Clearspace Quick Tour

Use this tour to get a step-by-step view of some of the things you can do with Clearspace.

As you read through the tour, it will point out features and suggest things you can do to start putting Clearspace to work for you and your team. Here are the steps:

Get Started

Collaborate on Content

Get Things Done

For other introductions to Clearspace, be sure to see the Jive Software web site. There, you'll find illustrations that show Clearspace in action, as well as a feature-by-feature description. You might also be interested in looking through the Clearspace Help, which answers common questions about how to get things done in Clearspace.

Get Started

Get to know Clearspace. When you first log into Clearspace, the All Content page offers links to places where you can dive in. Use the content type icons, titles, and change age ("3 hours ago") to decide if there's anything of interest for you here at the top level.

Your community manager might have customized the All Content page to show certain things, so it might look different from what's pictured below. But this is a snapshot of some of the things you might see.

Homepage

The content type icons are your first clues as to the kinds of content you'll find and create in Clearspace: documents, blogs, and discussions. You'll learn more about the types later in this tour. From the home page you can also get a feel for how you can find content. For example, through the sections on the home page you can browse by space, browse by content types or browse by tags (more about tags later, too).

Also, notice that menu bar near the top of the page. It's available on all the other pages, too. Use it to:

Create new content.
Browse for existing content, spaces, and people.
Get history for your recently viewed items.
Check in on your stuff for items you've created or are working on.

After you've gotten to know what's inside pretty well, use the Your View link to personalize your view. That way, you can choose which content you want to appear here. More on that later in this tour.

In the Find Content section of the tour you'll learn how to stay on top by using spaces, searches, tags, notifications, and something called "feeds."

Find Content

As you saw on the Clearspace home page, you've got a number of paths into the content. You can browse by space, by content type and tags, and you can search. (You can even browse for content by other people — just try clicking someone's name.) This section of the tour will introduce you to Clearspace's content-finding features.

Browse spaces. Most content in Clearspace is organized by spaces (some blogs aren't connected to a particular space). In spaces, you create, find, and organize content.

On the home page, click the Browse menu, then click Spaces.

The Spaces page shows the spaces you can visit in a hierarchy.
Click the name of a space. If the space's home page overview has been customized, you're likely to see an arrangement of content that's tailor made for you as a visitor to the space. You'll also find lists of the latest content of each other content type: blog posts, discussions, and documents. Use the All Content, Blog Posts, Discussions, and Documents tabs to get more of each kind of content.

If you haven't already, take a moment to browse your spaces.

Browse by tags. When you browse by tags, you're using a community-made indexing system. You and other people apply tags like index keywords to new content to make the content more findable. You look for content you want by clicking tag names to see a list of related content. Wherever you go in Clearspace, you'll see tags that group your content into categories.

Look for the tag cloud. If your team has had a chance to add and tag content, the home page for a space also shows something you'll probably find yourself using quite a lot: a tag cloud. A tag cloud visually groups tags so that you can look by popularity (more popular tags are in a larger font) as well as look by alphabetical order.

See the content associated with a tag. Hover over a tag to see the number of times it is assigned to content. Click the tag to see a list of the items it's assigned to.
While you're viewing the list of items associated with a tag, you can filter the list further. In the Tags box you'll see a cloud of the other tags that are applied to the items. As you click those tags, they'll be added to those you're filtering by (below, "recruiting", "job_candidates", and "hr"). The list of content items gets shorter as you add tags to the filter, showing only those items that include all of the tags you're filtering by.

Search for content. Search for the content you want, filtering your search to refine the results.

Take a look at the Search box in the upper right corner.
Type in what you want to search for, then click Search.
See results on the Search page. You can filter search results by content type, by space, or by date. You might also see search results from outside of Clearspace listed under More Results. You'll get these if your system administrator has connected OpenSearch sites to Clearspace.

Through browsing and searching Clearspace you can look for the content you need. But what if you've found something you want to keep your eye on? By subscribing to feeds or email notifications, you can get updated on changes to content you care about.

See the next part of the tour for an introduction to feeds and email notifications.

Subscribe to feeds. Ever want a way to see what's new or changed on your favorite web sites without having to visit the sites? You can use feeds to get a digest of updates to the stuff you're interested in. When you "subscribe" to a feed (such as RSS) — say, for particular search results or a tag or the content of a space — your feed reader (which might simply be your web browser) does the checking for you. With feeds, you can subscribe to nearly anything in Clearspace!

