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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.
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.
Getting the discussion going in a forum
Share ideas with others and discuss topics of common interest.
Browsing forums
Share ideas with others and discuss topics of common interest.

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.
    - Finding out what’s going on
      Find out what's going on in the communities you're a member of.
    - Unsubscribing from community emails
    - Bookmarking important places
      Have you seen something on the web you'd like to share? Bookmark the site to make it available to community members.
    - Getting the discussion going in a forum
      Share ideas with others and discuss topics of common interest.
      - Browsing forums
        Share ideas with others and discuss topics of common interest.
      - Adding topics to a forum
        Start a discussion with members of your community, add a topic a forum.
    - Sharing information in community files
      Upload, share, and work with community files using the Files app.
    - Assigning tasks in a community activity
      Add activities to your community to give members somewhere to assign tasks and to share information and resources. You can grant access to the activity to all community members, or you can restrict access to a subset of members.
    - Blogging your point of view
      Share your thoughts on any subject with others and get their feedback.
    - Creating information in a community wiki
      Use a wiki to share resources with your community and collaborate with others.
    - Sharing ideas in an ideation blog
      An ideation blog is a space where you can contribute and vote on ideas related to the community's area of focus.
    - Organizing your documents in libraries
      Use the Libraries app to upload, manage, organize, and collaborate on community files.
    - What's going on - scheduling events
      Use the Events app to share information about important events and dates relating to your community.
    - Conducting surveys to find out what people think
      Create a survey that allows people to give useful feedback on any subject. When the survey completes, you can analyze the responses to get an idea of what users think.
  - Owners - manage your community effectively
    Give your community and its members the tools they need to collaborate.
- 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.

Browsing forums

Share ideas with others and discuss topics of common interest.

About this task

Members can post discussion topics and respond to existing topics in those forums. The five most recent updates are displayed in the Forums area on the community's Overview page, where you can view usage statistics for each topic. These statistics are a good indicator of the topics that interest your community, and they can also give you an idea of who the most active participants are.

Procedure

To browse the forums in your community, complete the following steps.

From any page in your community, click Forums in the navigation bar.
Do one of the following.
1. To browse by forum, click the Forums tab. When you see a forum that interests you, click the forum title to open it and start browsing its topics.
2. To browse by topic, click the Topics tab.
  Topics are listed by date, with the most recently-created topics first. However, if the community owner has pinned any forum topics, these topics are displayed first.
To open any topic, click the topic title.
A threaded view of the topic displays, showing the original topic and any responses to it. When navigating long discussion threads, click the name after the response title to display the parent of that topic first in the page.

What to do next

If you want to get notified about updates to a community forum that interests you, open the forum and select Follow > Follow this Forum.