Thanks everyone who was able to attend this Voice User Group meeting. It was great to see you!

Around 50 people attended, which was excellent, and feedback was almost all positive!

We didn't try to cover quite as many things as in the first meeting, which meant it wasn't quite so hectic. Though we did still manage to talk about the following:

  • Introductions - who is who at Voice Online Communities CIC and Superhighways.
  • Funding - Voice is currently funded through the Digital Foundations project, which is great as it covers hosting and development costs for several years.
  • How to access the Test Site version of a site - see this page in the documentation for details.
  • A reasonably in-depth look at Surveys
    • How to create a survey with the Surveys app, and create different question types.
    • How to embed a survey on a page using the Survey includelet, for example to create a custom Contact Us page.
    • Putting links to surveys on the site homepage using the Surveys List includelet.
    • Looking at and downloading answers to surveys.
    • Comparing Surveys to Form Builder and the Email Contact Form includelet.
    • Suggestions for improvements to Surveys, e.g., automatically emailing users when they complete the survey (e.g., that'd be useful for us to send the Zoom link to people registering for the next User Group meeting!)
  • A look at the new Clarity theme
    • Overview of theme features and motivation for creating the theme.
    • Looking at the theme in action on a couple of different sites.
    • Trying out the theme options, including changing the background and text colours, and choosing a Google Font.
  • A look at the basics of the WYSIWYG editor
    • Editing text
    • Creating links to pages/documents
    • Adding images to pages
    • Quick peek at probable future WYSIWYG version
  • Getting ideas for updating the backend admin pages
    • Users shared the problems they have with this, e.g., when editing a page using in iPad.
    • Feedback from users on what improvements they'd like to see.
  • A quick visit to the Forums to show people how to use these to post questions. This really is the best place to ask support questions!
  • We discussed the day/time to hold future meetings. The next meeting will be on a Thursday at 10am as "usual", but we will look at holding meetings on different days and different times in future!
  • There were quite a few questions raised which we tried to answer, and some that are yet unanswered but we will get back to the askers soon!

 

Recording

There is now a YouTube Video of the demonstration parts of this meeting available here (with most of the chatty bits cut out).

So if you missed the demo of how to add a survey to a page, for example, then you can watch it here!
 

The Forums

For technical and 'how to' questions (and bug reports!) we recommend asking on the forums.

This may seem more painful than email, but it has the advantage that other users can learn from the answers. You can search the forums for previous answers, so you may already find what you need there without having to ask!

There's an article about using the forums here.

Note that groups based in London can get free one-to-one support from Superhighways. Nice!

 

The next meeting will be on 27th April 2023 at 10am

If you are interested in attending, please register here (you'll need to log in). You can also suggest topics/questions that you'd like to cover.