it up and running.

But Social Paper did not gain the popularity we’d hoped for, and in April 2020 we removed it from our top level navigation. It was still functional, but we no longer surfaced it on our home page or encouraged its use. We still wanted to provide access to members with existing Social Papers.

Deprecation

In October 2022, the Commons officially deprecated Social Paper. Even though the functionality had been obfuscated for a couple years, logged in users could still create Social Papers via the “Create new” option on the WP Dashboard. We have now turned this option off, and will not allow papers to be created, annotated, or corrected. We do not have the bandwidth to maintain Social Paper, and it has proved to be a target for unwanted spam.

What Does This Mean To Old Social Papers?

Social Papers can still be viewed on a read-only basis. They can be accessed via a member’s profile or via a group’s library. Each Social Paper has a unique URL that can be shared.

If you want to make changes to a paper, please contact us at support@cunycommons.zendesk.com and we will discuss your options.

 

There are almost 2,000 groups on the Commons and the Groups Directory surfaces Commons groups by keyword, campus, purpose, and tags.

Filters narrow search results – they have an implicit “and” condition. However, both the Campus and Purpose filters allow you to pick more than one option. So within these filters there is an “or” condition.  So if you check “BMCC” and “Baruch” in the Campus filter and “Class Project” and “Committee” in the Purpose filter you will display all groups from BMCC OR Baruch AND with a class project OR committee purpose.

Search results can be sorted by last active, newest, and alphabetical.

If no filters are entered, you will see four “Featured” groups, followed by the last active groups on the Commons. Once a filter is applied, the “Featured Groups” section will not display.

To remove all filters, simply click on the “Reset” button.

If you are logged into the Commons, you can also:

  • filter search results by “My Groups” or the groups you follow
  • join a public group
  • ask to join a private group
  • use the convenient “Create a Group” hyperlink to create a group

Group metadata can be set up at group creation, or group admins can edit it by going to the group home page and selecting the “Manage” option.

 

If you want to embed a group discussion forum into a Site post or page, use the following shortcode, surrounded by “[” and “]:

group-forum slug="xxx" height="800"

where xxx is the group slug. For example in the group URL, https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/digital-humanities-initiative/. “digital-humanities-initiative” is the group slug. height is optional and defaults to 600. In the above example, the height is changed to 800.

If the group is public, the forum is embedded.

If the group is not public:

  • When logged out, you will see the following message: “To view this group forum, please login and ensure you are a member of the group.”
  • When logged in, but not a member of the group, you will see the following message if the group is private: “You do not have access to view this group forum. You can request membership to the group here.”
  • If the group is hidden, you will see the following message: “You do not have access to view this group forum. Please contact the site administrator to request access to the group.”

The embedded discussion forum is read only. To post a new topic or a reply to a topic on the forum, members can either log into the group or use reply-by-email.

After you clone a group, there are several things to do:

  • Choose an avatar for your group
  • Review its short link, and adjust as needed
  • Start adding members. By default, a cloned group has only yourself as a member.
  • By default, the discussion forum will be empty. You may want to begin the forum’s first topic. Maybe even make your first topic “sticky” (i.e. stick to the top of the list of all forum topics). See more about discussion forum settings.
  • Review Library Items to verify they are appropriate. Remove items that do not belong. Adjust Folder names, if needed. And new items as needed
    • Only items written by admins are carried over in the cloning process
    • Items are attributed to original author
    • Your fellow admins will be notified by email that the group has been cloned. (Optionally, you can add them back as members of the cloned group.)
  • By default, the following settings are carried over from the original site. Review and change if necessary:
    • Email subscription settings
    • Permissions for group invitations
    • Whether forum is enabled
    • Status (public, private, hidden)

If your group is associated with a site:

  • Review site name and description
  • Optionally, add a navigation item that links to the group. (A navigation link from your cloned group to the connected site is automatically added.)
  • Review privacy settings
  • If site was cloned, review menu to ensure everything is correct

 

 

A Connected Group + Site

The Commons makes it possible to create or clone a connected group and site in one process. This process is broken down in two steps: first a group is created or cloned and then a site is created or cloned, or if it already exists, attached. To find out more about Connected Group and Sites, click here.

