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Welcoming additional Community-Minded Voices to the HL Vanilla Community!
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 We have some exciting news to share! In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be opening up parts of the Higher Logic Vanilla Community to people who are not currently HL Vanilla customers. This is a new step for our community, and one we’re taking with a lot of intention. By welcoming additional…
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A New Support Communication Channel!
It's May! And to celebrate, the Vanilla Support Team is trialing a new communication channel. We're turning off our phones for the month and replacing them with schedulable 10-minute Zoom calls. That's right! All Vanilla customers will now be able to schedule a 10-minute Zoom call - often within the hour - with an…
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Behind the Community: LastPass [ 🎥 recording ]
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 In case you missed our first "Behind the Community" session last week - check out the recording below: Join Higher Logic and Scott Wilder from LastPass for a practical conversation about the next phase of community strategy. We will explore how LastPass is using community operations, customer-language…
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#TipTuesday: Create an Onboarding Widget That Helps New Members Take Action
Hello Vanilla friends! 😎🍦 Welcome back for another edition of #TipTuesday. One of the biggest challenges in any community is not getting someone to register. It is getting them to take that first meaningful action after they arrive. If a new member lands in your community and does not know where to go, what to click, or…
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July Success Community Roundup! 👙 🏖️ 🐚 🍦
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 Hopefully you're all finding some time for fun in the sun. If you need some inspiration, how about a game of beach football? Let's take a look at what's been happening in the Success Community this month: 🍦 Vanilla Updates Salesforce Integration Setup Update Introducing: Theme Variable Search Exciting…
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Could MCP and agents help us identify the community content that needs attention most?
I have been thinking about a question inspired by a conversation with a customer: Could we eventually use an MCP connection to identify content that should be rewritten—and could an agent help make the changes? The more I think about it, the more I believe “what should be rewritten?” is only one part of the question.…
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How are you tracking resolved questions
Hey Community, I used to have a strategy in Vanilla Communities where I gave staff a quicklinks widget that was staff only. I'd use Vanilla Filters to create a url that showed me only questions (not discussions that aren't expected to have a resolution), that either had or did not have comments. This allowed me to see a…
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How I Used AI and the Higher Logic Vanilla MCP to Make Idea Management Less Manual
If you manage an Ideas program, you probably know the pain: new ideas come in, someone has to search for duplicates, compare wording, review older requests, decide whether anything should be merged, and then somehow keep the whole library current. That work gets even harder when your community team is doing most of the…
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#TipTuesday: The Answer After the Answer - Turning Solved Questions into Community Gold
You know that beautiful community moment when someone asks a question, another member swoops in with the perfect answer, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the whole thing feels wrapped up with a neat little bow? Amazing. Beautiful. We love to see it. But then what happens? Too often, that helpful answer drifts…
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#TipTuesday: Give Your Best Answers a Second Life
Accepted Answers are valuable—but only if members can find them. Every few months, review your most-viewed solved discussions. Ask yourself: Is the accepted answer still accurate? Could it benefit from additional context? Does it link to newer documentation? Should it be converted into a knowledge base article? Keeping…
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GEO for Communities: How to Become the Source AI Cites [ 🎥 recording ]
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 In case you missed it, @MariusCiortea and @mcrouse hosted a session covering GEO for Communities. Check out the recording and session details below: AI search is changing how people discover answers online, and community content is increasingly part of the source material AI systems rely on. For…
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#TipTuesday: Use Category Descriptions Like Tiny Tour Guides
Happy #TipTuesday Everyone, Category descriptions are easy to overlook. They sit quietly under a category name, usually only a sentence or two long, and because of that they can feel like “set it and forget it” text. But those little descriptions can do a lot of heavy lifting. Think of them as tiny tour guides for your…
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Is there a way to customize individual "create post" pages?
Hello! Looking to create specific page layouts for our different types of post (feedback, questions, etc.). Is this possible?
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#TipTuesday: Help Your AI Replicator Build Better Vanilla Widgets
You ask the computer for something simple. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” And instead of a perfectly reasonable cup of tea, you get… a lukewarm smoothie in a soup bowl with a garnish of CSS errors. That is sometimes what it feels like to ask AI for “a quick widget.” You might give it what sounds like an easy request: “Make me a…
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How AI Is Changing the Way Community Teams Work [ 🎥 recording ]
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 In case you missed it, we recently hosted a session on how AI is Changing the Way Community Teams Work. Check out the recording below! For most community teams, AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude have become a regular part of the workflow, but they've always had a fundamental limitation: they have no…
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June Success Community Roundup! 🦋🐜🌻🌞
Hey Vanilla friends 🤗 It is officially Summer, and that means sunshine, heat, and hopefully vacations (at least in the Northern Hemisphere)!! Let's take a look at what's been happening in the Success Community this month: 🍦Vanilla Updates Welcoming additional Community-Minded Voices to the HL Vanilla Community! Important…
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CMA Academy - Community Strategy Fundamentals Discussion
After completing the Community Strategy Fundamentals module in the Community Manager Academy, take a moment to respond to the following questions: 1. What was your biggest insight from this module? What changed the way you think about community strategy? 2. Which worksheet or activity had the greatest impact on your…
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#TipTuesday - Category, Tag and User Following
Never Miss What Matters: Personalize Your Community Experience with Following One of the greatest strengths of a thriving customer community is the wealth of knowledge being shared every day. New discussions, product updates, feature ideas, best practices, customer success stories, and expert advice are constantly being…
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Live Demos to Lasting Value: Building the Partner Spotlight Series Hub
Hi Community! The Blackbaud Community hosts a quarterly Partner Spotlight Series webinar featuring partner solutions in 10-13 minute speed demos. The Spotlight Series is a valuable way for our members to discover and learn more about these partner solutions. As the catalog of sessions grew, so did the need for a more…
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#tiptuesday Using AI to Generate Better Test Variants, Faster
In an earlier Tip Tuesday post, I gave tips for getting started with testing in your community. You can read the full post here. One of the hardest parts of A/B testing isn't running the test... often it's coming up with variants to test in the first place. Writing multiple versions of a banner headline or your CTAs can…
