A tour of the Underground
The Underground is a Web site designed to further connect and enable users (and partners) of the K2 software platform. We built the new site for you, and our goal is that it becomes a gathering place for both new and experienced users to discuss ideas, ask questions and share solutions.
- Help pages
- Feedback forums
- Member profiles
- Private messages
- Tags
- The Insiders page
- In addition we are creating an articles area for people to publish regular content.
Now that you have an overview, let’s dig into each piece in more detail.
Home page
Our intention in designing the home page was to make it a simple-to-navigate launching pad. We’ve packed the page with information to give you a smorgasbord of options and destinations.
You’ll see most recent activity and most active areas as well as direct links to the popular forums.
A bar at the top of the home page tells you who is on line.
Click on a name to view that user’s profile.
Another prominent item on the home page is the Tags cloud (see Tag section below).
Forums
The most popular areas of the Underground are undoubtedly the community forums. Forums are a place for the community to openly discuss a variety of topics regarding K2 and various supporting technologies. We have tried to organize these forums appropriately, but your feedback is always welcome. If you want to suggest a new topic, please do so, as we may add more topic areas over time.
In order to help you quickly find the most active areas in the forum or to find the threads that have not been responded to, we have placed a few helper areas on the forums home page. These areas will show you the list of unanswered posts as well as the most active (see below screen shots).
For more information on posting and replying click on the help link from any page.
Blogs
Underground blogs are another way of delivering information to the K2 community. We hope the community can take advantage of the voices of experience that blog here —K2 Insiders and employees.
Underground blogs are broken into distinct groups. Blogs by K2 people, blogs by Insiders and blogs from interest groups (see the Interest groups section for more information on who they are). At this time, we are not opening the blog option to everyone.
Files
The Underground’s file sharing area allows community members to share work samples, such as code snippets, processes, templates and forms. This can also be an area to share pictures from community events, documents, webcast recordings, etc. The file area is broken down into groups and folders. Currently the groups are:
Each group will have a series of folders to better organize the content.
Once in a folder you can add files by clicking on the upload button, specifying the file and providing information about it.
Interest groups
This is one of the great Underground features. The interest groups allow members of the community to connect and interact on topics of interest to them and interests the community has in common. For example, you can request a SharePoint interest group where those with a interest in having conversations on SharePoint have a place to easily share their expertise.
From the Interest Groups landing page, request a new group or request membership in an existing group.
Each interest group will have a dedicated forum group, a blog, a file share and an event page.
Help and feedback
To get help on the site, read the general help file:
K2 Underground Help
Or post a question to the Underground site help forum:
Site Questions
We also have a feedback and suggestion forum for the community to use as a way to help make the site better and more community focused:
Feedback Forum
Provide feedback, get help and ask questions by e-mailing us:
Underground@k2.net
Profiles
A great way to get to know your fellow community members and “chat” with them is through your profile and private messaging. Simply go to your profile page and fill out your profile information. This will help everyone get to know you and find you based on your interests. If you don’t want to post a message in the forum you can private message someone by going to their profile and selecting the send a private message option
Tags
In the Underground, every piece of content — whether it is a file upload, a forum post, a blog or other — has tags associated with it. These tags can be considered informal categories. For example, if I write a post asking about a K2 Studio installation issue, tags for this post would most likely be installation and K2 Studio.
Over time each of these tags are collected and organized so that when someone clicks on a tag in a tag cloud, all items that fall into those categories are displayed. This makes finding and organizing information far easier.
As a specific tag gets more hits, the font for that tag grows. This allows you to see which tags are most popular (see below).
Another important aspect of the tag cloud is that it is has scope. So it will only display tags relative to your position in the site. For example, if you are on the forums main page, only tags that are used in the forums will be displayed; tags from other areas are excluded.