Accessing The Creation Portal

To create or clone a site, you need to go to the Commons Creation Portal page. To get there go to the Commons home page (you need to be logged on) and click on the “Create an open space”.

 

All requests to create groups, sites and connected Group and Site are funneled through the Commons Content Creation Portal. Here you can easily see what each one does and select the option that is most appropriate. In this case, we want to create a Connected Group + Site, so click on the button circled below:

Creation Portal

 

 

Continue On To Create a New Group

 

The Details Tab

Group Name: This is the name of the group. This can always be changed, but please note that if the URL of your group will not change. The group URL will be formatted using the group name as you first entered it – https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/{original-group-name}

Group Description: The description will appear on the group front page. It can always be changed. It should be a succinct statement of purpose. If your group is public, it will be what users read and decide if they want to become a member.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the group, the Commons collects some basic data about it.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

Click on the Create Group And Continue button and you will be taken to the Setting tab.

 

Settings Tab

Group Privacy: You need to decide if your group should be public, private, or hidden. Click here to understand the implications.

Group Invitations: You need to decide who can invite members.

Email Subscription Defaults: When members join the group, what email notification setting should be the default? (This setting can be changed by the new member. See more about this here: Understanding Email Notifications)

 

Click on the Next Step button circled above to go to the Photo tab

Photo Tab

On this tab you can add a photo that will be displayed on the front page of your group. You will have an opportunity to crop the image to better fit the space.

Continue On To Clone An Existing Group

The Group Details Tab

Group Name: This is the name of the group. This can always be changed, but please note that if the URL of your group will not change. The group URL will be formatted using the group name as you first entered it – https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/{original-group-name}

Group Description: The description will appear on the group front page. It can always be changed. It should be a succinct statement of purpose. If your group is public, it will be what users read and decide if they want to become a member.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the group, the Commons collects some basic data about it.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

Click on the Clone Group button. Most settings from the cloned group will be applied to your new group

Step Two – Create or Clone the Connected Site

Now that the group is created, we go on to:

  • Create a New Site -OR-
  • Connect An Existing Site -OR-
  • Clone an Existing Site

Depending on your choice, the pathways diverge.

Create A New Site
Hidden content

Create a Group + Site

Site Domain: This is the web address of your site. Once your site is created, you cannot change it. It cannot contain spaces or special characters and must be in lower case. Sites on the Commons are subdomains and will have “.commons.gc.cuny.edu/” appended to them. If your domain name is already in use, you will receive a message to choose a different domain name. If you own or intend to buy a domain name, the Commons can map your site to that domain name.

Site Title: This can be anything you like and can be changed anytime using your WordPress Dashboard.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the site, the Commons collects basic data about it. By default, these field are populated with the value of your group’s metadata, but you can change them if you wish.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

Site License: All content should be licensed appropriately so that it can shared by others under conditions determined by the content creator. The Commons uses CreativeCommons licenses. The Creative Commons provides a variety of different licenses that affect whether others can use the content, modify the content(with or without attribution) or use the content for commercial purposes. The site creation process contains a wizard to help you select the correct license for your site. The default license allows content consumers to share or redistribute your content with or without modifications as long as they attribute the content to you and that it is shared for non-commercial purposes.

Site Privacy Options: Site privacy settings determine how visible/searchable your site will be. You can make it visible to the entire Web or confine access to a single individual as well as other options between these two extremes. Commonly, sites under construction are made visible only to admins, and then later opened up using different options.

 

Site Layout

The Commons offers Site Templates that are designed to get you up and running fast. These layouts are tailored for different purposes. If you don’t see a template that matches what you want to do, use the default template. It is a plain vanilla layout with no presets. In all cases, you are welcome to change to any themes installed on the Commons.

Group + Site User Roles

Also, do you want members of your group be able to post to the group site?

Click on the Finish Button and if you have filled out all the required fields, you will receive a success message, with a link to your new site and group, as well as a button to start inviting others to join your group and connected site.

