Member Properties & Profile Questions

Member properties and onboarding questions are important components of your community, and how you get to know your members and encourage connection. 

Reminder: Users can see and engage with some components of your community before onboarding, or completing their profile, but must fill out all mandatory fields to message other members, chat in events, and connect over video in events, roundtables, and networking matches. 

Member Properties

Member properties are the building blocks of your members’ profiles and onboarding forms, and how you gather information from your community. You will build all the properties you want to gather from your members first, before creating your onboarding or profile questions. 

There are no mandatory properties or profile prompts, but here are some fields or questions we’ve seen lead to great engagement and success in communities:

  • Pronouns
  • What I can help with (picklist)
  • What I want to learn (picklist)
  • What’s your superpower?
  • Tools I love

Currently, LinkedIn URL and Location are not customizable so reach out to the Gradual Team should you need to make changes to these properties.

Creating Property Types

Build all properties you want to gather from your members first, to establish the building blocks of your onboarding process and profile questions. 

1
From your dashboard, you will navigate to Settings and to Member Properties
2
Add a property by selecting the + symbol beside the preferred Property Type from the left-hand side options

Property Types

There are five different types of properties or question types to choose from. 

Single Select

This is used if you want the user to choose only one selection from the list of options as their answer

The system will automatically limit them to one selection.

Multi Select

This is used if you want the user to choose more than one selections from the list  of options as their answer

Control the number of selections the user can make:

    • Unlimited
    • At least [#]
    • At most [#]
    • Range [#] to [#]
    • Exact number

Single Line Text

This is used if you want the user to type a single line of text as their answer (max of 250 characters)

Paragraph

This is used if you want the user to type more than a single line of text as their answer (max of 1000 characters)

URL

This is used if you want the user to enter a URL or link as their answer 


3
Name the Property the prompt or question you’ll use in onboarding (must be fewer than 250 characters)
4
If the property/ question is a single select or multi select type:
  • Add the options the user can select from if using a multi select or single select type
  • Select the property style

Property Styles

The Single Select and Multi Select property and question types can show in a variety of styles. 

Checkbox [Multi Select only] 

Populates check boxes beside the options for the user to select multiple options from the list

Radio buttons [Single Select only] 

Populates radio buttons beside the options for the user to select a single selection from the list

Auto-fit box 

Populates the list of options in boxes that fit the size of the text for the user to select a single or multiple options

Auto-fill box 

Populates the list of options in boxes that are uniform in size for the user to select a single or multiple options

Dropdown 

Populates a dropdown list of options for the user to select a single or multiple options

5
Save your work

Editing Properties

If you need to change any of the text or style, you can edit the property by selecting the edit icon in the upper right of the block. If added to the Onboarding Form, any edits made at the Member Property level will be reflected in the onboarding form, too. 

When making changes to the text of the property or question, or any of the options, the system will prompt you to review your changes. Ensure that the revised property aligns with the original to avoid risks from inconsistent member responses and then confirm, and save your changes.

If a member has selected the option you are changing, the system will NOT automatically change the member’s response to the new option and that question will change to unanswered on the member’s account, and in member exports. 


It will not prompt them to complete their profile again, and will not limit them from video calls, chat engagement, or messaging other members (they will remain ‘Onboarded’). If you want to reset all profiles to ‘incomplete’ and encourage members to complete the edited question, reach out to the Gradual Team. 

You can sort the properties in the order you’d like them to appear by dragging and dropping the hamburger icon at the top of the block. This sorting will not effect the order of the onboarding form questions, though. 


Deleting Properties

Deleting a property is permanent if that property has received no responses from members in onboarding.

If any members have responded to the question in onboarding and then the property is deleted, the property will be archived and you can revert it when needed from the archived properties list on the left-hand side of the main Members Properties page. 


Onboarding Form

The Onboarding Form takes the information from the member properties and allows you to prompt profile questions to the members. Customize the order the questions are asked, their format, if they’re required or optional, public or private to others, and if they are filterable from the People page. 

Build your onboarding form and set profile question settings by following these steps.

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