Our Community Forum works alongside our Support Ticketing system and our Support Center and is incredibly simple to use. This article will explain the key functionalities of the forum and how you can get the most out of using it.
Accessing the Community Forum
- Click here for the direct link to the Community Forum! Make sure to bookmark this link so you can easily find it later.
- To access the community forum aside from the direct link, make sure you are logged in to the HomeGauge Dashboard. Towards the top right of the page, click your name and then "Support Center". From here, click the "Community Forum" link at the top of the page.
Topics
The first thing you'll see after accessing the Community Forum is our list of topics. The topic can be considered the category for what you'd like to talk about. These are added to the forum by the HomeGauge team, and we plan to expand these topics over time to reflect better industry conversations and other topics inspectors would like to see discussed. We recommend checking out our Community Code of Conduct, as this outlines the various ways we moderate and highlights what to do and what not to do when interacting with other forum users.
Additionally, each topic has a small description to explain the topic's purpose further. To name a few sections, we have the New HomeGauge Users topic for new inspectors to introduce themselves, Popular Resources, which is a collection of our most viewed Support Center Articles, Tips and Tricks to share software tips with other inspectors or share templates, Product Feedback for offering suggestions for our products, and Community Support to get support from other inspectors. We will also have our Release Notes for all of our products located here as well.
Posts
Posts are the discussion threads within the community topics. You can create a new post from the home screen of the forum or after selecting a topic.
After clicking "New Post," you will be taken to the page to write up the post. You'll need to include a title, the body of what you'd like to ask or talk about, and then select the topic you'd like the post to fall under. Also, before you click submit, please make sure you read the Community Code of Conduct and that your post falls within those guidelines.
After a new post is created, commenting on the post is the primary way to discuss the content of the post itself. Here you can engage in conversation and even vote comments up or down depending on how relevant they are to the topic
Voting
You can vote on both posts and comment on posts.
Voting posts or comments up is a great way to show you share the same sentiment, would like to see that product feature request added as well, or you found the comment helpful.
Following Topics/Posts
Following a topic allows you to be notified via email if there is any new post within this topic. A good example would be to follow the Release Notes topic, as you will be notified via email of any new releases. Following posts allows you to get notified of any new comments on that post. By default, if you create a new post, you will automatically follow that post, allowing you to see how other people are responding to it.
Featured Posts/Community Activity
Located at the bottom of the main page, you can find a list of posts that we've featured and all recent activity showing the newest posts in the entirety of the forum. This is a great way to see the latest news or find the most current discussion threads.
We hope you enjoy our new Community Forum! If you'd like to see new topics or have ideas on how to make the Community Forum better, please let us know in the Product Feedback topic!