Creating subcommunities

Create a subcommunity when you want to bring together a subset of members within an existing community.

Before you begin

You must be a community owner to create a subcommunity. When you create a subcommunity, you and any other community owners automatically become owners of that subcommunity. The subcommunity has the same functions as the parent community. You can edit, add apps, and perform the same actions in the subcommunity as you can in the parent community. The subcommunity displays on the Communities page.

About this task

Creating subcommunities is a useful way of organizing your community members into smaller groups with different areas of focus. By creating subcommunities, you can share information and collaborate with a more targeted selection of people while maintaining the objectives of the parent community. You can add as many subcommunities as you like to a community.
Note: You cannot create nested subcommunities within a community.

Procedure

To create a subcommunity, complete the following steps.
  1. Log in to IBM® Connections and open the community to which you want to add a subcommunity.
  2. Choose one of the following options:
    1. From the Overview page, select Community Actions > Create Subcommunity.
    2. If the Subcommunities app is included in your community, select Add a Subcommunity in the Subcommunities app on the Overview page.
  3. Required: Enter a name for the subcommunity in the Name field.
  4. Required: Specify the level of access that you want for the community.
    The access options available depend on the access level of the parent community.
    • When the parent community is Public to my organization, the subcommunity can have public, moderated, or restricted access.
    • When the parent community is Moderated, the subcommunity can have moderated or restricted access.
    • When the parent community is Restricted, the subcommunity must also have restricted access.
    Note: To create a restricted community that people can discover and can request access to, select Let anyone in my organization see the community's title, description, tags, and owners. People in your organization but who are outside the community can then see the community's name, description, tags, and owners in the My Organization Communities view; these details also appear in search results.

    A subcommunity cannot be more visible than its parent. Therefore, if a parent community does not have Let anyone in my organization see the community's title, description, tags, and owners. selected, then the subcommunity cannot have this set either.

    Note: The External access check box determines whether the community can have external usersexternal user icon. You cannot change this setting for a new subcommunity. That is, all subcommunities have the same setting for external access as the parent community.
  5. Enter a description for the subcommunity in the Description field.
  6. Enter one or more tags in the Tags field.
  7. To upload an image for the subcommunity, click Upload a Community Image and browse for an image.
  8. To generate a web address for your subcommunity, click Access Advanced Features and enter a one-word, unique term that identifies the subcommunity in the Web Address field.
    This field displays only if you have a Web Address entry in the parent community. If you do not want to create a web address, ensure that you leave this field blank.
    Notes:
    • Certain keywords with a technical meaning, such as html or atom, are reserved and cannot be used in subcommunity web addresses. If you enter a reserved keyword, an error message is displayed, and you are prompted to enter a different keyword.
    • If your web address contains a non-alphanumeric character, such as an ampersand (&), you must escape the character by using a forward slash ( / ) before the character.
    • If you do not see the option to create a web address for your subcommunity, your administrator has disabled this option for your organization.
  9. Add members to the subcommunity by doing one of the following:
    • To add a subset of the parent community membership to the subcommunity, enter the names of the people or groups that you want to add in the field provided.
    • To add all the members of the parent community to the subcommunity, click Add all members of this community to your new subcommunity.
    Note: If a person joins a subcommunity, they are automatically added to the parent community. This applies to public communities only.
    Note: You can add people and groups to the subcommunity, who are also members of the parent community only.
  10. If moderation is available and editable at your site, you can select from the following options:
    • Owners must approve all content (apps) where apps might be one or more of the following apps: blogs, files, or forums. When this option is enabled, community owners can review unpublished content submitted for approval and decide whether to publish it to the community or reject it.
    • Viewers can flag inapproriate content (apps) where apps might be one or more of the following apps: blogs, files, or forums. When this option is enabled, community owners can review content flagged as inappropriate by other users, and decide whether to keep or remove the content.
    For more information about moderation in communities, see Moderating community content.
  11. Click Save to save the subcommunity.

Results

Your subcommunity is created as a child of the parent community.

A Subcommunities link is added to the navigation sidebar in the parent community to enable you to open the subcommunity from the parent community. You can also access your subcommunities from the I’m a Member or I’m an Owner views.

What to do next

You can add content, edit, customize, delete, and follow subcommunities, and work with them in the same way that you would a regular community.

If you are creating multiple subcommunities within a community, consider adding the Subcommunities app to the parent community. This app allows you to see all your subcommunities at a glance and navigate easily to them from the parent community.