I'm Contributing to a Community, Where Do I Begin?

When you first join a community's external group as an external contributor, you can begin participating by accepting invitations, setting up your profile, and addressing your actions.

The following tips help you fit right in and get started. Once you're set up, take a look at what else you can do here!

Accept group invitations

The first thing that you should do when you sign into the community is to accept any group invitations. You'll be doing all of your work in groups, so accepting invitations is how you can see group content and activity. Go to Home > Actions and then accept group invitations that you see under Pending.

Note: You can only belong to a maximum of 20 groups, so choose wisely!

Set up your profile

Your user profile provides community members with an easy way to learn about your experience, skills, and interests. Your profile shows up in search results when community members search for keywords contained in your profile. You can update your information at any time.

Check out your Actions

When you are assigned something to do, such as a task or something that's been Marked for Action for you, you'll see an alert next to Actions in the left sidebar.

Use the following quick tips to use Actions effectively:

Click Action Items to see a list of your Action Items. From here, you can Resolve them, or bring in other participants. To see the Action Items you have already resolved, click Resolved.
Click Tasks to see a list of tasks assigned to you, which you can sort by project. To see the tasks you've completed, select View: Include completed. You can also Create a task from this page.

Customize email notifications

You can take advantage of custom email notifications if you feel like you might miss something important when you're not signed in.