Click the feed icon at the right side of your browser's address bar to subscribe to a feed for the content you're looking at. For example, if you're using a recent version of the Firefox browser, you'll get a list such as the following if there are multiple feeds available.

If you've chosen to be prompted to pick a feed reader (also known as a feed reader), you might see a page such as the following. You can choose the reader you want to use and see what the feed would currently bring you.

If feeds (such as RSS) sound appealing, take a moment to get it set up. Select one of the Clearspace feeds and subscribe. If you select a reader to use for all feeds, subscribing is as easy as clicking the feed icon where you see it in Clearspace.

Note: When subscribing to Clearspace feeds, you might need to associate your Clearspace user name and password with the subscription.

Get notified by email. In addition to feeds, you can also stay on top of content using email notifications. When you sign up to receive email notifications, Clearspace will send you email whenever the content you're interested in changes.

Navigate to a document you want to be notified about, then click Receive Email Notifications under Actions.

After you click, notice that Clearspace will change the link to Stop Email Notifications. You can always come back here when you want to stop getting the email. You can also manage all of your notifications from your profile, as you'll see later in the tour.

Get It Your Way

You'll want to personalize your home page. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of the time you're using Clearspace.

As you and others use Clearspace, the amount of content there will grow. You'll develop a preference for certain people's blogs, for discussions in certain areas, and you'll learn that some areas just rarely have anything you need.

Go the home page and click the Your View tab to begin designing your personalized view.
Click the personalize link to jump into design mode.

Notice how the page in design mode is divided into a top part and larger bottom part. In the box near the top of the page is a list of widgets. Most widgets are special views on content or people in Clearspace; a few provide other ways to add other things, such as notes and links to stuff on the web.
Beneath the list of widgets is a design already started for you. This design is an arrangement of widgets for you to change by rearranging it, removing widgets, and adding some you'd rather have.
Notice the widgets you don't want and remove them by clicking their Remove button.
Hover over the list of widgets at the top of the page and notice that each has a description next to the Cancel and Save buttons.
Next, grab the widgets you want, drag them onto your design...
...then drop them where you want them.
Click the widget's Edit link to edit its properties. This is where you fine tune the widget so that it shows you what you want.
Click Save Properties to save your changes.
When you've got the widgets you want in the design, click Choose a layout for ways to set up the columns on the page. Notice that the top of the page now displays possible layout arrangements you can use. Click each one to see how your personalized page looks. As you consider layouts, you can drag your widgets from column to column by grabbing the widget's name.
Once you've got your design where you want it, click Save. As you use Clearspace, remember that you can come back to design mode by clicking the Personalize link.
In the Create Content section of the tour you'll learn more about the kinds of content you can create in Clearspace.

Create Content

You'll find the content you need with Clearspace. But if you use it long enough, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to want to make your own contributions. And that where things really get interesting. As you join others in the space — getting answers to your questions, finding documents you need day to day, reading others' thoughts in a blog — you'll discover ideas you wouldn't otherwise have seen. And you'll want to get them out of your head and into Clearspace.

Ask a question, get some quick feedback. Discussions are great for those brief questions and comments. It might start with a simple question.

Click New > Discussion to start asking a question or make a quick post to find out what others think.
If you've posted things before, you'll see a list of the places you post in most often. Click the name of the space you want to post in. Otherwise, click Browse for a location.
Click the name of the space you want to post in.
Mark your post if it's a question. You can simply post a comment for feedback from others. But if you're asking a question, be sure to mark your post so that others know you'd like an answer.
Tell others which responses got you where you wanted to go. When someone responds to your question with a post that's helpful or correct, mark it as such so that others know which is the best answer. You and other people get status points for helpful and correct answers.

Create a document to preserve team thoughts. Documents and uploaded files give you a way to get content into Clearspace. With documents, you edit the content right in Clearspace. You and others can work on the same document and it's searchable. As you'll see later, you can also specify that other people should review or approve the content. By uploading a file, on the other hand, you can add something that was created outside Clearspace. Uploading the file makes it available to other people; you can tag the uploaded file to make sure it gets found.

A document is for capturing information that others on the team would be interested in (or might just need) — things like agendas, plans, meeting notes, equipment lists, and the like. They're team documents.

Click New > Document to start a new document.
Be sure that Write a New Document is selected. Anyone will be able to edit this document. (Later in this tour, you'll learn how to limit a document's visibility.) If you've posted things before, you'll see a list of the places you post in most often. Click the name of the space you want to post in. Otherwise, click Browse for a location.
Give the document a title and type your content in the editing window. The content editor is like a word processing program, with tools for more advanced formatting.
Add tags to describe the document to other people. This is one of best things you can do for your team. As you and other people add tags, you'll develop your own expressions to describe the content you all use. For those expressions to be most useful, try to use existing tags whenever possible.

