[INVISION COMMUNITY INSIDER] Invision Community 5: Assign topics to moderators

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Forum moderation management used to be straightforward. It was commonplace to assign a moderator to a single forum. They would be responsible for enforcing the rules, removing spam and generally modelling the behaviour you wanted to see within your community.

As community management has matured and moderators are tasked with roles based on knowledge, help and support, there is a need for more nuance in managing topics within your community.

For example, you may have specialists or teams of specialists who help answer questions about development, sales, or support. Topics that require this help may be posted anywhere within your community.

Indeed, this feature was inspired by a need in our own support community to ensure customers get the right help from the right team member. We have questions on feature sets, purchasing, and support requests, each requiring a different team member. It is not enough to hope that the right person sees the topics; they must be assigned to ensure excellent service.

 

What are the benefits of this feature?
The ability to assign a topic to a single moderator or a team of moderators ensures that each topic gets the best outcome regardless of where it was posted.

Having topics assigned helps moderators deal with issues quickly, as there's clarity over which moderators should handle the topic. It also helps keep your community team accountable by having the ability to monitor their workload and get statistics on the time it takes for your team to reply. These statistics also help the community lead assess quality control.

 

How do you use this feature?
There are two ways to assign a topic to a moderator or team of moderators. You can assign a topic when replying to it or do it from the topic's action menu.

Once assigned, the assignee can review their assigned topics via the Moderator Control Panel and see which are assigned to them via the list of topics. Each moderator will receive a notification informing them they have a new assignment.

Those with permission to assign topics to others will see all the assigned topics and who they are assigned to when reviewing the list of topics.

The Admin CP contains a list of all assigned topics and also allows you to create and manage teams of moderators, such as "Sales Team" or "Developers."

Finally, once the topic has been managed successfully, the moderators can remove themselves from the assignment completing the task.

Assigning a specific topic to a single person or team in a busy online forum is a strategy that can enhance the effectiveness of the forum's management. It promotes efficiency, expertise, consistency, and accountability, which are vital for maintaining a vibrant and respectful online community.

We hope you are looking forward to this feature and look forward to any comments you may have.

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