Managing Forums & Surveys [Video]

Managing Community Forums & Surveys

CommuniBee Forums allow members and administrators to communicate in discussion threads. Forum categories provide a grouping mechanism for topics created by your members.

Surveys can be used to gather feedback from your members about anything community-related. They’re similar to questionnaires used for events, but are not specifically tied to events.

This CommuniBee training video covers:

  • Setting up forums in the CommuniBee admin dashboard
  • Managing and moderating forums in the CommuniBee app
  • Creating and sending out surveys to your community members
  • Exporting survey responses

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CommuniBee Stripe Setup Guide

CommuniBee Stripe Setup Guide

CommuniBee users can purchase products, such as memberships and event tickets, through the app. We use Stripe as our payment processing platform. It’s fully PCI-compliant and is used to handle payment processing for companies like Kickstarter, Shopify and OpenTable.

We don’t charge any fees for transactions, but Stripe, like any payment provider, does charge processing fees.

Non-profits may qualify for discounted payment processing fees. If your organization has non-profit status, email sales+nonprofit@stripe.com, or visit this support page for more information.

To enable your community’s marketplace and sell products to your residents, you’ll have to set up a Stripe account and connect it to CommuniBee. Here’s a brief guide on how to do that!

We’ve also created a training video, explaining this process. You can view it here.

Setting Up Stripe

Step 1: Create A Stripe Account by clicking here. If you already have a Stripe account, skip to Step 2.

Step 2: Click on “Developers” > “API Keys”. This section contains two pieces of information that necessary for connecting Stripe to CommuniBee: your publishable key and secret key.

Step 3: Copy the test publishable and secret key tokens from Stripe. The secret key token is hidden, so you’ll have to click to reveal it. The two tokens are circled below:

Step 4: Log into the CommuniBee admin dashboard. Under your community, click on “Configure Layout” and scroll down to “Marketplace Settings”.

Paste the test publishable and secret key tokens from Stripe into the dashboard (see image below). The click “Update”.

As you can see, the keys you pasted as test keys. These allow you to test whether the marketplace, specifically product purchasing, is working in CommuniBee. Once that’s confirmed to be working, you’ll have to switch the test keys to live keys in order to officially enable the marketplace.

Step 5: In Stripe, click on “Developers” > “API Keys”. Now, toggle “Viewing Test Data” at the top right to off (see image below). This changes the test keys to live keys. You’ll see their tokens change so that they now say pk_live and sk_live.

Copy the live publishable and secret key tokens from Stripe. Once again, the secret key token is hidden, so you’ll have to click to reveal it.

Step 6: Log into the CommuniBee admin dashboard. Under your community, click on “Configure Layout” and scroll down to “Marketplace Settings”.

Paste the live publishable and secret key tokens from Stripe into the dashboard (see image below). Then click “Update”.

Your marketplace should now be enabled, and your members should now be able to purchase products, including memberships, through the CommuniBee app!

Don’t hesitate to submit any questions you may have about Stripe through our support form. We’ve also answered common marketplace questions in our FAQ.

 

  • The CommuniBee Team

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A Best Practices Guide for Adding Images to CommuniBee

A Best Practices Guide for Adding Images to CommuniBee

As a CommuniBee administrator, you’ll likely be uploading images through our dashboard at some point. Whether they’re your community logo or related to a specific event, we’ve compiled a best practices guide so you can ensure they’re optimized for display.

Community Logos

Community logos display on the home screen at the top of the CommuniBee app, and act as the focal point of branding for your community. Based on existing communities, they render best and use up the maximum amount space when their dimensions are approximately 1000 pixels wide x 250 pixels tall (or a size with an aspect ratio of 4:1).

Below is a community logo placeholder with the recommended dimensions:

Sponsors, Amenities, and Events

In terms of sponsors, amenities, and events, a more ‘landscape’ format tends to render better. The cover image for these features is restricted to a maximum height of 400 pixels on these pages.

Say the typical screen renders as 600 pixels wide. If you have a square image with dimensions 400 x 400 pixels, then you’ll end up with 100 pixels of white space on each side (600 minus 400 = 200, divided by 2 = 100 pixels) .

So, the ideal size for cover images on sponsors, amenities, and events is 600 pixels wide x 400 pixels tall (or a size with an aspect ratio of 3:2).

