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Creating and configuring Community sites

Updated on April 28, 2021

Pega Communities provides an ability to your customers, partners, and employees to explore and discuss solutions to common questions and issues. Community members can leverage the expertise of their peers and your business experts to openly collaborate and find answers in a safe, moderated forum. You can create, configure, and publish a community site from the Community page in the Knowledge Portal.

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This section contains the following topics:

  • Creating a community site
  • Member sign up in the community site
  • Deploying a community site
  • Mapping a community site with a help site

Creating a community site

Before you begin:

The Knowledge portal lets you create a community site that provides a forum for your customers, partners, and employees to explore and discuss solutions to common questions and issues. As a system administrator, you can create and configure a community site by adding a name, discussion categories, and selecting a layout template and styles.

  1. In the left navigation panel, expand Community and click Community site.
  2. Click New community.
  3. On the General tab, configure the layout of the community site.
    1. Enter the community site name in the Name field.
    2. Optional: To hide the community site name on the community site, select the Do not display check box.
    3. Select the desired community site layout from the Template list.
    4. In the Welcome message field, enter the welcome message to display on the community site.
    5. Optional: To hide the welcome message on the community site, select the Do not display check box.
    6. To enable the external search engine optimization for the community site, select the Optimize for external search check box.
    7. To add categories and sub-categories to display on the community site, click the Add category icon and then select the category or sub-category from the list.
      Note: Create taxonomy categories and related content prior to configuring on a community site. Selected categories or sub-categories are displayed on the community site. For more information on creating a category, see Adding a new taxonomy category.
    8. To allow your community members to report posts and comments to the respective community moderators, select the Allow users to report posts and comments to moderators check box.
    9. To enable the profanity checker and content masking for community posts, select the Enable profanity checker and masking check box.
      Note: Your Pega Knowledge community sites must be registered with your preferred search engines. For example, to register your sites with Google®, navigate to the Google® Search console and follow the registration instructions.
    10. To save the changes, click Save Draft.
  4. On the Gadgets tab, to quickly configure articles, links, or file attachments that you want to highlight in your Pega Knowledge communities, select the Featured content gadget check box.
    You can add content, links and attachments to the Featured content gadget after publishing the respective community site.
  5. On the Style tab, to change the default style settings, configure the following:
    1. To select the community site banner image, click Upload file, and select the image. The recommended image size is 1100 x 290 pixels in .jpg, .png, or .gif format.
    2. To select the font color and font size (in pixels) for the Name, Welcome message, Section titles, Discussion links, Reply links, and Breadcrumb trail, use the respective color picker and enter the font size in pixels.
    3. To select the color for the Page background, Section background, Side panel background, Title border, Community tabs background, Tab bottom border, and Tab bottom border color on mouse hover, use the respective color picker.
    4. To display category images on the community site, select the Display category images check box.
    5. To select the color for the Suggest a discussion button color, Post button color, Cancel button color, and Button text color, use the respective color picker.
      For all color fields, you can manually enter a hexadecimal (hex) color code. For example #FFFFFF for white color.
  6. To save the changes, click Save Draft.
  7. Optional: To review the community site, click Preview.

Member sign up in the community site

To become a member of a community, you must first sign up as a user. A member can access a community site, participate in discussion forums, and post comments.

When a member logs in and signs up for a community using the Community portal, the following are the changes are made:

  • An operator is created with the user Email ID in the KMCreateCommunityUser access group.
  • After Sign up, the users are associated with the KMCommunityUserAG access group with two access roles.
    • PegaKM:CommunityUser
    • PegaRULES:User4
  • While signing up, a one time password is generated, using the KMGenerateVerificationCode activity. This activity uses Java code to generate a random integer (one time password) not greater than 999999 and also store the time it was generated, which is used for expiry time verification.
  • Verification of the one time password is handled by the KMVerifyVerificationCode activity. It also handles the expired one time password entered by the user with a time limit set to five minutes.

If you have a third party authentication already set up, ensure that the operator has access role PegaKM:CommunityUser.

Deploying a community site

You can deploy your community site to your web self-service portal or other web applications. After deploying, the community site will be available to your customers. To deploy a community site, Pega Knowledge automatically generates the required JavaScript and HTML snippets. 

  1. Log in to Pega Knowledge portal.
  2. In the left navigation panel, click Community > Community site.
  3. Select the community site link you want to publish and click Publish.
  4. Click Embed site to generate the JavaScript and HTML snippets. Follow the instructions provided in the JavaScript code and embed the snippet in the desired placeholder.
    1. The JavaScript code can be inserted in the js file of the web server that is serving your targeted self-service site or other web application. This allows the referencing HTML code visibility when being called.  Alternatively, it can be inserted directly in the HTML of the targeted self-service pages.
    2. Insert the HTML code where you want the community site to be called or redirected, such as a button, link, or image. To pass a specific PostID to display upon reaching the community site, insert the related C- post number in the HTML code as the PostID parameter. This is passed with the calling URL and allows the community site to display this specific post once the user reaches the community site.
  5. To test, navigate to the web page that was configured with the community page JavaScript and HTML snippet, and then click on the UI element (button, link, or image) where the HTML snippet was embedded. The redirect brings you to your configured community site.
    Note: This sample did not specify a PostId as a parameter in the HTML code, so the user sees the main community site.
    Note: To archive or withdraw the help site, go to Actions > Withdraw, and then confirm withdrawing the help site. The respective help site moves to archive list.

Mapping a community site with a help site

As an administrator, you must map a community site with a corresponding help site based on the associated line of business. Mapping a community site with a help site help the users to navigate between the help site and corresponding community site. If you search with a relevant keyword, the search page displays the combined results of the community site and help site. You can map only one community site with a help site.

  1. In the left navigation panel, click ConfigurationsLink sites.
  2. Click New mapping, the Create new mapping window appears.
  3. Select the help site name from the Help site list.
  4. Select the community site name from the Community site list.
  5. Click Submit. The community site and help site is now linked.
  6. To view the list of mapped sites, in the left navigation panel, click ConfigurationsLink sites.

Tags

Pega Knowledge 8.7

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