The Glossary is your site's custom repository for definitions and explanations of words, phrases, and terms that are used within your organization. This can be very valuable because it's not uncommon for industry veterans and topic experts to sometimes forget that not everyone has their wealth of knowledge. The Glossary makes it easy for people to share this knowledge -- and it makes it easy for your members to look up technical terms and other jargon that they might come across when interacting with your Higher Logic site.
NOTE: The Glossary is optional in Higher Logic. If you don't see it, it might not be enabled for your site. To request that it be enabled, create a case.
One of the best features of the Glossary is that it is "wiki" based. This means that it is open and collaborative, and all of your site members can:
- Add glossary entries;
- Request definitions for words, phrases, and terms;
- Recommend glossary entries;
- Add tags and comments to entries; and
- Add links to internal and external resources (if information about a glossary entry exists elsewhere).
Being able to do all this creates a more social experience and collaborative environment.
Access the Glossary
To access the glossary:
- Click Browse > Glossary in the site's top navigation bar.
How to use the Glossary
By default, the Glossary page lists all of your organization's entries in alphabetical order, but you can click the dropdown to re-arrange them by:
- Most Popular - to arrange the entries by their number of views, from most to least.
- Top Rated - to arrange the entries by their number of Recommends, from most to least.
- Recently Updated - to arrange the entries by when they were last updated, from most to least recent.
- Status - to arrange the entries by their status. The Status options display above the list, and you can check one or multiple options to display only those entries. (See Status, below.)
Status
In addition to the social aspects of the Glossary mentioned above, perhaps the most important is the ability to flag entries with a Status. When creating or editing an entry, all users can tag it with one of the following statuses to indicate its level of accuracy and completeness:
- Final (Admin only)
- Need definition
- Needs a little more detail
- Needs a lot of help
- Ready
- Someone confirm this is accurate
NOTE: Only Super Admins can tag an entry as Final. Entries that are marked as Final can be:
1. Edited and deleted by Super Admins only (these buttons are hidden to non-Admin users).
2. Accessed by everyone, but not modified.
This status gives complete ownership of the glossary to your staff. While "edit wars" are rare, they are easily controlled by tagging entries as Final.
Statuses display to the right of each entry, as shown below.
Create a Glossary entry
To create an entry:
- Click Browse > Glossary in the site's top navigation bar to access the Glossary page.
- Click Add Glossary Term above the list.
- Then:
- Specify your entry (word, acronym, term, phrase, etc.).
NOTE: Your entry will automatically be appended to the permalink field, making it easy to share across your site. You can update this, but use only dashes, numbers, and/or letters.
- Define/describe your entry in the text editor.
- Select a Status to indicate your entry's level of accuracy and completeness.
- Click Save.
On the entry's "configuration" page, verify the entry name, definition/description (if you specified one), and the status (in the upper right). You can also:
- Edit the entry
- Delete the entry
- Add tags to the entry
- Recommend the entry
- Add links to the entry
- Add comments to the entry
Glossary entry page options
When viewing a glossary entry, all users can:
- Click Edit to update the entry or select Delete from the dropdown to remove it. (These options are not available to non-Super Admins if the entry status is Final.)
- Click this to recommend the entry, elevating its popularity and increasing its visibility when sorting entries by Top Rated. You can also click the number to the left to view users who have recommended it.
- View and copy the entry's URL, making it easy to share with others.
- Access any links that other users have provided and add your own by clicking Add.
- Read any comments that other users have posted and add your own by clicking Add.
- View the entry's tags and add your own. (Super Admins can control whether non-admins can tag content, so this option may not be available to all users.)
Integration write-backs
If your site is integrated with a third-party database, some glossary activities can be written to that database during the standard activity-sync process.
- Navigate to Settings > External Content > Activity Sync in the Admin interface in order to manage writeback activities on the Subscriptions tab.
To learn about the activity-sync process, see Member Activity Sync.