Below is a cover image placeholder with the recommended dimensions:

Resizing Images

CommuniBee’s built-in resizing code will automatically downsize any image with a width or height of 1024 pixels, and try to optimize it so the image file size isn’t too huge. Huge files will cause slow rendering, and make the app feel more like a website than an app. That’s why we recommend you edit and optimize your images for display.

One last tip: for images that have just a handful of solid colours (like in logos), saving them as 8-bit PNGs leads to the best quality and smallest file size. For photographs with many colours, saving them as JPEGs is the way to go, with a quality setting around 65%.

These specific image settings can be set in any image editing software, such as Photoshop. An easy-to-use free image editing tool we sometimes use on Windows is Paint.NET, which you can download here.

 

Ensuring that your images are optimized for CommuniBee will improve your residents’ experience and make your community look that much better!

  • The CommuniBee Team

Editing Your Member Profile In CommuniBee [Video]

Editing Your Member Profile In CommuniBee

In this short video, we’ll be reviewing the Profile section in the CommuniBee app. In this section, you can:

  • Edit your profile information
  • Reset your password
  • Enable notifications
  • Link family members to your account

And more.

How To Duplicate Events In CommuniBee [Video]

How To Duplicate Events In CommuniBee

In this short video, we’ll be demonstrating how to duplicate and move events in CommuniBee. This is particularly useful for recurring events, such as weekly farmers markets or sports practices.

Webinar Video – Using CommuniBee App To Build Your Community

Webinar Video - Using CommuniBee App To Build Your Community

Last week, we hosted two webinars explaining how communities in Alberta can use CommuniBee for free to bring the community together.  We’re happy to share the webinar in full with you today, along with a download link for the slides.

Download the slides.

If you’re interested in signing up your community, head on over to our community sign-up page and get started today.

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CommuniBee March 2019 App Update Notes

CommuniBee Update March 26 2019

CommuniBee just keeps getting more awesome! This release: streamlined community setup and user management, plus server optimization for faster performance.

This morning we published our latest rounds of enhancements to the CommuniBee dashboard and server. Here is a quick overview of the changes:

Community Configuration Streamlined

Previously, your community was set up on one page, and it got to be a very long page. We’ve broken it up, grouping sections together in a way that makes sense, like all things affecting appearance going under Configure Layout, so the app preview is always visible

Configure Layout

This is where you select the features you want to enable in your community, and what you want to call them. This naming you choose will also be reflected throughout the dashboard now (i.e. you might change Amenities to Services)

Security Settings

If you want more control over who can join your community, this lets you specify one of three options:

  • No approval required: all users immediately have access to your community
  • Approval always required: users enter a pending state and need to be approved
  • Email Domains Auto Approve: if users email ends in one of the specified email domains, they are automatically approved

User Management

Bulk Edit

Quickly change the access level of a group of users by uploading a list of email addresses (one email per line) and selecting the access level to apply

We’ve also added a ‘PENDING’ tab to manage not-yet-approved members

Performance Optimization

We’ve made a lot of progress optimizing Comunibee. Recently, we’ve improved the load times, responsiveness, and server load capacity. That means that your community can handle thousands of users on the app without missing a beat!

Upcoming: Questionnaire Simplification

One change we’ve been promising is to simplify the questionnaires set up. The new, simpler version will not be compatible with the current app, so we are disabling the questionnaire button for a few days so incompatible questionnaires are not created. The new questionnaire feature will be available shortly along with an update for the app that includes several other minor tweaks and fixes.

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Events & Questionnaires Guide [Video]

Events & Questionnaires Guide

The Events section allows you to create and schedule community events for your members. Depending on the event, your members can then RSVP or purchase tickets to attend the event.

Built into the event section is a Questionnaire tool, which allows you to set up a questionnaire or survey and send it out to members who have registered for an event. These questionnaires are particularly useful for gathering information about who is coming, to improve their event experience.

This CommuniBee training videos covers:

  • Creating event types
  • Creating events
  • Creating questionnaires
  • Getting events and questionnaires to show up in the CommuniBee app

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Managing Members & Membership [Video]

Managing Members & Membership

The Members section allows you to add and manage all members within your community app.

This CommuniBee training video covers:

  • Adding members to CommuniBee (manually and through file upload)
  • Changing the membership status of members
  • Linking family members your account
  • Exporting member lists

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