In this video, as a SharePoint Site Owner or Team Owner, we will describe how to add, install and configure Social Squared to ensure that you get engagement and user adoption.
CONFIGURING SOCIAL SQUARED FOR YOUR SHAREPOINT SITE AND TEAMS
To add and configure the Social Squared App for your SharePoint Site, or Microsoft Teams team, please follow the below steps:
Adding the web part and configuring forum groups/forums
- Edit a modern SharePoint page, click the Add “+” button, search for Social Squared and add the web part to the page. The first time the web part is added, hidden lists will be provisioned in the site where the Social Squared information will be stored.
- An empty instance of Social Squared is now created, and you can now add forum groups and forums.
- Click the Edit button on the web part to open the properties pane. In the properties pane, you can change the title of the web part from the default “Social Squared” and edit other properties
- To edit the forum settings, click the ellipsis button on the top-left of the web part and select the Forum Settings button. The Forum Settings button is only going to be visible to a user who is a Social Squared administrator on the site or a site owner.
- The forum group is essentially an outer container for different types of topics. Click “Add Forum Group” to add a forum group.
- Within the forum groups, the forums themselves serve as containers for separate topics. To create a forum, click “View Forums” , and then “Add Forum”.
- For some forums, you might need someone to moderate the content. You can type in their name in the Moderators box.
- To allow users to create a post and have it appear immediately without going through an approval process, select the “Allow users to create topics and posts messages while the forum is under moderation” option.
- In a forum, there are options to subscribe or unsubscribe. This means that users would get notifications when new topics or posts are added to the forum. As a site owner or Social Squared admin, you can click the (Un)Subscribe Users option to subscribe users or Microsoft 365 groups.
- The subscription options apply to topics as well.
Social Squared Properties Pane
- In the properties pane of the web part, you can select or unselect the “Enable Collapsible Forum Groups” option. This option allows you expand or collapse your forum groups so that you can focus on a particular forum group.
- If you have many forum groups, you can choose the forum groups you want to be displayed in the web part. You can go to the Forum Groups dropdown list and select the forum groups you want.
- In the Notifications section, you can toggle the options for notifications via email or Teams.
- In the paging section, you can input the number of topics or posts you want per page
- You can also toggle Likes and Teams-style emoji reactions
- Tagging enables users to type tag terms when adding a post or reply. Social Squared will suggest tags based on the content of the post, and will also suggest previously used tags when you begin to type a tag term. The tags will then appear in the Tag Cloud view of Social Squared.
- You can also use SharePoint Term Sets for tagging.
- Attachments to posts can be enabled. The permitted file types can be chosen and the maximum file size can be selected.
- When creating a post, you can insert media like images or even embed videos (from sources like YouTube) into the post.
- Badges accumulate for users as they interact with Social Squared. That is, the more topics posted or replies made, the more badges accumulated. In the properties pane, you can select the number of posts that earn a user a badge. For example, 1-5 posts would earn one badge, and 5-10 posts would earn two badges and so on. You can also select a preferred badge icon.
- Voting and downvoting can be enabled as well. This helps for posts where you would like to get feedback.
- Depending on preferences, you can choose to hide certain columns (e.g. Forums’ Answered Topics, Forums’ Last Post, Topics’ Latest Post) in the web part home page view.
- You can choose to show content from a specified date. For example, you can display only content from the last eight months.
- For the Social Squared menu views, you can select the count of items displayed. For instance, you can set Popular Topics Count as 5 and in the view, the first five most popular topics would be displayed. You can do the same to the counts for Recent Activities (last days) which shows the topics most recently worked on in the specified period, and Active Users (last days) which shows the most active users of Social Squared in the given time frame.
- With the Rich Text Editor, you can input text, media and even different programming languages like Python and Ruby. There are three options for displaying the rich text editor – Classic, Inline and Balloon. For the Classic, the editor options are displayed on top of the text box by default. For inline, the editor options are only displayed when the text box is clicked, and for the balloon selection, the editor options are only displayed if text in the text box are highlighted.
- The admin role in Social Squared grants the user control over the forum settings and properties. This role can be granted to the Site Owner or a member of a provisioned SharePoint group. By granting the admin role through provisioned SharePoint groups, a user can get the ability to configure forums without being an owner of the whole site.
- The Alternate content source option allows you to take a Social Squared instance from another site and display it in your current site. You would just need to copy and paste the URL of the other SharePoint site. The local lists from the current SharePoint site would then be ignored, and those from the alternate site would be displayed instead.
- If you prefer a fixed side bar with icons only, you can select the Show Side Bar option. This would replace the default pop-out side bar.
- The Enable Live Persona Card setting allows you to toggle users’ display picture and information. This is enabled by default.
- You can Enable Anonymous Posting. This setting lets users post content without revealing their identity. This is enabled by default.
Teams
In the Teams tab in Microsoft Teams, you can locate your site, and also add a Social Squared tab to that channel. This Social Squared tab would display the same Social Squared instance from that SharePoint site, and also be in sync with it.
- You can edit the property pane settings for the Social Squared tab as you would in SharePoint.
- Note that if you rename the tab in Teams, you will need to enter that new name in the Microsoft Teams tab display name field in the Social Squared configuration pane.
