User profiles are like other content in that they can be found on searches. Because of this, information that people give about themselves — including interests and areas of expertise — can be a great source of information for people looking to have a question answered. A person's profile can include biographical and professional information, along with links to content they've contributed.
Admin Console: People > Settings > Profile and Homepage
Editing the Field List
You can customize the profile template, providing the fields that people will fill in with profile information. The application includes several commonly used fields by default, but you can add your own as well. Also, if you allow people to register themselves, keep in mind that you can defined a form with a subset of these fields for a person to fill out when they register.
To create a new field, click New Field. See the Editing Fields section for information on how to edit a field's properties.
Editing Fields
Click a field's Edit link to edit the field's properties. When you edit a profile field, you're defining its behavior in the system -- who can see it, whether it's editable, and so on.
Be sure to consider whether or how a field should be visible. In some communities, for example, people might not want their phone number widely visible.
Give some thought to how people will be using profiles -- to introduce themselves or to find other people, for example -- then select or clear attributes accordingly. For example, making too many fields required could have the effect of discouraging people from completing them. Here are the
- Required -- People won't be able to save a profile that when required field is empty.
- Filterable -- When a field is filterable, people can type or select values of the field to make a list of people shorter. For example, someone viewing a long list of people in the community could make the list shorter by filtering on the hire date, specifying that the date be no earlier than last year.
- Searchable -- A searchable field is seen by the search engine.
- Editable -- People can edit their editable profile fields.
- Externally managed -- An externally managed field is associated with an external user directory, such as LDAP. Select this to include this field among those that can be synchronized with the external system. You'll need to separately set up synchronization. For more information, see Synchronizing with User Authentication Systems.