Totara Social Open Discussions

Forums versus Ideas/Questions versus Status Update

Hi All,

does anyone have any feedback on the best structure and the pros and cons of different data types? Our use case:
We run an online medical community. We were using another community platform and have 9000 GPs with forum data from a number of historical forums.

I want to make the new, TS version of our community much more engaging and quicker to post, rivalling the ease of the Facebook 'Groups' functionality which is really taking off (and currently hosts the most successful GP discussion group- GPs Down under or GPDU).

So, I am considering dumping all of the categorised forums into a single Group, under a single overall Forum called "Clinical Discussions". The main reason for this is to make it easier to import, rather than having to match to multiple categories and sub topics.

I am hoping the upcoming 'search' functionality in TS will be powerful enough to allow users to find forums, rather than having to Tag them all......Q1: any comments on that?

Next, I like the ease of use of the 'Status Update' on the home page. I am consider closing off Questions and Ideas and relabelling 'Status Update' in the language pack as 'Quick Post'.

The good thing about Status update is that it allows images and comments to appear in the Activity Stream, rather than just a transaction ("Stephen Post a comment and uplodaded a photo, click to see the content).

I am still testing (as per previous post- thanks for response!- how to use this, with notifications).

Q2: So, if users find 'quick post' easier, are they going to end up just using that functionality, or will they use forums? What are the pros and cons as you see it of using one over the other?

My gut feeling is that they will just use 'Quick Post' as it is easier.........

All feedback appreciated!
Kind regards

Stephen

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Hi Stephen,

I cannot comment on pros and cons of various content types. However, I wanted to mention here that if you are using Elasticsearch with your installation, you already have a powerful search functionality that can search through users, groups, forums, content, etc.

My opinion is that forums provide a more structured discussion with the ability to moderate, promote certain topics, and engage with a specific community (group) without worrying about "who I need to share this post with" all the time.

The idea behind the Questions is seeking expertise and developing a knowledge database where people can express their opinion on a certain topic and the most relevant/suitable answer can be highlighted for the future reference.

Status updates/quick post are quite self-explanatory. They are a simple way of keeping your community up-to-date with what's happening. They are not a part of the main content (i.e. you won't find them under Contribute menu), however they are still searchable with the Elasticsearch enabled.

Yuliya

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