You can type the tag names, letting Clearspace finish the name where the tag already exists; you can also click a tag in the Popular Tags list to add the tag to the document.
You can click Save and Continue to save your work and keep writing or click Save Draft to finish later. Click Publish when you're ready for others to see your document.
After you've published the document, notice that the Actions list lists tasks related to the document. In particular, notice the Manage versions and Manage collaboration links. Click Manage versions to display a page that lists versions of the document. You can select document versions in the list to compare changes to the document over time. The comparison shows additions and deletions.

Tip: You can make a document from a discussion! View the discussion in Clearspace, then click the Convert thread to document link under Actions.

Post your views to your blog. While documents are often authored by the team, blogs are for more individual kinds of content. A blog might be the voice of a department (such as human resources) or of an individual (such as you). A blog is a like a column in a newspaper — it's there when you look for it, now and then offering something new to read. Unlike a newspaper column, though, others can comment on a blog.

If you've got a blog, you might post your views on something you just read that others in the organization might be interested in. Or you could evaluate or summarize something for the team, providing a way for others to give feedback through their comments on your blog.

Click New > Blog Post to post to your blog.
If you've posted things before, you'll see a list of the places you post in most often. Click the name of the space you want to post in. Otherwise, click Browse for a location.
Notice that the blog editing page is very much like the discussion and document editing pages: the same rich text editor is available. The Extended Options section expands when you click its title. There, you can set options specific to this post — even set it to be published at a certain time in the future.
In the editing window, type a title and the content of your blog post.
You can Save a draft of the post before you publish. As with discussions and documents, be sure to add tags before you click Publish; tags will help your post be easier for others to find.
If you save but don't publish, you'll be taken to a place where you can review your posts. Here you get a number of shortcuts to tools that are specific to blogs. You can view the posts you've made, comments to your posts, trackbacks (links to other sites that have linked to your blog), and blog options such as moderation and feed settings.

Connect With People

You'll see lots of great, useful content pop up when you're using Clearspace. But have you ever noticed that you keep using content from the same set of people? You can build your own network and never lose touch with the people whose stuff matters the most. The best way to get primed for connecting with people is to get lots of information into your profile. Using your profile and other people's, you can make one-to-one connections to keep up with individuals. And when you share an interest with others, you can join or create a social group to talk about it.

Create a profile. Your profile is a quick way for other members of your team to find out more about you. It can be bare bones or more thorough. If you fill in the optional fields, you can give others a sense of who you are and what you know. It can be very useful in a team to know who to go to when you've got a question or suggestion in mind.

Click Your Stuff > Profile to view your profile.
On your profile page, notice that the Actions list lists a few things you can do. On the preferences page you can adjust your notification and subscription settings.
Click Edit Profile.
Fill in as much profile information as makes sense. Keep in mind that your profile will be found when people search, so if you have professional roles or interests that would be useful for others to know, be sure to include them.

Find people and make connections. You can build your own personal network by using the connection feature. Making connections is a little like adding people to a list of favorites. When you're connected, you can more easily keep track of what they're up to, what they're saying in discussions and blogs.

Click Browse > People, then find someone you want to connect with — whose activity in Clearspace might be interesting to you.
When you find someone, view their profile by clicking their name.
Click the Follow... link under the Actions list. This will add the person to the connections you're following.
Click Your Stuff > Connections to view the list of people you're following. The person you added is listed there, along with links to the content they've contributed recently. This page also includes a link through which you can see a list of the people who are following you.
In the Filter by Label list, click Add/edit labels to add a label that will help you manage your growing list of connections. Click Create new label, then enter the label's name and select a color for it by clicking the little box to its left. Click Save.
After you've created labels, click the Labels link above a person's recent activity list to apply the label to that person.
Notice that the labels you've applied to a person you're following show up beneath their Recent Activity list. What's more, as your list of connections gets longer, you can filter it according to the labels you've applied.

Join a group. They're out there, you know — your people, that is. Find them and reunite in a social group.

