New Functionality to Improve Discussion Boards

In efforts to improve the quality of its discussion boards, ASQ has selected Jive Forums (Professional Edition) as its software of choice beginning July 2004 with the release of the Society’s new Living Community Model. Jive Forums, a powerful, open architecture, customizable community product that supports dynamic, threaded discussions on Web sites, was selected based on functionality requirements gathered from members and discussion board participants.

Jive Forums is a “good fit” with existing ASQ infrastructure and technology. It will be integrated with ASQ’s single sign-on technology so that an additional ID is not required when logging on to the discussion boards. When the discussion board software debuts, it will contain enhanced functionality in addition to the features that are installed today. As a discussion board participant, you will have the ability to:

Message Notification

1. Receive notifications, via email, when there is a new message in your favorite discussion board(s).
2. Receive notifications, via email, when there is a response to a message you posted.
3. Link directly through the email notification, which will contain a URL linking you to the message and/or discussion board(s).
4. Chose your notification preferences, none will be set as a default.

Create and Manage Messages

1. Edit your message(s) after they have been posted (messages that have been edited have their dates changed to reflect the date of the edit).
2. Integrate spell checker.
3. Enhance your message with text features (bold, italic, underline).
4. Mark individual and multiple messages as read or unread.

Search

1. Search by keyword—default setting.
2. Search by user name or ID (message author).

Reward System

Use a virtual currency to encourage participation to your topic (as author) to assign points to their questions and reward the best answers with the points.

Additional Features include:

Archive Discussion

1. Automatic archiving of messages in discussion after n days. The discussion moderator or system administrator sets this feature.
2. Ability to archive entire discussions (make all messages in a discussion read only).
3. Ability for all participants (or those with appropriate permissions) to view archived messages.
4. Archives can be tagged as “read-only.”

Administration of Discussion Boards

1. Moderation- Moderators may see new messages and/or new attachments posted to discussion board which require their approval.
2. Administrators and moderators with appropriate permissions see extra selection check boxes on each discussion page and can delete multiple messages at once.

If you have any questions or comments, please reply to membermodel@asq.org.