Connect An Existing Site

If you choose to connect your group to an existing site, you must be an admin of the site and that site cannot be connected to another group. The sites you can connect are displayed in the dropdown. In the example below, “A Site For Teaching” is selected:

Clone An Existing Site

If you choose to “clone” an existing site, you need to be aware of the following:

  • To clone a site, you must be an admin of the site. If you are not an admin, contact the admin and ask for permission. S/he can either clone it for you, or make you a temporary admin and you can do the cloning.
  • All content (i.e. pages and posts) created by admins of the site will be copied over
  • Content created by non-admins (e.g. student work) will not be copied over
  • Admin content will be attributed to the original author, but original authors will not be automatically added as admins of the site. After the cloning process ends, you will be the only admin of the site. You can of course add add members (admins, authors, contributors, etc.) as you see fit.
  • Site theme, plugins, menus, settings will be copied over so that the site looks the same, although non-admin content will be missing
  • The cloned site will have a different URL
  • The cloned site will have a different name
  • The cloned site will have the same license as the original site, but may be changed after the cloning process, if needed.

In the example below, “A Site For Teaching” will be cloned and you will need to provide a new domain name and new site name:

After you click the “Finish” button, you will see the following:

Congratulations

Please note that althought you have successfully followed the steps to create a group and a connected site, there are a number of custom settings that are available. As an admin of the group, these can be accessed by clicking on Manage, circled below.

How To Manage A Group

Once you have created a group, you and whoever is also delegated to be an admin will see the “Manage” option in your group’s sidebar, circled below.

 

All the settings for your group can be adjusted here.

Details: Most of this information was what you entered initially on group creation. You can change it all here. There are three additional settings:

  • New Topic Email Address – You can start a new forum topic via email without being logged in. See more about Reply by Email.
  • Quick Links – CUNY.IS quick links make it easy for members to access your group. See more about Quick Links.
  • Notify group members of changes via email – if you make changes to the group infrastructure, do you want to notify your members?

Settings: These are the same options you set initially. These can be changed any time.

Photo: You can add a group avatar here or change it.

Members: Here you will see a list of your members. You can change their permissions or remove their membership. Click here for more information about group permission levels. Swamped? Delegate… Add additional admins to your group. Or add some group moderators. Admins will have the same permissions as you. Group moderators will be able to do a subset of the things you are allowed to do, including the ability to send announcements to the rest of the group.

Files: Members can upload and download files from your group. Here you can add file categories that provide convenient storage schemas. Think of them as your group file directories. Find out more about Files.

Group Site: If you have a site connected to your group, you can “uncouple” it, change its site privacy settings, or change member settings. If you don’t have a group site, you can add one here or couple it with an existing Commons site. Find out more about Group Sites.

 

Digital Research Tools: Digital Research Tools (DiRT) is a robust directory containing an ever-growing list of research tools, searchable by category or keyword. You can enable or disable this option here. Find out more about DiRT.

Forum: Here you decide whether or not your group should have a discussion forum. The default is yes. Find out more about Discussion Forums.

Social Media Accounts: Does your group have social media accounts? If so, you can add them here. Icons will appear on your group home page.

External Sites: Enter RSS feed URL’s for sites you would like to attach to this group. Any future posts on these sites will show on the group activity stream.

Delete: Here you can delete your group.

 

Getting Started

There are two ways to get started creating a group. In each case, you need to be logged on to the Commons.

  • First Way – On the Commons home page, click on “Create a new space“:
  • Second Way – On the main navigation bar, click on the “Groups” tab and then click the “Create a Group” button.

Either way you use, you will be taken the the Commons Creation Portal.

The Commons Creation Portal

All requests to create groups, sites and connected Group and Site are funneled through the Commons Content Creation Portal. Here you can easily see what each one does and select the option that is most appropriate. In this case, we want to create a group, so click on the button circled below:

 

Creation Portal

Once you click the Create a Group button, you should see the following screen:

 

Continue On To Create A New Group

The Details Tab

Group Name: This is the name of the group. This can always be changed, but please note that if changed, the URL of your group will not chnage. The group URL will be formatted using the group name – https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/{original-group-name}

Group Description: The description will appear on the group front page. It can always be changed. It should be a succinct statement of purpose. If your group is public, it will be what users read and decide if they want to become a member.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the group, the Commons collects some basic data about it.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

Click on the Create Group And Continue button and you will be taken to the Setting tab.

