Posting questions to a forum

Post a question to a forum to solicit an answer from others in your organization.

Before you begin

Anyone can post a question to a stand-alone forum. To post a question to a community forum, you must be a community member.

About this task

If you want to find answers to a specific question, use the expertise in your organization by posting the question to a forum. As the topic creator, you can moderate the answers that people provide and choose whether to accept or reject their responses.

Using a question-and-answer format is also a useful way to make information available to forum members in an easy-to-read layout. By creating question-and-answer threads, you can build up a useful repository of information for new users.

When you are posting a question to a forum, create a regular topic mark it as a question. The topic is marked with a question mark icon Question icon in the user interface so that forum users can easily identify it as a question.

Procedure

To post a question to a forum, complete the following steps.
  1. Open the forum where you want to post your question.
  2. Click Start a Topic.
  3. Enter a topic title in the Title field.
  4. Required: Select Mark this topic as a question.
  5. To tag the topic, enter one or more tags in the Tags field.
  6. Enter your question in the rich text field.
  7. To attach a file to your question, click Attach a File and browse for a file.
  8. Click Save.

Results

If forum topics are moderated in your deployment, the topic is not displayed immediately because the forum moderator must first approve the content. If content moderation is not enabled, the topic is displayed immediately.

What to do next

You can post an answer to your own question by clicking Add Your Answer and following the steps in the Answering questions in a forum topic. When you post an answer to a question that you asked, the answer is automatically marked as an accepted answer.

To accept an answer posted by another user, click Accept this Answer. The response is marked as an accepted answer and the icon next to the original question changes to a tick Tick denotes an accepted answer. Accepted answers are also highlighted with a green background so that you can quickly identify them when there are several responses. You can mark multiple responses as accepted answers. When one reply is marked as an answer, the entire topic is marked as answered.

To reject an answer that is already marked as accepted, click Decline this Answer.

If your question is marked as answered, but you later find that you need more information, click Reopen Question. The question is marked as open and users can post answers to it again.