This month we are releasing a new build of Social Squared!
Social Squared is our Discussion Board tool for Microsoft SharePoint & Microsoft Teams; it allows SharePoint users and Teams users to enter discussions in a structured way. Forum Groups and Forums can be defined within your Teams channels or SharePoint sites allowing users to ask questions or post announcements within forums. This structure means that conversations with verified answers to questions can be discovered well into the future as new members join the team.
An example of Social Squared is shown below where you can see Social Squared being used in a Technical Support Team. Categorising the Questions and Discussions into Forum Groups such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint, and having sub-categories (forums) such as On-Premises and Online, allows conversations to be found easily, and allows for subject matter experts to focus on a specific forum.
What’s new in 3.8.0.0?
There are over 50 subtle improvements that we have made to this build of Social Squared. The improvements focus on accessibility, aesthetics, and also some Lightning Bug fixes along the way. In this post, we’ll concentrate on a few of the new features which include:
- Contextual Getting Started Guide for Administrators and End Users
- My Posts view for finding and managing your own Topics and Replies
- Document Library File Attachments
Contextual Getting Started Guide for Administrators and End Users
We are constantly working on our documentation to ensure that it is accurate and easy to follow… But, users don’t always know where to find it, which can be frustrating and time-consuming. So, we still have our documentation training videos and documentation on our Social Squared help centre, but we’ve also built a contextual help module that can be accessed within Social Squared itself. Now you can learn how to create topics, reply to topics, and use tagging, search and all of those other features without having to leave SharePoint or Teams.
The Getting Started Help will detect whether you are a Teams Owner or Member. If you are a member, you will receive the end user getting started guide, whereas Team Owners will receive a more technical guide on configuring the settings of Social Squared.
My Posts View
The new My Posts view enables the current user to find all posts that they themselves created. Some of the posts may be pending moderation, rejected, or deleted. From the My Posts view, the user can find their posts, open them, and of course edit or delete them if required.
Document Library File Attachments
Users have always been able to attach a file to a Social Squared post either through SharePoint, Teams Desktop, or Teams Mobile. However, the attachment was literally a file attachment to a list item behind the scenes. This made it difficult to find files, manage permissions on files, use version management, and search attachment content. Now, you have a choice! You can select a Document Library for Social Squared as the repository for the attachments. Upon attaching a file, the file will be stored within a document library and a link set within your post.
Attachments can now also be made at the time of authoring your post. You no longer have to save the post and then add the attachment later.
Many of the other improvements will be discussed in our Social Squared webinar which takes place live on the 21st July. To register, please visit the link below:
