Q1 2024 Release Notes for Customer Communities (CC)

Create Events More Easily and Quickly

Community managers and administrators rely on the Events feature to enhance engagement and collaboration between community users. To further enhance the events creation experience, Customer Communities bring user experience enhancements that simplifies and quickens events creation in Control.

• Ability to Duplicate Events
• Ability to Save Events as Drafts
• Automation Capabilities in Events Creation

Deliver a Localized User Experience with Multi-Language Support

Customer Communities is excited to announce multi-language support for all communities. With this enhancement, community users can select and view the interface text in their preferred language. It allows customers to increase engagement with their community of global users, spread across various regions, by delivering a more localized experience. The following multi-language support capabilities are introduced:

• Ability to Select Preferred Language in Destination
• Ability to Customize Phrases in Preferred Language

Empower Community Managers with Actionable Insights through Control Home (OPEN BETA)

Customer Communities is excited to introduce Control Home, a new default landing page in the Control view. Previously, community managers relied on the Moderation Overview page to manage their community and navigate between topics using filters. However, community management is broader than just moderating content. With Control Home, Customer Communities aims to bring all information and data that matters to community managers upfront. This page is equipped with a variety of out of the box cards that empowers managers to stay on top of all that is happening within their community.

Control Home brings the following benefits to Community Managers:

• Faster Access to Insights - It serves as an action center where metrics that matter to community managers are available upfront.
• Proactive Management - It provides immediate insights into areas needing attention for a healthy and vibrant community.

After activating this open beta, Control Home becomes the default landing page for community managers. It is populated with the following cards out of the box:

1. Summary - Provides an overview of user engagement in the community using metrics such as Post Created, New Registrations, and so on.
2. Content Overview - Lists all community topics and allows you to sort based on Unread by team, Spam, and Reported.
3. Pending - Displays the list of pending action items for community managers related to Posts, Users, and Group Requests.
4. Popular - Shows the most popular content in the last seven days from Topics and Categories.
5. Recents - Lists the most recently registered Users, published Articles, and created Ideas.
6. Drafts - Displays articles open in the Draft mode in the community to easily resume tasks where it was left open.
7. Leaderboard - Shows the Top Users in the last seven days, ranked by points.

Furthermore, community managers can personalize their Control Home to show only those cards which are relevant to their daily community management responsibilities. To customize:

1. In Home, click Edit Dashboard.
2. Clear the checkboxes on cards to remove them from Control Home.
3. (Optional) Drag-and-drop the cards to change their order of appearance.
4. (Optional) Click Reset to Default to restore the default settings.
5. Click Apply.

Note: Any changes to the Control Home dashboard are limited to the logged in community manager’s account.

To activate Home in your Control environment:

1. Log in to Control.
2. Navigate to Settings > Open betas.
3. Turn on the Control Home toggle.

Increase Community Engagement with Dynamic Content Widget

Enhance your community's engagement effortlessly with Dynamic Content Widget. This widget automatically updates content based on set rules, thus relieving community managers of efforts to manually configure their community home each time.

Based on the feedback received during the Open Beta program, the following enhancements are made in the Dynamic Content Widget:

• Unanswered Questions Filter - Bring up unanswered questions to encourage community users to contribute and initiate discussions.
• Publication Date Filter - Show the latest content published in the time period defined in days.
• Public Tags Filter - Display content that matches with one or more public tags used in your community.

Note: 

• Previously Open Beta, this widget is now enabled as default and available for all customers.
• Open Beta program refers to early access to product enhancements for customers to explore and provide feedback for improvements. Enhancements launched under this program are under continuous development and customers might experience instabilities.

For more information on how to configure the widget, refer to the Boost Engagement with Dynamic Content Widget section in the Q4 2023 Release Notes for Customer Communities.

For latest updates, refer to the community post.

Improvements to Quick Links

To modernize and simplify your experience in Destination, we are delighted to introduce the latest improvements to better manage quick links.

• Streamlined Quick Link Editing: Adding new quick links or editing existing ones is further streamlined. One click opens a pane within the QUICK LINKS slide-out panel instead of a dialog box to make the process of adding or editing quick links easy.

• Modernized Quick Link Overview: Overview of quick links is made more visually appealing by replacing the duplicate cards with modern cards. The new modern cards make it effortless to take actions on quick links such as scanning through the list, arranging their order, and editing or deleting them.

For latest updates, refer to the community post.

 

Customization Mode for Events

IMPORTANT: Events customizations enhancements will be enabled by default for all customers after June 1, 2024. Gainsight recommends upgrading to the new experience before this default enablement, which allows you to customize your new Events page to align with your brand identity and publish it.

We are excited to announce that the Events page now supports customization.

• Search banner that allows you to search through Events.
• Page customization ability that allows to place widgets on the page. For instance, you can insert a Banner widget above the Events list to promote a larger upcoming event, or do a call for speakers. 

The new customization mode also offers a brand new way for your end users to filter events. Currently, the growing list of events in the Upcoming and Past Events tabs makes it challenging for end users to efficiently access the right event. This enhancement allows filtering events by type, reducing the time end users spend scrolling through lengthy event lists and finding the events they are interested in. Furthermore, end users can add an event to their Outlook and Apple calendars in addition to Google Calendar.

To customize and publish your Events page:

1. Navigate to Events in Destination.
2. Click CUSTOMIZE.
3. To choose a widget, click the plus icon. The Choose a widget dialog box appears. 
4. Include the widgets and styling that matches your community brand.

