Message boards let you post team announcements and set up threaded conversations among users. Announcements might include planned site outage announcements, new results in a study, organizational and personnel changes, introducing new features for users, etc.
Individual announcements in the message board can also include threaded discussions contributed by users. This allows users to ask questions and receive answers in a public (or private) forum.
- Log in to your server and navigate to your "Tutorials" project. Create it if necessary.
- If you don't already have a server to work on where you can create projects, start here.
- If you don't know how to create projects and folders, review this topic.
- Create a new subfolder named "Collaboration Tutorial". Accept all defaults.
- Notice that the page contains several default web parts. For this tutorial we will begin with the Messages web part.
Message boards can be made available to the general public, or restricted to a selected set of users, based on the security configuration of the folder. If a folder is only accessible to the user group "Lab A", then the message board is accessible only to users in that group. See the
security tutorial for details.
You may also choose to
restrict the visibility of the web part based on permissions, but note that doing so does not prevent a user with access to the folder from finding and using it, such as using the URL.
Example Message
Researchers might use a message board to announce new content and updates to their work. Here is a (fictional) example message, announcing new data and press resources:
Use the Message Board
- Click New in the empty Messages web part.
- Enter a Title, shown here "First Announcement".
- Enter a Body, such as "This is the first announcement of the collaboration project."
- Click Submit.
To learn more about writing and responding to messages on an existing message board, complete the "Messages" section of this topic on a hosted trial server:
Configure the Message Board
- In the Messages web part, open the menu and choose Admin.
- In the Board name field, replace the text "Messages" with the text "Our Team Message Board".
- In the Conversation name field, replace the text "Message" with "Announcement".
- Review but do not change the other customization options.
- Click Save.
- Notice that the web part has a new name, says it is showing "all announcements", and the text of the link for viewing it is also changed.
Adjust Email Notifications
By default you will receive an email every time you post or someone responds to a message you have posted. Adjust this if needed as follows:
- In the Messages web part, open the menu and choose Email > Preferences.
- Select the desired options.
- Note that emails are only sent when your server is properly configured to send them.
- Click Update, or Cancel to discard your changes.
Customize Messages Web Part
- From the Messages web part menu, select the Customize option.
- Set whether full or simple messages are shown in the web part display.
- To see the difference in the two settings, you will need to add longer messages to the board.
Additional Information
Related Topics
