Hello Everyone!

As you’ve probably noticed there’s been a few changes to the Commons! We’ve rolled out Commons 1.1 and with it there are several exciting new additions to the Groups feature we’d like to share with you.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you now have more control over how you receive email communication from the group:

By clicking ‘Change’ next to the email icon a drop down menu will give you 5 different options for controlling the way you get your updates. You can also go to ‘Email Notifications’ on the left sidebar and alter your preferences there as well.

For all of you admins out there, if you have a trouble maker in the group but never saw yourself as the karate type we’ve added the option to ‘Remove’ members along with the more permanent ‘Kick & Ban.’ From the left sidebar, select ‘Admin’ and ‘Manage Members’ and scroll to the member in question:

Matt mentioned in his overview that we’ve also given group administrators more control over the group slug:

If you go to ‘Admin’ from the left sidebar you’ll be presented with several options, ‘Group Slug’ is now one of them. Click it and you’ll find that you can edit the pre-assigned slug into anything you’d like.

Finally, from the Admin options you’ll notice that you can now link an external blog to your Commons group by posting the RSS feed URL of the external blog to the field indicated below. This is a handy tool for those groups that have already developed rich websites for their groups or events outside of the Commons. Updates to the external blog will show up in your Commons group feed.

We’ve been working hard to incorporate all of your suggestions into our new roll-out and love getting your feedback! Please contact any of our Community Facilitators with your questions and thoughts as you explore the shiny new Commons 1.1 and let us know what you think.