Community roles and badges are a set of features designed to help you:

• Encourage members to take on leadership roles.
• Help members identify expert resources and make connections. 
• Recognize members for their meaningful contributions.

Community Roles

A Community Role is prominently displayed around a member’s avatar to highlight a specific and meaningful role a member has within your community. Community roles will be visible throughout the entire platform, including emails.

Defining a Community Role

Every community is unique so we made Community Roles extremely configurable.

Access Community Roles by clicking on the Community Menu (people icon in the upper right hand corner) and selecting Community Settings. From the Community Settings page, select the Community Roles tab. Then, click Add a Community Role. 

From here, you can configure your community role in the following ways:

• Title -- this will be the name of the role.
• What should every member know about this role? -- this will be a short description that is displayed when a member hovers over the role. It should be no longer than 2 sentences.
• Description -- this will be a longer description shared in the email notifying the manager or member when they are assigned this role.
• Icon -- this will be the image displayed on a member's avatar. You can also choose the background color of the icon & add a colored border to the outside of the member's avatar. 
• Term Limit -- If enabled, you can choose a predetermined amount of time a member will have the assigned role. Adding a term limit can help distribute administrative workloads and give you a touchpoint to gather feedback and make adjustments to the role.

Assigning a Community Role

Community members can only have ONE community role at a time. 

To assign a role to a member click on the Community Menu (people icon in the upper right hand corner) and select Community Settings. From the Community Settings page, select the Community Roles tab.

Then, click the down caret to the left of the role that will be assigned and begin typing the name or email of the member you want to assign the role. Select the member from the search results. 

An email will be sent to the member to let them know they have been assigned a role in the community.

How can members see Community Roles?

Community Roles will always be displayed on member avatars in the platform & in emails. Members can hover over the icon to learn more about the role. Members can also filter the Member Directory to search for members with specific roles.

Badges

For achievements not tied to a specific role in your community, we designed Badges.

Badges are perfect for recognizing when a member does something truly meaningful for your community – something that makes a difference to your members. This could be as simple as participating in your annual conference, or as significant as mentoring a colleague.

Defining a Badge

You can award a one-off Badge, a shout out for a unique accomplishment, or you might set up a series of related achievements that build on each other.

Access Community Badges by clicking on the Community Menu (people icon in the upper right hand corner) and selecting Community Settings. From the Community Settings page, select the Badges tab. Then, click Add a Badge. 

From here, you can configure your badge in the following ways:

• Title -- this will be the name of the badge
• Description -- this will be a description displayed on the Badges section of a member's profile and shared in the email notifying the manager or member when they are awarded this badge. 
• Icon -- this will be the image displayed on the Badges section of a member's profile. You can also choose the background color of the icon.

Assigning a Badge

You can assign as many badges per member as you'd like! Every one will be displayed on their profile.

To assign a badge to a member click on the Community Menu (people icon in the upper right hand corner) and select Community Settings. From the Community Settings page, select the Badges tab.

Then, click the down caret to the left of the badge that will be assigned and begin typing the name or email of the member you want to assign the badge to. Select the member from the search results.

An email will be sent to the member to let them know they have been assigned a badge.

How can members view Badges?

Badges are visible on member profiles. Members can view their own badges by clicking their avatar in the upper right hand corner, clicking View my Profile, and then selecting the Badges tab.

Since badges are visible on member profiles, members will be able to view other member's badges too. Clicking on a member's avatar in the feed or click on their card in the Member Directory will bring you to their profile. Then, select the Badges tab.

Strategy

Please view our blog post to hear our thoughts on how to strategically think about Community Roles and Badges to your community https://www.forj.ai/resources/roles-and-recognition.

We hope these new additions give you one more reason to reach out and connect with your members & we would love to hear how you use them.