Discussion Categories
by Douglas Cook on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 7:37am
Listed in:
I would like to use the "Categories" tab to try to organize my committee's workspace. I created several categories but don't know what to do with them next. I want to, for example, organize Online Docs by type, i.e. Policies, Publication Requests, etc. Is there an explanation anywhere of this functionality?
Thanks in advance
Doug
Chair, EBSS Publications Committee
re: Categories
Thu, 08/06/2009 - 9:34am
Hi, Doug --
Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to write that help document yet, although it's definitely on my long list of topics to cover. Here's a quick overview until then.
Once you've created the categories, you select them when posting new content. For example, when you click on any of the"[add]" buttons in the right-hand column of your group, you should see the categories you created appear as menu options. To attach a post or discussion topic to that category, just select it. You can also go back and edit previous content to add it to one of these categories.
Once a category has content in it, you'll see it magically appear in the right-hand column. Clicking on it there will take you to a page that links to all of the content for that category.
If you have further questions about this process or if you run into any problems, please let me know.
Thanks,
Jenny
categories or other ways to organize
Thu, 08/06/2009 - 9:55am
Is there a way of organizing online docs? I'm thinking that I can't create for all the docs posted to the glbtrt space. Have a look, it poses an interesting problem. We have a ton of reports there. I'm thrilled they're on Connect but this has turned in to a bit of a mess and I think will make people shut down instead of wading in.
Should we stream line by making one big doc called Annual 09 Reports? Or is there a way to apply a category to these that I don't see? If there was a way to apply tags, create structure with tags and display them in that structure (like a doc tree) that might be ideal but I'd be thrilled with anyway we can apply more order to these docs.
If I can apply tags like "Annual 09 Documents" and/or "Steering Committee Minutes" and/or "Committee Reports" and/or "Liaison Reports" that would be cool.
hope you're well!
david
--
David S. Vess
re: categories or other ways to organize
Thu, 08/06/2009 - 10:22am
Hi, David --
Yes, group admins see a tab on their group home pages called "Categories." From there, you can create your own subject headings just for you group. You can make them specific, like "2009 Annual Documents" or general like "Annual Documents" or even just "Files." Once you've created those subject headings, they appear as options group members can select from a menu when creating content.
The thing you want to be careful about is that all of your categories with at least one thing attached to them will appear in the right-hand column, and if you create a category for every conference, eventually that list will get pretty long. You could play around with that model and have a "bucket" for things like "2009 Annual Documents" and then have a larger "Past Annual Documents." Once you get to Annual 2010, you could create a new category for it, move the 2009 docs to the "Past" bucket, and delete the 2009 category.
If you want to see an example of how the "group categories" look, see the section in the right-hand column of the "Help" community (http://connect.ala.org/help). We've also done a little bit of this in the Website Advisory Committee group (http://connect.ala.org/wac).
Keep the questions coming! :)
Jenny
More on categories
Tue, 08/11/2009 - 12:15pm
A question I received via email made me realize that I forgot to mention that when you create your "vocabulary" (ie, "categories"), you have to tell Connect which types of content get to use the categories. Options include:
If you don't check any of those boxes, the categories won't appear when you're adding or editing content. If you check all of the boxes, the categories will appear as a menu option when you're creating or editing any type of content. And, of course, you can mix and match to make certain categories appear on specific types of content, and create other categories for other types of content.
I'm bumping up writing the help document about this on my to-do list, but hopefully this will help until then.
Jenny