Intro: How to Use Animal Services Group Pages on

Commons

Commons- Home PageTo locate the groups you are a member of, select “groups” at the top next to your name.

To view all of the groups available on Commons, select “All Groups” below the Commons logo.

This is what your list of groups will look like:

This is the county-wide, general Animal Services group page:

General Countywide Animal Services Group on Commons

• All county departments must have a general group with basic information for county employees.

• This group is semi-public and available to all county employees.

• Please do not post anything on this page.

There are 4 private sub-groups set up for private internal communication amongst shelter employees: Main (for everyone), Field, Client Services and

Animal Care.

You can create content on any of these group pages by selecting “Create Content”.

Options for Content Creation

• These groups are currently set up to allow people to post blog posts or polls.

• It works just like a regular blog, with newest content at the top.

• Individual blog posts may be commented on. • You must click on the post headline to view the

entire post and comments.• You may also attach photos or insert hyperlinks.

Things to Consider

• The benefit of using a group site to share info with coworkers is that all important, recent info can be viewed in one place (rather than numerous emails, each with endless streams of reply emails).

• There are many other content creation options that we can consider adding.

• For now, “blogs” were enabled, rather than “news” because blog posts allow comments, whereas news posts do not.

• Other potential features include documents, pages, events, webforms, policies and news.

How to Join Groups

• All of the private animal services groups are set up to allow any group member to invite new members.

• When new people join the MCAS team, please invite them to join the group(s).

• The county wants people to use only actual headshot photo avatars. No cats wearing bunny ears.

Under “manage

members”, select “invite

members”.

If you start typing in someone’s name, options appear in a list. (Just like in gmail.)

What’s Next?

• Please consider how this tool might be utilized for communication both within your work section and shelter-wide.

• Might this work better than email?

• We can always try it out and make adjustments and/or create rules as needed.