This is an overview video of Social Squared Discussion Boards for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. You can watch the video below, or click continue for a guided tour. In both the video, and the guided tour, we’ll show you the basics of configuring Forum Groups and forums, and then Creating and Replying to Topics. The same experience can be had within Microsoft Teams as well as in SharePoint.
Getting Started
Now that you have Social Squared installed, we’ll look at using Social Squared within Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams Tabs, Microsoft Teams Personal Apps, and as a mobile phone app.
Within SharePoint Online, we’ll explain the structure of Social Squared, and how to configure new Forum Groups and Forums. We’ll then discover the high level features such as posting topics, replying to topics, inserting pictures into posts, tagging posts, and searching posts.
The Social Squared Discussion Board Structure
Social Squared posts are organized into topics, forums, and forum groups. This structure enables users to navigate to relevant content when researching answers to questions or posting questions. Rather than a social feed that is continuous, Social Squared topics are created within a forum so that posts with a similar subject are grouped. This structure can be found in many internet-based forums. Take, for example, discussion boards related to baking. Forum Groups could be Cakes or Bread. The Cakes Forum Group could have many Forums, such as Cupcakes and Birthday Cakes. While the Bread Forum Group could contain Bread Rolls, Sourdough, and Wheat Bread. If you had a topic, such as a baking question or a new recipe, you would navigate to the appropriate forum so that users could find your topic and reply to it. A topic such as “How to make a sourdough starter” would be posted under Sourdough -> Bread.
Social Squared has many uses, such as Community of Practice, Technical Discussion Boards, Class Discussions, Brainstorming, and much more. So the structure would be up to you. The example below shows how Social Squared could be structured for a Human Resources Discussion Board.
Social Squared can also be displayed within Microsoft Teams as a Channel Tab. It’s not a choice of one or the other; you could add Social Squared to a Team and also to the underlying SharePoint site. They will both share the same content allowing your users to engage in discussions through their favorite platforms.
Creating a Topic in Social Squared
Once the Forum Group and Forum structure has been defined. Users (members of SharePoint Sites and Teams) can navigate to the appropriate forum to ask a question. Since the question is posted within a specific forum, like-minded users or experts will see your post and reply to it.
Below, a question has been posted in the 401k forum about 401k contributions. You can create a topic by:
- Navigating to the Forum that is most appropriate for your questions.
- Click ‘Add new topic’
- Add a subject & body.
- Optionally add formatting to your post.
- Optionally add tags. adding tags makes it easier to find your question.
- Click Add.
In the next video, we’ll take a look at navigating Social Squared. If you are a Site or Teams Owner, you can navigate straight to our configuring Social Squared section.
