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Using Connections 7.0
Welcome to the HCL Connections™ documentation site, where you can find information about Connections. Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
Communities
Get together with people who share your interests.
Owners - manage your community effectively
Give your community and its members the tools they need to collaborate.
Managing your community to keep it relevant
Edit your community to update basic information about the community or the apps associated with it. If the community is no longer needed or was created in error, you can delete it.
Creating subcommunities to reflect organizational change
Create a subcommunity to bring together a subset of members within an existing community for a specific purpose.

Using Connections 7.0
Welcome to the HCL Connections™ documentation site, where you can find information about Connections. Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
- Accessibility features for Connections
  Accessibility features assist users who have a disability, such as restricted mobility or limited vision, to use information technology content successfully.
- What's new in Connections?
  HCL Connections 7.0 gives collaboration a boost with these new features and enhancements.
- Overview
  HCL Connections™ is a collaborative tool that makes it easy to connect with others and exchange ideas. Start sharing important information, building a network of useful contacts, and following people that interest you.
- Home page
  Use the home page as a command center to scan and manage items that need your attention. You can view your most recent project updates, check in on the people you follow, and review your action items all from one place.
- Profiles
  Use profiles to connect with others, showcase your skills, and find the people you need.
- Activities
  Use activities to keep a team informed, collect and share project resources, or to assign and track tasks.
- Files
  Using the Files app, you can upload, organize, share and collaborate on files easily. Files can be shared, tagged, organized in folders, and accessed from other applications, such as Activities and Communities.
- Communities
  Get together with people who share your interests.
  - Getting started
    Find out about communities. Then, search for the communities you're interested in and join them. If you've a mind to, start your own community.
  - Members - use your community effectively
    Use community apps, such as Wikis and Blogs to share information, collaborate with others, and bring your expertise to the community.
  - Owners - manage your community effectively
    Give your community and its members the tools they need to collaborate.
    - Adding members to grow your community
      Add members to make your community flourish. You can also invite people to join the community. If the community is moderated, you can decide whether to accept or reject incoming membership requests. To add multiple members, use the import tool on the Members page.
    - Managing your community to keep it relevant
      Edit your community to update basic information about the community or the apps associated with it. If the community is no longer needed or was created in error, you can delete it.
      - Moderating community content
        Review and manage blog, file, and forum content. By monitoring updates regularly, you can control what content is added by members and remove anything inappropriate.
      - Changing your community's access level
        Change your community access level to protect any sensitive information contained in it.
      - Enabling your community's PDF export access
        As a community owner, if you want to your members to be able to download and print community app content generated as .pdf files, you must enable export access for all members. Owners can generate and access PDFs regardless of whether the access is enabled.
      - Deleting unwanted communities
        If a community no longer has a purpose or is inactive, you might want to delete it.
      - Creating subcommunities to reflect organizational change
        Create a subcommunity to bring together a subset of members within an existing community for a specific purpose.
      - Moving communities
        Moving communities to become subcommunities of a top-level, parent community is a good way to integrate what were diverse communities. Similarly, making a subcommunity into a top-level community is a good way to promote important communities.
      - Copying a community structure
        When you want to create a new community, it might be easier to copy an existing community rather than creating one from scratch.
      - Exporting community membership
        Exporting community membership to a comma-separated value (CSV) file (called membership.csv) is useful when you want to create a community with the same owners or members as an existing community. Instead of adding the members manually to the new community, you can import them in a single transaction.
    - Keeping your apps contemporary
      Take advantage of all the ways you can use apps to engage your community.
- Blogs
  Use blogs to share your announcements, updates, and opinions with others.
- Forums
  Share information, brainstorm ideas, ask and answer questions, and discuss topics of mutual interest in a forum.
- Wikis
  Tap the wisdom of the crowd by building a body of knowledge in a wiki. Everyone on your team can make a contribution.
- Bookmarks
  Use Bookmarks to collect and organize shortcuts to websites.

Creating subcommunities to reflect organizational change

Create a subcommunity to bring together a subset of members within an existing community for a specific purpose.

What can members do in a subcommunity?

When you create a subcommunity, you and any other community owners automatically become owners of that subcommunity.

Create a subcommunity

Open the community to which you want to add a subcommunity.
Click Community Actions > Create Subcommunity.
Follow the instructions in the wizard. The most important field is the subcommunity's Access type. The access options depend on the access level of the parent community.
- When the parent community is Public to my organization, the subcommunity can be public, moderated, or restricted.
- When the parent community is Moderated, the subcommunity can be moderated or restricted.
- When the parent community is Restricted, the subcommunity must also be restricted.
Click Create.

Some tips

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 in the parent community's profile setting, the subcommunity cannot have this set either.

You cannot change the External access setting for a new subcommunity. That is, all subcommunities have the same setting for external access as the parent community.

What's next?

Subcommunities display on the Communities page. If the Subcommunities app is added to the parent community, any subcommunities also appear on the parent's Overview page.

A Subcommunities link is added to the navigation bar 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.