Click Browse > Groups to look through the group directory. At the top of the directory page you'll find a cloud of tags that are assigned to groups. Below the cloud is a list of groups (if there are lots of groups, the list will be only partial).
Find a tag that interests you and click it. The list of groups beneath the cloud will shorten to include only those that have the tag you clicked assigned to them. You can shorten the list further by clicking other tags in the cloud.
When you find a group that interests you, click its name to take a closer look. Keep in mind that there are four kinds of groups:
- With open groups you can read or post content any time, without being a member.
- With members only groups, you can read content without joining, but you have to join in order to create new content there.
- With private groups, you'll need to join before you can read or create content.
- With secret groups... well, they're a secret. You won't even see secret groups in the list. You can only join a secret group by being invited by someone who manages the group. (Of course, you can create your own, too.)

Start your own group. Can't find a group for your favorite subject? Make your own. You can invite anyone you like — even make it super-secret.

Click New > Group to start creating a new social group.
In the Create a new group page, fill in your group's details. If there are lots of groups already, click Check Availability to make sure your group name isn't already taken. (And be sure to add tags so people can find you!)
At the bottom of the page, say what type of group it will be and which features it will include.
On the Group Created page, click the home page link to go to your group's main screen.
You can customize the overview page (in the same way you personalized your home page) and start adding content. (The Edit group detail link will take you back to that page with the group settings if you want to change them later.)
To get your group rolling, click Invite people to join this group to get some like-minded people involved.

Collaborate on Content

Nearly everything you do in Clearspace is about collaboration. Content you add is almost always visible and searchable by everyone (unless you've explicitly indicated that its visibility should be limited to certain people). Other people read your work, you read theirs. You get ideas from someone else's blog, they comment with suggestions on your document.

But Clearspace provides ways through which you can manage collaboration. For example, you can say that only certain people are collaborating on a document with you. You can say that some of these people can edit the document, while others must approve it before it's visible to everyone.

Note: Publishing a document always makes it visible to everyone who can ready documents (which is typically everyone using Clearspace). If you want to limit a document's visibility, save it as a draft!

Add collaborators. When you first create a document, you limit its visibility by setting its collaboration options. When you add people to edit and approve a document, you're giving them special roles in what's called the document's "workflow." In other words, work on the document starts in one place — a draft — and moves through a process — possibly more drafts, review, and approval — until it's ready for publishing.

Click New > Document to create a new document.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Collaboration Options.
In the Specific Users box, enter the Clearspace user names of the users you want to be able to see and edit the document. (You can also click the Just <my_name> option if you want to be the only person who can see and edit.)
If you want certain people to be required to approve the document before it's published and visible to others, enter their user name in the box under Users who must approve...
Under Comment Policy, choose how you want comments to the document handled.
When you're done editing the document, be sure to click Save Draft rather than Publish. (Clicking Publish will make the document visible to everyone!)

After you've saved the document, you can come back later to edit these options by clicking the Manage Collaboration link in the Actions list. The people you added to edit and approve the document will be able to get to this document from their Your Stuff menu and from the Your Stuff tab of their own profile.

Profile approval

The document itself will also let approvers know that it's time to approve.

Approve or reject

Get Things Done

You've got people sharing ideas and contributing content. When specific schedules and goals drive their work, create a project to focus it. In Clearspace a project is a way to collect tasks and schedules with other kinds of content to collaborate toward an overarching goal.

Go to the space where the project should live.
Click New > Project to create a new project.
Enter information to get your project started: what it's called, what it's for, and a target completion date. Create a project blog to make share information — status, research, other thoughts — that people working on the project can use.

After you've created the project, you'll see the home page. Here, you can get started creating the tasks and checkpoints — the stuff that sets a project apart. You can customize this page just as you can with your personalized home page or a space overview page.

You'll use checkpoints to map out your project's milestones, with tasks between the checkpoints.
To add a checkpoint, in the Actions list click Create a checkpoint, then enter the details.

As you add checkpoints, notice that they're visible on the Overview page in the Checkpoints list and the Project Calendar. Hover over a checkpoint in either place to edit or delete it.

Start adding specific, smaller-grained tasks that can be assigned to someone for completion between checkpoints.
To add a task, in the Action list click Create a task. Use the Add Task page to enter the task details. Assign the task to someone and give it a completion date. You can edit it later.
Click the Tasks tab or a task title link (in the Tasks list, for example) to view a list of tasks to do for the project. In the To do list, you can filter the tasks by assignee and completion.
You can also create personal tasks for yourself that aren't associated with a project at all. These will also appear in your task list. Click New > Task to start creating a personal task.
If you personalize your home page, you can also keep track of your tasks there using the Your Tasks widget.

This is the end of the Clearspace tour, but it has really only scratched the surface. The best way to get to know Clearspace is to put it to work by adding content and responding to the content other people have added. Give it a try!