New Resident Discussion Board & Threaded Conversations!
Greetings! We’re starting the month big with 2 brand new features that have been a popular request among our clients. The new Resident Discussion Board & Threaded Conversation features are now available in Pilera!
Threaded Email Conversations
Previously, we added the ability for residents to reply to manager emails. Now, a history of all email conversations with your residents will be stored within Pilera. The new threaded conversations feature gives you a single source of truth, so you will always know who said what. You can see a history of all replies and when they replied in the message center and within the resident’s profile. This new feature will be auto-enabled for everyone to start using right away!
Resident Discussion Board
The Discussion Board feature allows your residents to communicate with each other, exchange ideas, and facilitate positive conversations about the community. Many community members use public tools like Facebook Groups or Nextdoor without the oversight of management or board members. If the board and management are not seeing complaints, they can’t address them before they get out of control. With our new Discussion Board feature, you will hear about any complaints, concerns, or suggestions first and can keep discussions “in-house” within Pilera.
Here are some examples of how your community can use the discussion board:
- Exchange ideas on home improvements
- Provide feedback on community amenities
- Get recommendations for products and services
- Find ways to stay connected with other community members, such as through a book or gardening club.
Now that you understand the kind of conversations that can take place, we’ll walk through how the Discussion Board will help your community stay connected while ensuring conversations are healthy and productive for all.
Setup a moderator role to oversee conversations
A concern we often hear from managers and board members about public discussion forums and Facebook Groups is that comments can’t be moderated. That’s why we’ve implemented a new Community Moderator role for the Discussion Board feature. The Community Moderator will receive an email notification when a new topic is created and anyone comments on it. Managers can also view notifications about the discussion board within the Message Center. You can assign any manager, board member, or resident the Community Moderator Role. If the Community Moderator Role hasn’t been assigned, the dashboard will display an alert to inform managers.
Organize discussion topics
You can create categories and subcategories to organize topics across multiple communities in the templates section. For easier access to category creation, we’ve added a link within the discussion board topic. You can also adjust the categories within a community in the Categories tab under Settings.
Remove topics or comments
If topics or comments are inappropriate or it goes against your company’s forum policies, you can delete them. Deleted topics or comments will no longer be visible to residents. However, as a manager, you can view deleted topics with the dashboard filters. Similarly, you can view any edited or deleted comments in the events section of the topic.
Close topics
To allow for new topics to get visibility, it’s important to close old topics that have been resolved or are inactive. You can change the status of a topic to closed and filter the dashboard for that status to see all closed topics.
Submit private comments
Managers can submit comments that are visible to other managers only or post a comment for all residents to see.
See the latest threads
Within the dashboard, managers, board members, and residents can see how many topics have had activity within the last 30 days.
Publish rules through the ticket alerts
For community discussions to be healthy and productive for all, it’s important to set some rules in place for your residents to follow. The ticket alerts in Pilera are a great way to inform residents of the rules. This alert will display at the top of each new thread a resident creates.
Generate reports on-demand
Summary and Detailed reports provide you with a way to export all topics for archival purposes. Additionally, these reports give you insights on discussion board activity and what kind of topics are generating the most interest in your community. You can filter the dashboard based on criteria such as category, subcategory, and dates to generate your reports.
How to get the discussion board for your community
The Discussion Board is available to all clients who have the Resident Portal at no additional cost! We will be rolling out the discussion board gradually to our clients. If you would like to opt-out of the Discussion Board feature please contact us at [email protected].
About Pilera
Pilera Software is the premier community and property management software that has helped thousands of community managers enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. To learn how Pilera can help to improve efficiency and reduce costs, book a personalized demo.
