Discussion

Discussion Overview

Discussion forums are a way to collaborate with other developers on the project, or with end users. You can create as many different forums as needed by clicking on "Create a Forum" on the left sidebar.

Example forums for end users include "Troubleshooting" or "Project Announcements."

• Configuring Discussion
  • Forums
  • Option
• Using Forums:
  • Creating and posting to threads
  • Moderation menu
    • Moving Threads
    • Sticky/Announcement

Configuring Discussion

You may install with the "Add New..." link in the project menu bar.

Once installed, for each Discussion instance, there are a number of configuration options available. In addition to the common tool options of permissions, Label and Delete, there are also these options specific to the Discussion tool:

Forums

At the bottom of this page, there's an Add Forum link. The following fields are requested upon forum creation:

• Name: The long display name for the forum
• Short Name: The short name that forms the URL this forum uses
• Parent Forum: Select a parent if the forum is to be a subforum of another one
• Description: A short description for this forum section, to help users determine the correct forum to use
• Monitoring Email: Enter an email address that notifications should be sent to. Often used with a developer mailing list.
• Icon: Select an Icon for the discussion
• Developer Only: This option can be used to set a forum to be viewable by developers only, even if most forums are publicly available
• Anonymous Post: You can use this option to allow anonymous posts to a specific forum even if they aren't generally allowed for the discussion tool.

These values may be edited after forum creation as well.

Option

The Posting Policy determines how moderated posts are handled

• Approve Once Moderated: This means if a user's message gets moderated, and manually approved once, future messages will be auto-approved
• Approve All: This means all posts that get moderated will need to be approved.

Using Forums:

Creating and posting to threads

To create a new thread, use the Create Thread link in the left sidebar. Enter an appropriate Subject, Forum, and then enter a Description and post.

To reply to an existing thread, when viewing the thread, either select "reply" next to a comment to reply to that specific comment, or use the dialogue box at the bottom of the discussion to add to the end.

Moderation menu

With appropriate permissions, forum moderators have the following options available using the Pencil icon in the upper right when in the thread view of a particular forum thread.

Moving Threads

To move a thread, simply select a new forum from the moderate menu and save.

Sticky/Announcement

Check the appropriate values to set a thread as an Announcement or a Sticky thread.

• Announcement gets a dedicated section at the top, this is displayed on all forums, not just the one that contains that thread.
• Sticky stays at the top of the particular forum, and is marked Sticky, but it is still grouped with the other threads.

A thread may be both an Announcement and Sticky