When creating a community, it is important to understand whether its membership will be managed by:
- Higher Logic (HL-managed) or
- an external database (an AMS or CRM) that is integrated with Higher Logic; this is referred to as AMS-managed.
If you are creating a community, review the following table to familiarize yourself with the difference.
| Membership | Description |
|---|---|
| HL-managed | These communities do not interact with a membership database (i.e., an AMS or CRM). They are created in the Higher Logic system and memberships are managed only through the community settings in Higher Logic. After being set up, you can manually add users or add user groups by creating Automation Rules. |
| AMS-managed | AMS-managed communities (also referred to as integrated communities) are created in an external (of the Higher Logic system) membership database (such as NetForum, Aptify, Personify) that is integrated with Higher Logic. The integrated database is the authoritative database and its records are provided to your Higher Logic site where members (users) are added based on the classification in each member's record in the integrated database, as described below. NOTE: The classification system is created, managed, and used in that integrated database. |
EXAMPLE: If you have a Board of Directors community that is AMS-managed, your database admin would have to add a classification (e.g., BOD) to member records in order for the system to put them into the Board of Directors community in Higher Logic.