 

Settings Tab

Group Privacy: You need to decide if your group should be public, private, or hidden. Click here to understand the implications.

Group Invitations: You need to decide who can invite members.

Email Subscription Defaults: When members join the group, what email notification setting should be the default? (This setting can be changed by the new member. See more about this here: Understanding Email Notifications)

Click on the Next Step button circled above to go to the Photo tab

Photo Tab

On this tab you can add a photo that will be displayed on the front page of your group. You will have an opportunity to crop the image to better fit the space. This is not required.

Click on the Finish button, circled above, and you should see the Congratulations screen, with links to invite others to join, or to just go to the newly created group:

You have now created your group and you have a choice of two buttons: Invite Others to Join this Group or Go to Group.

Please note that you have successfully followed the steps to create your group, but that there are a number of custom settings that you should be aware of. As an admin of the group, these can be accessed by clicking on Manage, circled below.

Manage A Group

Continue On To Clone An Existing Group

If you have chosen to clone an existing group, you will see this screen:

The drop down will list all the groups you are an admin of. You must be an admin of the group you clone. After selecting a group, you should see this screen:

If the group has a connected site, you will be asked if you want to clone the site, create a new site, or neither.

You will need to provide an group name, description, and provide campus and purpose metadata.

Group Name: This is the name of the group. This can always be changed, but please note that if changed, the URL of your group will not chnage. The group URL will be formatted using the group name – https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/{original-group-name}

Group Description: The description will appear on the group front page. It can always be changed. It should be a succinct statement of purpose. If your group is public, it will be what users read and decide if they want to become a member.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the group, the Commons collects some basic data about it.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

The other cloned group settings will be copied from the original group.

Please note:

  • The admin cloning the group will be its only initial members. More can be added later.
  • Any other admins of the group will be notified by email that the group has been cloned.
  • Only Library items (files, docs, and external links) added by admins of the parent group will be copies over, retaining their original attribution.

Click on the Clone Group button.

Continue here if you have chosen to Clone the group’s connected site

If you have chosen to clone the group’s connected site, you will see the following:

On this screen you will need to provide the site domain and title and choose privacy options for the site as well as decide whether members of the site can post to it.

Continue here if you have chosen to create a new site connected to your cloned group

Create a new site for your cloned Group

 

If you create a new site for your cloned group, default options are filled in, but you can always overwrite them.

Site Domain: This is the web address of your site. Once your site is created, you cannot change it. It cannot contain spaces or special characters and must be in lower case. Sites on the Commons are subdomains and will have “.commons.gc.cuny.edu/” appended to them. If your domain name is already in use, you will receive a message to choose a different domain name. If you own or intend to buy a domain name, the Commons can map your site to that domain name.

Site Title: This can be anything you like and can be changed anytime using your WordPress Dashboard.

Metadata: In order to better understand the purpose of the site, the Commons collects basic data about it. By default, these field are populated with the value of your group’s metadata, but you can change them if you wish.

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • Is it for teaching? If so, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?

Site License: All content should be licensed appropriately so that it can shared by others under conditions determined by the content creator. The Commons uses CreativeCommons licenses. The Creative Commons provides a variety of different licenses that affect whether others can use the content, modify the content(with or without attribution) or use the content for commercial purposes. The site creation process contains a wizard to help you select the correct license for your site. The default license allows content consumers to share or redistribute your content with or without modifications as long as they attribute the content to you and that it is shared for non-commercial purposes.

Site Privacy Options: Site privacy settings determine how visible/searchable your site will be. You can make it visible to the entire Web or confine access to a single individual as well as other options between these two extremes. Commonly, sites under construction are made visible only to admins, and then later opened up using different options.

