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Creating Message Boards Threads

By default, only authenticated users with the requisite permissions (at minimum, Add Message, Reply to Message, Add File,and View) have the ability to create threads. See the Message Boards Permissions Reference for more information. Administrators can enable the feature to allow guests to post threads.

Posting a New Thread

Threads can be created at the root level of the Message Board itself and within categories that have been created.

To create a new thread:

  1. Click the Message Boards New Thread button. The Add Message form appears.

  2. Enter a title in the Subject field.

  3. Create your thread’s content in the Body field.

    note

    This field uses the same editor as the Blogs app, except that it uses BBCode instead of HTML. For further instructions, see the documentation on using the editor.

    Figure 1. Creating the first post

Uploading Attachments

Users can attach files to forum posts.

  1. To add attachments, expand the Attachments section.

  2. Drag and drop a file to upload or use the Select Files button to navigate to the file’s location.

    Figure 2. Uploading an attachment

important

You can enable automatic antivirus scanning to scan files on upload. For details, please see Enabling Antivirus Scanning for Uploaded Files.

Besides using Categories to organize the threads, users can add a tag to a forum post. If searching for content using this tag (for example, Toyota), all posts with the Toyota will be returned faster.

  1. Expand the Categorization section.
  2. Click the Select button to select an existing tag. Alternately, create a new tag by entering the tag name in the Tags field and clicking Add. See the documentation on tags for more information.

The message board post now has a tag.

Message Boards threads can be linked to other existing assets in DXP.

  1. To select an existing asset in the portal (e.g., a media file, blog post, etc.) to relate to your thread, expand the Related Assets section and use the Select button to select that asset.

    Figure 3. Adding a Tag and Related Asset

Set the Thread’s Priority

A Message Boards thread can be prioritized as Urgent, Sticky, or Announcement. By default, it is set to “None”.

  1. Expand the More Settings section.

  2. Select the thread’s priority.

  3. Click Publish.

The new post has been created. Site administrators have the ability to move this post to another category at a later time.

Using Threads as Questions

Message Boards Threads can be more than just sharing ideas and opinions. Forum members can turn their post into a question for other site members. The reply that best answers the question can be marked as the answer.

To make a thread post a question:

  1. Click the New Thread button.

  2. Expand the More Settings section.

  3. Check the box for Mark as a Question.

    Figure 5. Marking a thread as a question

To select a reply as the answer:

  1. Click the 3-dot icon.

  2. Click Mark as an Answer.

    Figure 6. Replies can be marked as an answer to a message board question.

  3. Click Publish to publish the thread.

Message Board Thread Replies

Click a thread to view it. Messages appear in a threaded view so that replies are aligned under their parent thread. This makes it easy to follow conversations. Thread replies are indented under their parent thread.

Figure 7: A thread's view displays author information and thread content, for the thread and all replies to the thread.

To reply to a message in a thread:

  1. Click the Reply button. This opens the quick reply form, which only contains a text field for entering your reply.
  2. Enter your reply in the text field. To access more options for your reply, click the Advanced Reply link. This opens the full editor from the add/edit thread form.
  3. Click Publish.

In addition to replying to a message, you can rate it or flag it as objectionable. A message board moderator can evaluate flagged messages and decide how to handle the messages and their authors.