In this article, you'll learn how to create an Automation Rule that will automatically add users to an HL-managed community. This will both streamline the process for you and help your community achieve high engagement as quickly as possible.
EXAMPLE: Check out Manage Automation Rules to learn more about accessing and managing your Automation Rules.
Before we begin...
This article is meant for customers leveraging HL-managed communities, not AMS-managed communities. What's the difference?
- HL-managed communities do not interact with a membership database, or AMS (e.g., NetForum, Aptify, Personify, etc.). They are created solely on the Higher Logic side, and membership is managed through the community settings on our platform only.
Steps
NOTE: If your HL-managed community already exists, skip to the steps below; if you need to create one, do so by referencing Create and Manage Your Communities before following the steps below.
- Access the Admin interface.
- Navigate to Automation > Automation Rules.
- Click Create.
- Configure the Rule as shown in the images below:
- Select the Add to a Community option from the first dropdown.
- From the every contact who dropdown, select a criterion to pinpoint which users to add to your community (TIP: use the search field to quickly find a criterion). In our example, we selected "is in the security group [specified]" because we're going to target all users belonging to a specific Security Group.
- With your criterion selected, click Add. The page will reload and additional options will appear.
- For the next two dropdowns, select Immediately add to the > [your community]. This is where you're telling the system which community to add these users to.
- Below, you'll notice the criterion you selected a moment ago, along with a dropdown to configure it further. In our case, we chose to pinpoint by Security Group, so we now need to select that Security Group. Configure your criterion as appropriate.
- At this point, you've selected one criterion to pinpoint users and have chosen which community to add them to. If needed, you can repeat these steps to choose additional criterion to further segment your users. If you add multiple criterion, you can use the And/Or toggle to control whether they function as "AND" conditions or "OR" conditions. In our case, we're targeting users who belong to a specific Security Group who have ALSO accepted our terms and conditions within the last 7 days, so we'll use the AND condition.
- Click the Calculate Who Qualifies button to check who the Automation Rule will affect. Once calculated, you can click the blue numbers to check who will be added to and removed from the community, based on your current criterion.
- Next, you can decide how this Automation Rule affects users who already belong to the community but no longer meet its criteria. Click the dropdown shown below and select to either remove these users or let them stay.
- Configure the remaining options, as desired (e.g., decide whether to send notifications to these members, set notification subscriptions, etc.).
- Give your Automation Rule an appropriate name so its easily identifiable and its purpose is clear (e.g., "Add users to [your community]").
- Lastly, decide whether to just Save the Rule and have it run according to your Automation Rule schedule (see Automation Rule Settings) OR select Save and Run Now from the Save dropdown to have it run (nearly) instantaneously. If you're planning to have it run according to your schedule, make sure to also enable the Schedule toggle at the top of the page (the toggle will be green).