Site Templates: The Commons offers Site Templates that are designed to get you up and running fast. These layouts are tailored for different purposes. If you don’t see a template that matches what you want to do, use the default template. It is a plain vanilla layout with no presets. In all cases, you are welcome to change to any themes installed on the Commons.

Site Permissions: Do you want members of your group be able to post to the group site?

Click on the Finish Button to finalize your site creation.

If everything went as expected, you should receive a Congratulations:

Click on the Clean up button to clean up the process.

For more information, see Manage A Group.

 

Each time a member does something in a group, such as join the group, add an item to the Group Library or the add a topic or reply to a topic in the Discussion Forum, the action is added to the Group Activity stream and an email notification is generated.

Individual members of the group can choose how to “read” the particular group, that is, when should they be notified (if at all) when some activity takes place. Some settings are available on the group level, others pertain to all the groups a member belongs.

How Do You Want To “Read” This Group

Members can easily control how they get group email notifications. Go to your group, and click on Email options tab, highlighted below.

 

This same setting can be changed from the Group Page – you will see the current way you are reading the group and you can simply click on the “Change” button to switch to another of the five options.

Additionally, you can select what kind of activity you want to be notified about. This applies to all groups to which you belong.

To do this, go to your Commons Profile, and click on Settings, or simply hover over profile photo and select My Settings>>Notifications.  Here you can also set  Email Subscription Options (see above), on a group level.

 

A repository for group files, editable Docs, external links, and forum attachments, the group library centralizes member resources and allows them to be organized into folders and easily discovered by keyword searches or filtered by type and folder. Library items can be sorted by name, creator, and creation date.

A convenient “Collapse All/Expand All” feature provides a streamlined view of library items or a full view of items and available descriptions.

Items are added to the library through a common interface that simplifies categorization. An icon is attached to each item to identify its file type (e.g. PDF, Microsoft doc, JPG, Google Drive, Dropbox, or simply an external URL).

Group files and forum attachments are static and need to be downloaded; editable Docs and external links are dynamic and accessible by clicking their library URL.

Library file types:

Editable Docs

Editable Docs are collaborative documents that can be created and edited by all group members. Think of them like a group wiki.

Read More About Editable Docs

An editable Doc on the Commons is a document that all members of the group can collaborate on.  It has a robust change control feature lets you go back to various versions, if needed, and see who and when changes were made. It  inherits many features that are available for a WordPress post. - you can embed pictures and videos, use blockquotes, links, bullets, numbering and indentations. Like posts, some html tags are allowed, and an easy-to-use tool bar is available for common editing needs.

You can also embed some external content as well, as long as it does not require a plugin. For more help on embedding content from external sources, see Embedding content For Other Sites.

A URL is available for each Doc. If your group is private or hidden, these URLs will only be viewable by members of your group.

Creating an Editable Doc

Since editable Docs are items in the group library, they are created via the common Group Library Add interface by clicking the Add New Item button.

Doc Discussion

Each Doc has a discussion thread that can be used by all group members.  Often it is used to comment on a particular section of the Doc, or to track why certain changes were made.

Parenting

Some Docs may be hierarchical in nature, and may be assigned as parent or child. When child/parent relationships are established, links to the parent will appear at the bottom of the child doc, and links to children will appear at the bottom of the parent doc.

Doc Visibility

Docs in public groups are visible to everyone, even though only group members can edit them. If you want your Docs invisible to the public, make your group either private or hidden.

Please note - Folder titles are hidden until the Any Folder search field is clicked on. At that time, viewers can search within a folder.

Minor (Silent) Updates

When a group member creates an editable Doc, a notification is generated and depending on individual member email notification settings an email update notification may be sent. When a group member makes a change to a Doc, a change notification is generated as well, but there is an option to select "This is a Minor Change."  When this is checked, no notification is created. This is a great tool to use if the change is minor, and you don't want to jam up members' emails.

Read More About Group Email Notification Settings

Each time a member does something in a group, such as join the group, add an item to the Group Library or the add a topic or reply to a topic in the Discussion Forum, the action is added to the Group Activity stream and an email notification is generated.

