Contributing to community as external user
A company may invite you to join one of their groups and become part of their online community as an external contributor. This role allows you to collaborate in a community on a limited basis. As an external user, you can view content and participate only in the group you belong to.
When you create or join an external group, you can collaborate with users from outside the community. These groups typically serve specific purposes, such as working on a project with a vendor. Once you accept an invitation to join a community's external group, you can begin contributing to that group.
How to begin contributing to community
When you first join a community's external group as an external contributor, you can begin participating by accepting invitations, setting up your profile, and checking your actions.
Accepting group invitations
The first task when signing into the community is to accept any group invitations. You'll be doing all of your work in groups, so accepting invitations is essential to see group content and activity.
- Go to Home > Actions and then accept group invitations that you see under Pending.
Note: You can only belong to a maximum of 20 groups, so choose wisely!
Setting up your profile
Your user profile is crucial for providing community members with easy access to your skills and interests. Your profile shows up in search results when community members search for keywords contained in it. You can update your information at any time, and setting up your profile is the first step to participating in the community.
Checking your actions
When assigned tasks or actions, you'll see an alert next to Actions in the left sidebar. Use the following quick tips to use Actions effectively:
- Click Action Items to view your Action Items. You can Resolve them or involve other participants. To see resolved Action Items, click Resolved.
- Click Tasks to see tasks assigned to you, which can be sorted by project. Select View: Include completed to see completed tasks. For more information, see Using projects and tasks.
What else can external contributors do?
Jive is a platform where you can build your network, come together as a team, share files, collaborate on documents, and get answers quickly.
Objectives of external contributors
As an external contributor, you primarily see parts of the community that directly affect you, which helps to minimize clutter and focus your experience.
External groups overview
External groups provide an area where standard community users can collaborate with external contributors. Only secret or private groups can have external access.
Creating external groups
When creating a group, you can select Enable external access to allow standard users to invite external contributors for enhanced communication and collaboration.
Who are external contributors?
External contributors can join a secret or private group upon invitation by a group member. They can only view and participate in that specific group and cannot see other community content or activity. Keep in mind the maximum limit of 20 groups for each external contributor.
Differentiating between external contributors and standard users
You can identify external contributors by an orange icon or orange text near their name, distinguishing them from standard community users.
Inviting external contributors
If you belong to a group with external access, you can invite users from outside your community using their email addresses.
What can external contributors see?
External contributors have limited visibility within the community and can only see content within their groups, subject to certain restrictions.
Customizing email notifications
To ensure you don’t miss important updates when you’re not signed in, customize your email notifications. For more information, see Customizing notificationsCustomizing notifications from the User Guide.
See also: