Using Ning as a Helpdesk platform

[Christine Prefontaine]

We've been discussing how to use the Ning platform (which runs this site) to run a Helpdesk. Ning is a social networking platform. We've hacked it to create an organizational website with strong community-building features. So... how can we hack it some more? Some ideas:

Groups — See our guide on groups. Groups are mainly for collaboration. So this would be a great way to coordinate people running a helpdesk. They could discuss best practices, challenges, ideas — process stuff. Assuming the group is public, activity shows up on the Latest Activity column on each page of this site and users can search group forum discussion content. This means groups could be created to explore specific topic areas.

Forums — You're in a Forum now. This is a good place to post information and resources (I can attach PDF or Word files to this post, for example) and help each other. The forum basically works as a bulletin board, which lots of communities use as helpdesk platforms (check out the Ning Network Creators forum, which we use regularly to get answers). You'd need to have good facilitators that can chunk up and systematize information (post it in a logical place, keep it organized) and moderate discussions. BUT — the one issue we've not yet resolved is what happens when a person who acts as a moderator leaves? As I understand it so far all their content leaves with them. Not sure forum content does too — I'll follow up to check this because it would be a problem.

Member Profiles — Here's a fun and practical hack: Create a series of "members" (Sally Social Enterprise, Teddy Technical, etc.) — accounts that are managed by a group of people. This is how we do the telecentre.org organizational account. This way, people have "someone" specific to go to ask questions about a particular topic. And there's no issue with losing valuable content when people leave the community (mentioned above). The people managing the account can be listed on the "member" page for transparency. So, for example, I can go ask Sally Social Enterprise about a new service I want to deliver to my community, and I will get an answer from one of the people assigned to act as Sally and provide Social Enterprise advice (folks like Harsha or Loic). Sally can also host forum discussions, lead working groups, and post blogs.

Notes & Pages — We use the Notes feature to run our About section, so we can't use them for helpdesk information. But there's also a pages feature (see tutorial, and note that it's on a tab called Tutorials) that could be used for static information, which could then be linked to discussions. Need to dig more into this idea.

So how best to use and combine these features? Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

[Anahi Chaparro]

Hi Christine,

We have started a discussion about your member profile suggestion in the spanish site. You can see the responses under "Expertos anónimos" in the group "Explorando el Ning para el SAOT".

Best regards,

Anahi

[Christine Prefontaine]

Hi Anahi,

Thanks for letting me know. I just skimmed through and want to clarify:

"La razón para esto sería que si alguien sale de la red, todo el contenido que había puesto desaparece también (bueno, eso es lo que creemos y trataremos de probar)."

We tested this and indeed when a member leaves a network, all of their content is deleted. And if they started a discussion the whole discussion will disappear, including subsequent replies. Read the information on leaving a network — particularly the links at the end on the Ning Network Creators.

"a. Invisibiliza al experto que quiere contribuir - muchas veces esa es la principal razón para responder. Es decir el que responde no puede capitalizar de ninguna forma el expertise que comparte."

I suggest in the post above that everyone would know who is acting as the "experto seudónimo" by listing their names on the profile. In addition, experts can add their names to their answers. So it would not at all be invisible.

"b. Es difícil hacer un seguimiento a la respuesta ni a su calidad. Es difícil dar retroalimentación y decir si la respuesta fue útil o no."

I'm not sure I understand this as the people managing the pseudonym could be given the responsibility to do followup.

Hope this helps. Maybe the idea is not a good one — but want to clear up any confusion. Hope you can communicate this to your team and looking forward to hearing your ideas!

[Christine Prefontaine]

Based on something Marcia pointed out I've updated the section on group forum discussion content "searchability" (my spell check tells me that's not a word, but i'm using it anyway :)

So it is possible to search group forum content — it's just that you need to direct users to it. I suppose Ning did this because some groups are private.

[Marcia Chandra]

Hi Christine,

I tested it and the global search button does search Group forums and comments but only for those group that are public.

Try it by entering Power point in search button above...

Best,
Marcia

[Anahi Chaparro]

Hi Christine and Marcia,

Two questions:
1. Could it be possible to implement the search option in the Home page?

2. Are we going to have a tag cloud? This could help to direct users to some of the topics of most interest and, as the "searchability", it could include just the public content.

[Christine Prefontaine]

Hi Anahi,

1. Users can search from the Home page, including the content of groups (see discussion above).

2. I have not done full research, but a quick look suggests that tag clouds are possible for specific areas (groups, photos, etc.) And there is likely a way to consolidate. As to whether or not we are going to have a tag cloud I can't answer that because it's a decision we take together as a team — keeping in mind what is best for users. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the ideas above and to understand how you envision the cloud working.

BTW we can also create a feed of all content tagged with a particular term. This could be "helpdesk" generally or a specific topic like "working with women's groups" — see how the Academy has done this (scroll down to "Academy News").

[Christine Prefontaine]

OK... So forget that last comment about group search. Public groups are searchable. So people providing support around a particular topic could form a group. I'm sure other ways to use groups — waiting to hear back from others and will post as I think of more.

[Anahi Chaparro]

Sorry Christine, I didn't see the search box in the home page. I didn't realise there was a box in the right corner because in all the other pages there is another search option just under the title, like it is "Forum" or members "Recently added". Is it possible to move the search box and put it under the main menu in the upper right corner? Because it's not very visible.

About the tag cloud, I think it would be good to promote different ways to go to the same information. For the helpdesk this would be very useful because it would help us to promote it inside the ning community. So, for example, if a recurrent theme comes up in the helpdesk, it would appear in the tag cloud and people that use the ning site - but maybe haven't yet discovered the helpdesk- could see that there is information about that theme without having to go first to the helpdesk group. This could be possible if there was a tag cloud in the main page.

Also, inside the group, a tag cloud could help us to organize and rank the different topics that we are developing.

The feed content it's a good idea. It could help us to link the different tools we want to use for the helpdesk (a helpdesk page -like a personal page-, a blog, a group...)

Keep me posted about the decisions you make about the tag clouds.

Best regards,

Anahi

[Marcia Chandra]

Hi Anahi,

While we might not be able to implement a tag cloud globally on the site, you could consider to implement something more 'local' for the Helpdesk.

You can perhaps plug in an RSS feed for the helpdesk forum into this widget: http://www.wowzio.com/docs/faq#tagcloud-faq to create a tag cloud and then embed this cloud into the helpdesk group or maybe somewhere else...

Tag clouds are a little negative in terms of slowing down networks but if the cloud were just used for one RSS feed and perhaps on a page where only those interested would go to, then it could work very well.

Its an idea worth exploring.

[Marlene Bramley]

I would also like to know if ning offers rating functionality - when a tag cloud is created it relies on ratings, I have not seen ratings next to blogs, comments nor posts. can it be added?