Working with Community Forums
With a wide range of users across different products, Zoho Desk offers multichannel support and guidance through various platforms like IM, email, calls, and social media. One of the main channels for providing support is the Community module.
This platform allows the agents to create topic types like discussion, question, announcement, problem, and ideas. It also allows the users to ask questions, engage in discussions, share information, and connect with other users and agents on specific topics.
Users can create threads, reply to posts, and organize discussions into categories or sub-forums. The module offers online space for knowledge exchange, support, and community-building.
Depending on the purpose, a topic can be posted under a specific category:
- Announcement: Product or feature launch
- Idea: Product or feature requests
- Problem: Issue with the product or technical failures
- Question: How to install a product or use case possibility
- Discussion: Sharing business use cases or understanding usage
Let's see how agents can navigate through the community module and make efficient use of the available filters.
Department-based filters
A community can be created for every department, and each community home page will display the list of forum posts published.
The left panel displays the list of categories available in that specific department, and all the forums posts available in those specific categories are listed on the details page.
For example, selecting the 'zPhone' category from the left panel will display the forum posts 'zPad' and 'New zPhone models' that are associated with that category on the detail page.
The community posts can be broadly filtered into:
- Recents: The most recent post.
- Unreplied posts: The list of posts waiting for agent responses across all four forum types.
- Sticky posts: Important posts that are pinned by the organization for easy access.
- Top contributors: Posts from agents and help center users that are actively engaged in discussions are marked as top contributors.
- My drafts: The drafts saved by the agent.
Filter based on type of post and status
Forum posts can also be filtered by the type (such as discussion, announcement, question, idea, and problems) and by status.
For example, agents can view answered questions by setting the type as Question and the status as Answered.
View-based filter
Classic view
Displays important information, such as:
- Forum title
- Brief of the content
- Category name
- Agent name
- Agent who responded recently to the post
- When the post was updated
- Number of views, comments, and likes
By hovering over the list of forum posts, agents with the appropriate permissions can view the options to edit a post, lock responses by setting it to Read-only mode, or open the forum post in the help center.
Compact view
More compact version of the classic view. It displays:
- Forum title
- Category name
- Agent name
- Agent who responded recently to the post
- When the post was updated
- Number of views, comments, and likes
Status board
The status board can be used only to filter the questions, ideas, and problems posted by the customers.
The kanban view provides clear categorization and the organized view can help agents quickly review the topics.
Note: Users cannot set a custom status. Only the system-defined status will be used to categorize the topics.
Here are the few statuses available for each forum type.
Forum type | Statuses |
Question |
|
Idea |
|
Problem |
|
Setting display preference of the topics
The display preference allows agents to set the preferred view for the posts.
- Order By: Forum posts can be viewed in the order in which they were published, with the most recent post on the top and the oldest at the bottom.
- Sort By: Forum posts can be sorted based on the created time and modified time.
- Records per page: Agents can set the number of posts that can be viewed at a time in the list view. By default, 10 articles will be displayed. A maximum of 50 articles can be viewed per page.
- Posted in: Agents can filter forum posts based on the duration of time since they were posted. The posts can be filtered by:
- Last 7 days
- Last 30 days
- Last 365 days
- All time
- Custom
Clicking on the 
icon on a category page will show additional details about the category, including the number of posts and followers for that specific category.
Clicking on the number of followers will display the name and the email address of the agents and help center users who follow the category.
Viewing and editing a forum post
From the community detail view, agents can view the:
- Type of the forum post
- Number of views, likes, and dislikes received on the posts
- Replies that the help center readers have left on the article
- Ticket ID, if the post has been converted to a ticket.
- Status of each post
The left panel displays the list of posts available in the selected category. Posts can be filtered by views, forum type, and the status.
View topics in conversation mode
The responses posted by other customers and agents can be viewed by selecting conversation mode for a topic.
The conversation option can be selected from the drop-down if the agent wants to see the interaction. The conversation option is available for all forum types.
If a comment added by a customer is useful, the agent can mark it as the best answer.
Topic-related insights
Forum metrics provide an overview on the effectiveness of the content, its popularity, and usage by the agents.
The insight displays the following metrics:
- Created by: The agent who created the post, along with the timestamp.
- Last updated: The agent who recently updated the post.
- Approved by: If the agent added a reviewer to the post, and they approved it, their name is displayed in the approved by section.
- Likes & Dislikes: The count of likes and dislikes for the post could indicate its popularity. Upon clicking the number, you can see who has liked or disliked the post.
- Replies: Customers can leave responses, suggestions, and report errors by commenting on the posts. This provides an opportunity to enhance the content and keep it up to date.
- Views: The number of views received on the post.
- Participants: The number of agents and help center users who actively participated in this post.
- Followers: The number of followers for this specific post.
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