Individual members of the group can choose how to “read” the particular group, that is, when should they be notified (if at all) when some activity takes place. Some settings are available on the group level, others pertain to all the groups a member belongs.

How Do You Want To “Read” This Group

Members can easily control how they get group email notifications. Go to your group, and click on Email options tab, highlighted below.

 

This same setting can be changed from the Group Page – you will see the current way you are reading the group and you can simply click on the “Change” button to switch to another of the five options.

Additionally, you can select what kind of activity you want to be notified about. This applies to all groups to which you belong.

To do this, go to your Commons Profile, and click on Settings, or simply hover over profile photo and select My Settings>>Notifications.  Here you can also set  Email Subscription Options (see above), on a group level.

 

Group Files

Your group very likely has static files that need to be shared. They might be PDFs, Microsoft documents, scanned forms, pictures, text files, etc.

Place your file in a folder to easily organize minutes, syllabi, forms, or assignments. All members of a group have the ability to add files and folder. Only members who upload a file and group admins can delete a specific file. If you want to update a file, you should first delete it, and then add it back again, or create a new version with an appropriate file name change.

Read More About File Uploads

Adding A File To The Group Library

Since files are items in the group library, they are uploaded via the common Group Library Add interface by clicking the Add New Item button.

File Descriptions

When you upload a file, you can provide a 350 character description. This description is viewable in the group library if you click "Expand All." File Descriptions are totally optional.

Silent Upload

When a group member uploads a file, a change notification is generated and depending on individual member email notification settings an email update notification may be sent. If you don't want to jam up members' emails, you can always choose to select "Silent Upload." No notifications will be generated.

This is especially useful when uploading a large number of files, or when making small edits to existing files, and re-uploading them.

Read More About Group Email Notification Settings

Each time a member does something in a group, such as join the group, add an item to the Group Library or the add a topic or reply to a topic in the Discussion Forum, the action is added to the Group Activity stream and an email notification is generated.

Individual members of the group can choose how to “read” the particular group, that is, when should they be notified (if at all) when some activity takes place. Some settings are available on the group level, others pertain to all the groups a member belongs.

How Do You Want To “Read” This Group

Members can easily control how they get group email notifications. Go to your group, and click on Email options tab, highlighted below.

 

This same setting can be changed from the Group Page – you will see the current way you are reading the group and you can simply click on the “Change” button to switch to another of the five options.

Additionally, you can select what kind of activity you want to be notified about. This applies to all groups to which you belong.

To do this, go to your Commons Profile, and click on Settings, or simply hover over profile photo and select My Settings>>Notifications.  Here you can also set  Email Subscription Options (see above), on a group level.

 

External Links

Group members can share on-line resources by adding external links to the group library. Each external link has a name, an optional description, and a URL. Like other items in the library, they can optionally be organized in folders. No notifications are generated when an external link is created. External links cannot be updated. If you made a mistake, delete the link and re-create.

External links are especially useful when members share URLs to third party platforms such as:

  • Google Drive
  • Dropbox
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • Zoom
  • Skype
  • OERs
Read More About Adding An External Link To The Group Library

Since external links are items in the group library, they are uploaded via the common Group Library Add interface by clicking the Add New Item button.

Forum Attachments

The Discussion Forum is perhaps the most popular feature of a Commons group.  Members can discuss a wide range of topics and create long forum threads. Forum attachments can be created at the beginning of a topic, and at each subsequent comment.  These files can be many different types – they are uploaded to the group site when a member goes to “Attachments” and clicks on “Browse” and selects a file on an external drive.

Forum attachments are automatically added to the group library. They do not have a description, but they have a context – the discussion topic where they added. When you click on “Expand All” in the library item list, you will see a hyperlink to the topic context.

Read More About a Group's Discussion Forum

Perhaps the most used group tool is the Discussion Forum. In simple terms, someone starts a Forum Topic and others Reply to it. To post a new topic, either scroll down, past all your old topics, or simply click on “new Topic”:

You will see the following New Topic form. Provide a topic title and start typing your content.

