Explore the Community

Here's an overview of the main components you'll see in your community.

News Page

The News page functions as a central news page for your community. It features a variety of streams and tiles designed to bring you the latest news and information.

The left pane of the News page organizes community activity into streams. From any stream, you can preview and interact with activity that flows through your community. To learn more about streams, be sure to read What Are Streams?

You'll see the following streams on the News page by default:

News (top-level view): The News view aggregates and displays only new content posted in your News and Connections streams. However, unlike your other streams, the News view does not show content updates and comments in the stream. In addition, content that gets updated or interacted with is not bumped to the top of the News view. So, to repeat, the News view shows only new things. To learn more about the News view, be sure to read What Is News?
News Streams: News streams are designed by your community manager to bring you the latest news and information. These are the streams listed above the Communications stream. For example, you could have a stream there called "CEO's Blog" or "My Department." Note that you can't delete News streams or change the email notifications settings for them (like you can with your custom streams).
Connections Stream: This stream shows the activity of people, places, and content that you are following in the community. If you are new to the community, you might want to browse through People > All to begin following your teammates or other people who interest you. To see who you're following, click People > Following. Note that you can't delete this stream, but you can remove any or all items from it.
Your Custom Streams: Click New Stream to create a custom stream containing only activity related to the people, places, and items you specify. You can have one custom stream or several. For example, you might create a "My Current Project" stream to follow everything related to your current project. To learn how to create custom streams, see Create a New Stream.
Top & Trending Stream: This stream shows the most valuable and interesting community activity. What you see here is generating a lot of Likes and comments.
Most Recent Stream: This stream shows all public activity in your community that you have permission to see. Watching this can be useful if you are new to the community and want to find people, places, and content to add to your custom streams.

Home Page

Your community manager configures the Home page to direct you to important content and places in your community. As you begin interacting around the community, you may not visit the Home page as often because the information you need will begin coming to you in your streams and Inbox. You won't see Home if your community manager has not enabled the feature.

@ (Your Inbox)

Click the @ button next to your avatar in the main navigation to see your Inbox, which includes the following pages:

Inbox: Inbox includes updates to things you've participated in: direct messages, @mentions, and shares, plus any items you pulled in by following them in Inbox. See Tips for Using Inbox for more details.
Your View: Your View lets you set up a page just for yourself so you can get to your most-used items quickly. You can change what you see from Your View whenever you want. For example, you might want to update Your View when you change projects or teams, or when you just want to watch new things in your community. See Using Your View to learn how to set it up. Note that you won't see Your View if your community manager has not enabled the feature.
Actions: Actions reminds you to complete a Task or Action Item that's been assigned to you. See Tips for Using Actions for more details.