How does the Community feature work?

[Wendy Myers]

I am exploring how to include social interaction amongst end users.  Is Community what I should be looking at?

[Maik Skoddow]

Hi @Wendy Myers 

definitely yes. 

But with such a question, which only allows a "yes" or "no", it is difficult to go deeper.

Maybe you can provide more details about what and you are looking for and why

Kind regards
Maik

[Wendy Myers]

Maik,

I'm just beginning to do some research and don't know what I don't know.  I am an Instructional Designer in ITSM and want to see if it's something I should introduce to my corporation.  So far, collaboration usually happens one-on-one.  I'd like a way for the "hive-mind" to work together.

If you have any thoughts about how your organization uses Communities, I'd like to hear them. 

Thanks
Wendy

[Miguel Donayre]

Hi Wendy,

I see Community being used mainly in support of Citizen Development efforts. When a user runs into an issue, I can ask the Community for help, just like this SN Community, and it's the same product. 

It's an excellent way to get people who are usually siloed out in developer team pockets to reach across the company and share knowledge. I would mention your interest to your account rep, and they provide really nice demos and provide use cases to fit your ask.

However, for a more on-the-spot type of collaboration, like if a server goes down, how do we fix it. I would stick to "chat" applications like slack or teams. 

[Kim27]

What kind of interaction are you looking for? If you are looking at "hey, how's the weather where you are" then no, the community feature is not the solution. 

I see the community feature being used in two ways.

1. If you are looking to create a community around a certain topic (like ServiceNow knowledge managers)
2. Using the community to assist solving problems related to the community topic(s)

Either way, you need to have a formal plan in place to launch a community. In most cases the "build it and they will come" approach does not work. This is simply because until you achieve a balance of users asking questions and users answering questions, many (if not most) will go unanswered. 

• Pre-seed the community so that there are questions, answers and/or discussions. Recruit others in your organization to help you do this. 
• If using the community to help resolve problems, you must have a moderator. Set SLAs to ensure that questions are being answered in a timely manner. No question should be left unanswered. 

If you are interested in launching a community around a certain topic (Community of Practice) check out this start up guide. There are some great resources on that site as well. 

Good luck! Please share more details if you can. That will help to better answer your question.