This article provides an overview of the major changes to the Online Community admin experience, including:

Dashboard

A focal point of the new admin experience, the Dashboard displays charts that provide at-a-glance metrics to understand community engagement over time. You can select which charts to display, and even pin your favorite ones to the top of the Dashboard for quick access to the data you need.

TIP: The Dashboard is customizable per individual admin.

Navigation

Navigating the interface is accomplished via the new vertical Navigation panel. Items have been reordered, relabeled, and reduced to provide a more streamlined and intuitive user experience.

TIP: If your organization has multiple Higher Logic products (e.g., Community and one of the Marketing Automation products), each is represented by a tab at the top of the panel.

The orientation is vertical, rather than horizontal, for mobile optimization, and can be collapsed to optimize website real estate. In addition, you can search by current (or former) menu terms for quick access to specific pages.

NOTE: When searching, a minimum of three characters must be typed before matching navigation items are automatically refreshed.

New CMS - Page Designer

NOTE: This section is not applicable to customers whose community site is based on the Community Essentials model.

Our old CMS has been replaced by Page Designer. With its elegant drag-and-drop interface, creating, editing, and organizing your pages and content is easier than ever before.

On-Page Help

Click the (?) icon in the upper-right corner to expand the new Help Panel. Page-specific topics help you understand how to use and understand a given page. Most topics include a Learn more… link you can click to view more in-depth information in our Support Center. For pages that don’t yet have specific help topics, a set of default topics are presented.

New List Pages

Many admin pages have been re-designed in a list structure. This was done for a singular reason: Efficiency. These new list pages make it easy to find, create, and manage your content.

Let's take a look at some of the features available on these list pages.

Search

Click the magnifying glass to display the search field. The search feature queries a set of available columns that have been heavily indexed so that results are presented fast. The searchable columns are the text fields within a given list.

The list will automatically update with each typed character and display all records (visible and hidden) that contain a match. Click the X to clear the search field to restore the original list.

Filter

Many list pages also feature a filter enabling multiple fields to be combined using an “AND” operator for a more focused search.

Columns

List pages include numerous columns that can be shown or hidden, making it easy to locate the content you’re looking for. The number of columns per list has been streamlined to improve performance.

Multi-Select

List pages support multi-selection. In many lists, you can perform bulk actions for efficient multi-item management.

How to select multiple contacts

The button used to multi-select rows is device-dependent. To select more than one row, hold the Ctrl (Windows) or command (Mac) key and select each of the other rows you want to manage. To select a continuous list on PC and Mac, click one row, then hold the Shift key and click the last row.

TIP: After multi-selecting BUT before acting on the selected contacts, you can add and deselect contacts via the check boxes to their left.

Page Consolidation

To streamline the user experience, some pages have been consolidated. On many list pages, there is a dropdown to the right of the page title allowing you to view content of a specific type or status. For example, the Users List allows you to quickly view your Enabled, Deactivated, Pending Approval, and Rejected users with the click of a button.

Preview Panel

A new Preview Panel is available on many list pages. Upon clicking an item in the list, the panel opens and provides an at-a-glance view of key data and metrics. Dots under a field value indicate that the data can be edited.

Users List

The re-designed Users List page enables admins to manage user contact information and permissions in one location. Added functionality from Deactivated Users and Moderate Users pages. For standalone clients (i.e., those without a CRM or AMS), the account approval process is available on this page.

Communities List

The re-designed Communities List page now enables admins to manage community moderation and permission settings directly on this page. Clients licensed for nested communities can view their community families on this page.

Terminology

Some terminology changes, mostly affecting menu items, have been introduced in the new version. To help with the transition, you can type the old item name in the navigation search box to find its new equivalent.