Similar to WP posts, there are formatting tools are available to you and you have the option to switch from Visual to Text view, if you want to edit the HTML markup. You can embed images and videos, add links, block quotes, numbering, bullet points, and more.

Topic types can be normal or sticky. If you want a topic to “stick” to the top, your can make your topic sticky (see below).  Otherwise, the most recent topic is displayed at the beginning of a discussion forum. This is especially useful if you are using the Commons to teach a class. You may want to post important contact information and class links in one post, and make it easy for your students to find, and comment on if they need help. The sticky topic option is only available to admins of the group.

Members of a group can use email notification settings to determine how they are notified of new topics and replies.

If you want your group to be able to reply to your topic, leave the Topic Status as Open. If you want to close the topic, click “Close.” There are a number of other actions that are available if you are an admin of the group. See below:

Reply, Nested Reply, or Quote

All members of the group have the option to reply to the discussion topic, reply to a another member’s reply, or quote another member’s reply.

  • Reply – your reply will be displayed in at the bottom of the thread. Simply scroll down to the end of the topic and add your reply.
  • Nested Reply – your reply will be displayed (or “nested”) underneath the reply that it refers to. Scroll down to the reply you wish to reply to and click on “Reply”
  • Quote – your reply will appear at the bottom of the thread, but it will include a text box containing the reply you are referring to. This clarifies what your reply is about. To quote a reply, scroll up to the it and click on “Quote.” Then add your reply.

File attachments can be added at any point of the discussion thread. You can attach one or more files, and these will automatically be added as an item in the Group Library.

You can cross post a topic to other groups that you are a member of and that you have rights to post. See Post To Multiple Groups, highlighted above.

Reply by Email

Members do not have to be logged on the the Commons to reply to topics. Once they receive an email notification, they can reply using their email client. This is not available if you choose to receive notification “digests.” See email notification settings.

Read More About Reply By Email

 

You don’t need to “log on” to the Commons to respond to group email notifications.  Participate in group discussions by simply clicking Reply in your email client.  Our plugin Reply By Email takes care of the rest!

Respond to personal messages in the same way, and in both cases, you can attach files, and those files will be available to your group or friend.

You can even post a new topic via email.  Make sure you send from the email address shown in your Commons settings and use the group’s quick link appended by “@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu.”  For example, if the group’s quick link is cuny.is/omeka, post your topic to:  “cuny.is/omeka@groups.commons.gc.cuny.edu”.  The  subject line will become the new topic’s title. Depending upon your group’s email settings, your new topic can trigger notifications to group members.

A Few Caveats

  • When you receive a Commons email notification, you’ll notice the phrase “— Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to add a comment —“ (circled in red, above). Anything you type above this line will be part of the message posted to the forum, while everything below this line will be ignored But it is vital that the line itself be present in the reply. Reply By Email uses this info to route your reply back to the Commons. (Depending on your email client, when you hit reply, you might see additional address information added. Don’t worry – this will not be part of your response.)
  • You must reply using the same email address at which you received the notification – Reply By Email uses this as a way of matching you up with your Commons username. (Not an issue for most people, but it may affect those who have set up their email client with multiple email addresses.)
  • You can use Reply by Email to reply to discussion threads on group forums, to personal messages and @mentions, and to group announcements.
  • Attachments are allowed for group forum emails.  To attach a file, use the familiar method provided by your email client.  Our attachment size limit is 3MB. Keep in mind that you cannot attach files for daily or weekly group digest emails.
    You can also tell if attachments are allowed by checking the email footer:
  • You cannot use Reply by Email to reply to notification “digests,” Docs notifications (new docs, edited docs, new comments), group file uploads, group invites, or friendship requests.

See here for further technical details.

Post New Topics By Email

You can also post new topics by email by using the email address assigned to the group. The group email can be found here:

How to email the group:

  • Compose a new email from the same email address you registered with –[this address will be provided when you click the “?”]
  • Put the address, highlighted above, in the “To:” field of the email
  • The email subject will become the topic title

Download Individual Topic To CSV File

An admin of a group can download individual forum topics and their replies to a CSV file:

 

This is especially useful if you are using the discussion forum for teaching. You can sort the resulting spreadsheet by student to quantify participation in the topic.