5. Click PUBLISH. The customized page is published and available to your end users.
   Note: This action cannot be undone. Gainsight recommends verifying the customization before publishing.
6. (Optional) To change the title of the Event types widget and the Upcoming events and Past events titles:
   1. Turn on the Phrases toggle.
   2. Click the edit button. A header field appears.
   3. Enter the new title.
   4. Click SAVE.
   5. Turn off the Phrases toggle. The titles are updated successfully.

To filter the event list:

1. Navigate to Events in Destination.
2. In the Events list view, you have the tabs to select:
   • Upcoming events tab, to filter the events list to view all events that are coming up next.
   • Past events tab to filter the events list to view events that concluded in the recent or distant past.
3. From the right-hand pane, further select the following option:
   • Event type - Filter the events list based on the type of event, that is, Workshop, Meetup, Webinar, and so on. 

For latest updates, refer to the community post.

Seamless and Secure Login Experience with Single Sign-On (SSO)

IMPORTANT: All customers will be migrated to the SSO experience in a phased manner. The migration process will complete before the end of April 2024.

Customer Communities brings the platform experience to offer your community users a login process that is unified, seamless, and secure. When the user logs in to their account, the community identifies the user role type with emails.

• Control users, such as Moderators, Community Managers, Administrators, and custom role users with access to the Control environment are redirected to Gainsight’s single sign-on (SSO) login page.
•  Users, other than Control users, are prompted to provide passwords to log in to their community account.

This enhanced login process allows users of all roles to access their accounts from a single page, eliminating the need to remember multiple URLs for different user roles.

Furthermore, Control users with access to multiple Gainsight products, such as Customer Success (CS), Product Experience (PX), and Customer Education (CE), can seamlessly navigate  between product areas using the Product Switcher SSO functionality. This eliminates the need to manage multiple login credentials and facilitates quick transition between product areas.

For more information on different user roles in Customer Communities, refer to the Primary and Custom Roles article.

Additionally, community administrators can now configure SSO settings for Control Users. The Integrations SSO consists of two pages—End Users and Control Users to configure the single-sign on experience for end users and Control users, respectively. The Control Users SSO page allows administrators to add authentication methods for Control users using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Google Apps mechanisms.

To configure and enable the SAML mechanism for control users:

1. Navigate to Control > Integrations.
2. Click Control Users. The Control Users SSO page appears.
3. From the Add Authentication drop-down list, select SAML. The SAML Mechanism dialog box appears.
4. Provide the required information.
   1. Name: A unique connection name for authentication. This field can only contain alphanumeric characters and “-”. It must be unique, begin and end with an alphanumeric character and can contain a maximum of 40 characters.
   2. Email Domain: A domain name for SAML authentication. For example, acme.com.
   3. Sign In URL: Login URL for authentication.
   4. (Optional) Sign Out URL: Logout URL to exit from authentication.
   5. Certificate: Certificate is a Public Key provided by SAML IdP in .CER or .PEM formats.
   6. (Optional) Field Mapping: Name of the email field from SAML IdP. This is required to map incoming user’s username from SAML IdP to Gainsight user’s Username.
5. Click Save. The SAML mechanism is enabled successfully.

Note: 

• Any change made to the SAML settings in other Gainsight products, such as Customer Success or Product Experience also impacts the SAML configuration in Customer Communities.
• Community Administrators need to set up a SAML identity provider (idP) to get the Sign In URL, Sign Out URL, and Certificate. For more information on how to set up SAML idP, refer to the Setup SAML 2.0 Authentication section of the Gainsight Authentication article.

After the SSO and SAML configurations are complete, the login experience for single product (only Customer Communities) and multi-product users is updated.

• If you are only using Customer Communities, the login process is updated as follows.
  • When logging in from Control, you are redirected to the Gainsight login page where you need to provide your existing login credentials. Use your email address instead of your username to log in. 
  • When logging in from Destination, one of the following events will occur upon providing your login credentials.
    • If your email is registered with the platform's SSO, you are redirected to the SSO login page, where you must provide your password again.
    • If your email is not registered with the platform's SSO, you are logged in as a non-SSO user.
    • If SAML is already configured in Control for Destination, the login process remains unchanged.
• If you are using both Customer Communities and Customer Success, the login process is updated as follows.
  • When logging in from Control, you are redirected to the Gainsight login page.
    • If you have a registered account in Customer Success with the same email address as used in Customer Communities, you can log in using the Customer Success password.
    • If you do not have a registered account in Customer Success, you can log in using the Customer Communities login credentials.
    • If SAML for admins is already configured in Customer Success, you are redirected to the SAML login process.
  • When logging in from Destination, one of the following events will occur upon providing your login credentials.
    • If your email is registered with the platform's SSO, you are redirected to the SSO login page, where you must provide your password again.
    • If your email is not registered with the platform's SSO, you are logged in as a non-SSO user.
    • If SAML is already configured in Control for Destination, the login process remains unchanged.
• If you are using both Customer Communities and Customer Success with Customer Education or Product Experience, you can login using Customer Success credentials and switch between products through Product Switcher.
• If you are using both Customer Communities and Customer Education or Product Experience, you can login using Customer Communities credentials and switch between products through Product Switcher.

Additionally, the password reset process for users is streamlined in Control. To reset the password for any user, in the user profile, navigate to the Login Information pane, and select the Reset Password button. A link to reset password is sent to the registered email address.

Note:  If the user account, for which the password reset process is initiated, is active on multiple Gainsight products, the password is changed for all products.

For latest updates, refer to the community post.