⏳️ AVAILABILITY: This feature is not yet available in all Vanilla communities. It is currently in a beta state and limited to beta testers. This note will be removed and the title updated when the feature is globally available.
In the Community Management Dashboard article, you learned about how the Community Management Dashboard (CMD) and its reporting features can be used by your organization's staff and community users to help keep your community content professional, accurate, and "clean" by premoderating content and manually reporting content that fails to meet your community's guidelines.
In this article, you'll learn:
View your reported content
Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) tracks your community's reported content and makes it available for review on the Moderation > Posts section of the Dashboard.
Here, you can manage your reported content on three dashboards, based on type:
- Triage - Lists all new posts and threads with new comments from across your community; these are known as unresolved posts because they haven't yet been reviewed by a staff member. Refer to Triage Dashboard, below, to learn more.
- Reports - Lists all posts reported from community members, via Automation Rules, spam addons, and/or your community's premoderation settings. Refer to Reports Dashboard, below, to learn more.
- Escalations - Lists all reported posts that have been manually escalated (by an admin) or automatically escalated (by an Automation Rule). Refer to Escalations Dashboard, below, to learn more.
Required permissions
The permissions required for a user to participate in reporting and managing content via the CMD are outlined below.
- Garden > Moderation > Manage: Grants global access to the CMD, with full report-management access.
- Garden > Staff > Allow: Only grants access to the Triage Dashboard.
- Reactions > Flag > Add: Gives users the ability to report a post via the flag icon when viewing a post on the front end of your community.
- Do you want to limit the reports a user can manage to specific Categories in your community? If so, grant their associated Role the Posts > Moderate permission for the Category(ies) you want them to manage.
Sort content & navigate dashboard pages
In addition to using filters to help locate specific reports, you can sort each of the three dashboards and navigate through their pages.
Sort a dashboard
Above each dashboard, use the Sort By option to arrange the dashboard's content by newest first or oldest first (The default is newest).
Page navigation
The page-navigation at the top right displays the number of records for that type of reported content. Use these icons to navigate the dashboard's pages:
- Click the < and > icons to navigate through the pages, one at a time.
- Click the →| icon, specify a page to jump to, and click Go.
Filter the dashboards
Each dashboard provides several filters you can apply to make locating specific types of reports that much easier.
📝 NOTE: While many filters are unique to a particular dashboard, others are shared between them. The image below shows the filters available on the Reports dashboard.
Filters are grouped into categories:
- Status - These filters help you pinpoint reports of a specific status, such as resolved/unresolved, new, open, in progress, dismissed, etc.
- Reason - When reporting content, users must select a reason why they're reporting it. The CMD includes several default reasons but you can also create custom reasons to meet your organization's specific needs. These default and custom reasons are an especially powerful way to locate specific types of reported content. 📝 The Triage dashboard does not include Reason filters.
- User - While not an actual category, each dashboard includes several user-based filters, like Reporter, Reporter Role, and Post Author. These help you target specific users in various ways, and function differently than the other filters because you can add more than one at a time (e.g., pinpoint two or three Roles or post authors at once).
✅ TIP: The filters you apply to a dashboard are appended to the page's URL in your browser; this is helpful not only because it enables each moderator to save a set of URLs to access just the specific filtered content they want to manage day after day but also allows them to easily share specific reports with others.
Manage your reported content
This section describes the management options that are available on each dashboard. These options allow you to, for example:
- review premoderated content and decide whether to reject or allow it in the community;
- escalate content;
- remove or restore a post;
- send a message to the content's author; and
- if you have integrated connectors, such as Zendesk, Salesforce, Jira, or Github, create tickets from reported content.
Triage Dashboard
📝 NOTE: The Triage dashboard is only available if it has been enabled (toggle it on via the Dashboard > Settings > Content Settings page. Read this article to learn more.
This dashboard lists all new posts and threads with new comments from across your community; these are known as unresolved posts because they haven't yet been reviewed by a staff member. The resolution status is shared among your community-management team so you can work together more efficiently.