 

 

 

 

Library Management – Folders

The group library can optionally be organized into folders. Mimicking computer file systems, items not assigned to a folder are found in “root” directory, and you can easily move them to whatever folder you choose.  You can have as many folders as you want, but only one root exists per library.  Unlike computer file systems, there is no sub folder functionality – that is, you cannot create a folder within another folder.

You can easily switch between folders from the main library page. Your folder names will appear at the top of the page, along with the number of files the folder contains:

 

You can also edit folders by clicking the edit “Manage Folders” hyperlink, highlighted above

 

Here you can add a new Folder, rename a folder, delete a folder and its files, or delete the folder but not its files. If you choose the last option, the orphaned files will revert back to the root directory.

 

 

In June, 2019, the Commons began to collect basic metadata for sites and groups to better understand how members are using the Commons and what their needs might be.

We will not share data entered here in aggregate with any third-parties. It will be used to inform our development process and to better surface Commons activity by community, discipline, and purpose. As part of that process, certain data entered to describe sites and groups may be publicly visible on the Commons.

Here are the fields we’d like to know about:

  • Is it for a certain campus or campuses?
  • What is the primary purpose? Choices are: Teaching, Committee, Conference, Department/Program/Center, Personal, Publication, Project, Portfolio, Working Group, Community of Interest, or Other
  • If it is for teaching, the Commons will add it to the “Courses” tab. We’d like to know:
    • What Disciplinary Cluster does in fall under? Choices are: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM, Professional, Other, Not Applicable
    • What Semester? (spring, fall, winter, summer)
    • What Year?
    • Does it use Open Educational Resources?

If your group was created before June, 2019 or if you want to update the metadata about your group, go to Manage on your dashboard.

Scroll down to the Campus and Primary Purpose and click on the text box to see drop down options. You can choose multiple campuses, but just one primary purpose.

 

If you choose “Teaching“, you will see the following additional fields concerning your course:

 

Click in the text box to reveal your choices. And remember to Save Changes.

If you have any questions, please contact us at Zendesk.

Once you have created a group, you and whoever is also delegated to be an admin will see the “Manage” option in your group’s sidebar, circled below.

 

All the settings for your group can be adjusted here.

Details: Most of this information was what you entered initially on group creation. You can change it all here. There are three additional settings:

  • New Topic Email Address – You can start a new forum topic via email without being logged in. See more about Reply by Email.
  • Quick Links – CUNY.IS quick links make it easy for members to access your group. See more about Quick Links.
  • Notify group members of changes via email – if you make changes to the group infrastructure, do you want to notify your members?

Settings: These are the same options you set initially. These can be changed any time.

Photo: You can add a group avatar here or change it.

Members: Here you will see a list of your members. You can change their permissions or remove their membership. Click here for more information about group permission levels. Swamped? Delegate… Add additional admins to your group. Or add some group moderators. Admins will have the same permissions as you. Group moderators will be able to do a subset of the things you are allowed to do, including the ability to send announcements to the rest of the group.

Files: Members can upload and download files from your group. Here you can add file categories that provide convenient storage schemas. Think of them as your group file directories. Find out more about Files.

Group Site: If you have a site connected to your group, you can “uncouple” it, change its site privacy settings, or change member settings. If you don’t have a group site, you can add one here or couple it with an existing Commons site. Find out more about Group Sites.

 

Digital Research Tools: Digital Research Tools (DiRT) is a robust directory containing an ever-growing list of research tools, searchable by category or keyword. You can enable or disable this option here. Find out more about DiRT.

Forum: Here you decide whether or not your group should have a discussion forum. The default is yes. Find out more about Discussion Forums.

Social Media Accounts: Does your group have social media accounts? If so, you can add them here. Icons will appear on your group home page.

External Sites: Enter RSS feed URL’s for sites you would like to attach to this group. Any future posts on these sites will show on the group activity stream.

Delete: Here you can delete your group.