Clarify that you need to be a group member to reply to a post

hello @LPortalupi , Thanks a lot for your idea. I totally agree with you, this is not the best UX. I will note that down for when we will resume work on groups. In the mean time I will keep this idea open.

This is causing a lot of challenges with our beta test group. It’s more frequently asked question and biggest pain point.

I love the idea of introducing friction / messaging that calls on people to join the group and/or sign up for the community to reply. That will improve the UX while also driving sign up activity that benefits the community. 

This is a huge need for my organization as well! As @LPortalupi pointed out, posts in groups that members haven’t joined still show up in Recently Active & elsewhere, but those users can’t reply to them. That creates a lot of confusion for users and also, unfortunately, limits the number of replies our posts in groups get vs. posts in discussion categories. While a note like @LPortalupi mentioned could help, I would prefer for there to be a “Join Group” button that appears directly in a dialog box on that page so that the user doesn’t have to navigate away from the post to reply. In my mind, this would create the best UX because:

1. If a user sees content they’re interested in from a group they’re not a part of, that’s the best way to promote them joining the group
2. Allowing them to immediately join the group and reply to the post without leaving the page creates a higher likelihood that they reply to the post

If the “Join Group” button didn’t appear directly below the post, the user would have to navigate to the group page, join the group, relocate the original post, then share their reply. In my mind, this would significantly reduce the number of replies in these situations.

@Marion Frecaut any idea when this work might resume?

Hello @adam.ballhaussen , thanks for all this detailed feedback. This makes a whole lot of sense. This is really on our radar however I don't have a timing yet for when we will be able to implement this. I will keep you posted once I have more visibility. 

cc @Ati 

Thank you @Marion Frecaut !

Hello everyone,

We would like to share the following concept and mock up to best solve this pain point.

Our idea would be to simply indicate to the user that they will automatically be added to the group if they reply to the topic. The idea is to make the flow as simple as possible for end users and also grow the number of members of the group. Of course they can always leave the group later on.

@adam.ballhaussen @Kseniya @Marina Perminova @LPortalupi I'm especially curious to get your input :)

cc @xiaoyu-shen 

Hi @Marion Frecaut,

Thank you for sharing this!

A few comments/questions:

• Am I right that reply window will be available for everyone by default now?
• Will there be still possibility to join group in old-fashioned manner?
• This is applicable for public groups only, isn’t it?
• Overall I love this solution! I believe it significantly reduces the number of steps for user

Hello @Kseniya thanks for the feedback.

• Am I right that reply window will be available for everyone by default now? => Yes. The reply windows will be shown to all users. Logged out users will see that reply window and will need to log in to actually post the reply
• Will there be still possibility to join group in old-fashioned manner? => Yes, end users can of course go on the group detail page and join from there. This, we will not change.
• This is applicable for public groups only, isn’t it? => Yes only public groups. Simply because for private groups, you have to be a member to see the content of the topics
• Overall I love this solution! I believe it significantly reduces the number of steps for user => Great to hear

@Marion Frecaut, 

One more thing just came to my mind: that would be great to have admins excluded from this rule to be added to the group every time admins reply in the thread or create a topic. Or at least, to have possibility to do exclude them. 

We have 20+ groups, and I would like to have the end-user view of the groups page. So I intentionally do not join groups so I can have the same view as end-user.   

  Hey all, I’m happy to announce that this idea has been delivered. 

How it works

When a registered user creates or replies to a topic in a public group, they will become a group member if they are not already.

Note: this doesn’t apply to users with moderator, community manager and admin roles.

• The banner will not be shown to them.

• They are able to reply to topics and create topics without becoming members in public groups (just like in Control).

This is awesome! Thank you @Marion Frecaut and @xiaoyu-shen!   

@marissa.piazza @alfonsmr some good news for you and the C2C team!

@xiaoyu-shen, great to see this delivered!

That is great news @DannyPancratz! Thanks for letting us know!