Essentially, the Triage Dashboard is the staging ground for all new posts (not reports) so it can easily be reviewed in one central location. From here, you will be reviewing posts and deciding whether to:
- Mark them as Resolved, meaning no further action is required (and the post is removed from the Dashboard).
- Escalate them because they do require further action and attention. Escalated posts are sent to the Escalations Dashboard, where they can be further managed.
✅ TIP: When escalating a post, you must choose a report reason (e.g., spam, inappropriate, etc.). Because you can create custom report reasons, not all of them need to be associated to bad behavior: you can create workflows that leverage escalations to review and update stale community content or to pinpoint unanswered questions that need a response, and you can even assign these escalations to specific staff members who will be notified via notifications.
Triage actions
You can manage the content in this dashboard in a variety of ways.
📝 NOTE: The options that display/the actions that you can take can differ based on (a) the filters applied to the dashboard, (b) the types of posts in the dashboard (e.g., posts with a Zendesk association), and (c) a post's flagged Reason (e.g., Abuse, Spam, etc.). Not all possible options are listed below; instead, this article focuses on the most common ones.
Click the:
- Content title to access the report's "details" page (refer to the Details pages section of this article for information about what you can do on that page).
- Name of the post's author to jump to that user's profile page.
- Category title (to the right of the author's name) to jump to that Category.
- Checkmark icon to mark the post as Resolved, indicating it has been reviewed by staff.
- View post icon (to the right of the checkmark) to view the post in your community and access all post-management options. 📝 The post is opened a new tab.
- Just like the content title, View Details takes you to the report's details page. Refer to the Details pages section of this article for information about what you can do on that page).
- Message Post Author to display a popup allowing you to send a message to the author. Some default text and a link to the post in question are provided but you're free to customize the message as needed. When your message is ready, click Send to send it to the user's account inbox.
- Escalate to display the Create Escalation popup. Fill out the form and click Create to manually escalate the post. to the Escalations dashboard. Refer to Escalations Dashboard section of this article for more information.
Reports dashboard
This Dashboard lists all content reported via:
- community members,
- Automation Rules,
- spam addons,
- and/or your community's premoderation settings.
📝 NOTE: Posts that land here from premoderation settings are not yet visible in your community; these posts include the Reject and Approve buttons (see image below). Once you've reviewed a premoderated post and determined whether it's appropriate for your community, click Reject to delete the post or Approve to post it in the community.
Report actions
You can manage the content in this dashboard in a variety of ways.
📝 NOTE: The options that display/the actions that you can take can differ based on (a) the filters applied to the dashboard, (b) the types of posts in the dashboard (e.g., posts with a Zendesk association), and (c) a post's flagged Reason (e.g., Abuse, Spam, etc.). Not all possible options are listed below; instead, this article focuses on the most common ones.
Click the:
- Reported by [user] to jump to the reporting user's profile page. 📝 If the post was reported via premoderation or an Automation Rule, the reporting user will be labeled as "System".
- Name of the post's author to jump to the author of the post's profile page.
- Content title to view the post in your community and access all post-management options. 📝 The post is NOT opened a new tab; we recommend right-clicking the title and opening in a new tab.
- Category title to the right of the author's name to jump to that Category.
- Dismiss to immediately remove the content from the dashboard; when reviewing content, choosing to dismiss simply indicates no further action is required. ⚠️ No confirmation is prompted; this action is immediate and cannot be undone.
- Escalate to display the Create Escalation popup. Fill out the form and click Create to manually escalate the post to the Escalations dashboard. Refer to Escalations Dashboard section of this article for more information.
Escalations Dashboard
As its name suggests, the Escalations dashboard lists all reported content that has been flagged as "escalated," indicating this content likely requires special attention. Content can be escalated because either:
- it has reached the reporting threshold set in an escalation-based Automation Rule or
- a moderator has manually escalated the post/report.
