How to Use the Community Site Feature in SharePoint 2013

Collaborating and being social on SharePoint has never been easier with the introduction of the Community Site feature. New to SharePoint for 2013, this feature adds community functions such as discussion categories, reputation scores for users based on their participation, and the member’s list. It also provisions community site pages that contain the aforementioned lists and features. In this post, we’ll show you how to activate the Community Site feature as well as some of its key functionalities.

Activate Community Site Feature:

Go to Site Settings and click Manage site features:
Go to Community Site Feature and click Activate to activate the feature:
After you have activated the feature, you’ll see the following:

Use Categories to Manage Discussion Topics:

Go to the Categories page and click Create categories via the selections on the right:
To add a discussion to a Community, begin clicking New discussion:
After you have added your new discussion, your discussion board will be open for community conversation:

Manage Member Information and Set Up Score for Community:

Click Assign badges to members on the right to see information for a given member:
Go to the Moderation tab in the Ribbon and click Give Badge to set the level of a given member:
After you have set the level for a member, you will see badges under their names as shown below:
Next, click Reputation settings from the right bar to establish the settings score for individual acts of participation within the community:

Manage your Community:

If you are a Moderator of a community, your Community Home page will include a bar on the right side that features a number of community management options, as shown below:
If you are NOT a Moderator of a community, your Community Home page will not display the community management options:

Want to know more about out-of-the-box Web Parts available for SharePoint 2013? Check out the complete series:

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