Discussion Boards are an area within a circle connection plan in which circle participants can discuss topics among themselves. It serves as a type of "mini-forum" that only a circle's participants have access to.

To enable Discussion Boards for your program's circles, please contact your CSM. Note that existing circles that don't have Discussion Boards enabled already will not be able to utilize Discussion Boards; only new circles created with a circle plan template that has this feature enabled will be able to use it.

Please note: It may be confusing to users to have both the Discussion board and the Message feature enabled since both allow users to start a conversation with their circle. It will be important to disable one, or make the distinction clear between the two features. In addition to messaging members, Discussion allow members to post a response to a specific topical thread. Discussion also also shows how many views for that particular discussion and allows users to follow the discussion so that they will be alerted as additional responders contribute to the conversation.

To access a circle's discussion board, simply click the Discussion Board tab in the Connection Area to be taken to the list of discussion board conversations. Note that the discussion board will always place the most recently created conversation at the top of this list.

Participants can start new conversations in the Discussion Board by clicking one of the Start a Conversation buttons.

A general summary of the Discussion Board and the content that should be discussed within can be customized in the summary you see on the right side of the image above. This summary can only be modified by your CSM, so please get in touch with them for assistance.

Once within the Discussion Board section, participants can click Start a Conversation to begin. They'll see this screen upon clicking the button:

After posting, the participant will be taken directly to the conversation they just started, which will look similar to the image you see below. Note that every person in the circle will automatically follow all new Discussion Board posts.

Participants will be notified of any activity that occurs in conversations they are following in their digest emails. They will not receive update notifications about conversations they are following anywhere else in the software.

If someone wants to discuss a topic further, they can reply to the conversation to do so. Note that hyperlinks cannot be directly provided here, but participants can add attachments to their replies if they'd like to do so.

Once posted, participants can comment on existing replies, or continue discussing the original topic by creating their own reply.

Finally, note that posts cannot be edited once they have been created; they can only be deleted and re-added again manually by the participant.