✅ TIP: For most Vanilla communities, it makes sense to set up Automation Rules that will automatically escalate posts based on them meeting the established reporting criteria. For example, in large and busy communities, you may only be concerned with posts once they have been reported three to five times, posts that feature a specific sentiment, or posts that are left unanswered for a certain amount of time. In other words, rather than spending time attempting to evaluate every single report, you can prioritize those that land in the Escalations Dashboard, as these may truly be an issue in your community that require more immediate attention.
Escalation actions
You can manage the content in this dashboard in a variety of ways.
📝 NOTE: The options that display/the actions that you can take can differ based on (a) the filters applied to the dashboard, (b) the types of posts in the dashboard (e.g., posts with a Zendesk association), and (c) a post's flagged Reason (e.g., Abuse, Spam, etc.). Not all possible options are listed below; instead, this article focuses on the most common ones.
Click the:
- Content title to access the report's "details" page (refer to the Details pages section of this article for information about what you can do on that page).
- Name of the post's author to jump to that user's profile page.
- Category title (to the right of the author's name) to jump to that Category.
- Message Author to display a popup allowing you to send a message to the author. Some default text and a link to the post in question are provided but you're free to customize the message as needed. When your message is ready, click Send to send it to the user's account inbox.
- Remove Post to delete the content from your community (it is removed from the "front end").
If your Vanilla community has an integration set up with Zendesk, Salesforce, Jira and/or Github, you can click the ellipsis (…) menu to create a ticket in that product right from the CMD, creating a seamless reporting process.
Details pages
On the Triage and Escalations Dashboards you can click the title of a post to view its dedicated "details" page. The details view is functionally more robust for Escalations but let's examine each so you understand both.
Details pages for Triage posts
You will primarily use the details pages for Triage posts to:
- view any associated public comments (comments made by users on the "front end").
- view all reports made on a post; each report shows who reported the post, the date and time of the report, and the reason it was reported. In addition, you can view each report revision, allowing you to see any changes to the post over time.
Details pages for Escalation posts
Here, moderators can dig deeper into the reported content and perform a number of unique actions.
- At the top of the page, view meta details like who originally escalated the report and when, along with the date of the latest escalation (multiple users can make an escalation). 📝 If the content was premoderated or reported via an Automation Rule, it will be reported by "System."
- Use the Revisions dropdown or the Reports area on the right side of the page to view any revisions the content may have undergone. For example, if a post was reported because of inappropriate language but was later edited to remove this content, you can view both the original and edited versions by selecting these revisions. This enables moderators to easily understand the breadcrumb trail of changes a post may receive over time.
- Use the Assignee dropdown to assign the escalation to a specific moderator to review. If this user has email notifications enabled, they will receive an email letting them know.
- View all internal comments moderators have posted about the report.
- Add new comments to the report, which will be visible to other moderators.
- Click the link icon next to a comment to copy the report URL to your clipboard, making it easy to share with other moderators. In cases where a report includes numerous comments, this allows you to easily share a URL that will take the recipient directly to a specific comment for review.
Comment actions
You can perform several actions for a given comment via its ellipsis (…) menu:
- Select Edit to makes changes to the comment.
- Select Delete to remove the comment altogether.
Escalation status & actions
At the top-right of the page are the Status and Actions dropdowns.
- Use the Status dropdown to flag the escalation with one of the following statuses. These allow you to organize your reports and more easily manage them via filters.
- Open
- In Progress
- On Hold
- Done
- In Zendesk
- Use the Actions dropdown to perform one of the following actions:
- Select Message Post Author to display a popup allowing you to send a message to the author. Some default text and a link to the post in question are provided but you're free to customize the message as needed. When your message is ready, click Send to send it to the user's account inbox.
- Select Remove Post to delete the content from your community (it is removed from the "front end").
- If your Vanilla community is integrated with a third-party product, such as Zendesk or Jira, you'll have access to associated options to create tickets or issues in those products right from your Vanilla community.
