Members must be logged in to see the Forum and must have a complete profile to make posts or comments and engage in the conversation.

Posts are listed by most popular or ‘Hot’ and by most recent or ‘New’ from the Forum homepage, and within each Forum board.

Forum posts can also display a status when they are connected to a Support, Idea, or General Ticket. This status appears in the list view, feed view, and post details, allowing members to track the progress of their requests directly from the Forum.

If AI Page Content Translation is enabled for your community and a post is written in a different language than the one you’ve selected, you can use the Translate button at the top of the discussion to translate the post and its comments. Select Show Original at any time to switch back to the original language.

Members must be fully onboarded and have completed their profiles to create Forum posts.

To create a post, select the green Create a post button on the Forum home page. In the post editor, you can select a Post Type, enter a title, write your post, add topics, and upload attachments if this feature is enabled.

Depending on the selected Post Type, you can also choose a Post Template to help structure your content and select a Product & Service Area to categorize your post.

The Title can be up to 300 characters and will be what’s prominently displayed in the list of posts on the Forum homepage, along with the poster’s profile picture.
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The body of the post can include text, images, videos, and code snippets. Images included in a post will also be displayed in the list of posts on the Forum homepage.
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If attachments are enabled, members can add files to a post using the attachment icon in the editor. Contact the Gradual team if you’d like to enable this feature for your community.

Each post can include up to 10 attachments, with a 9 MB limit per file and a 100 MB total limit per post. Supported file types include common document, image, archive, and presentation formats such as TXT, JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, ICO, ZIP, GZ, TAR.GZ, TGZ, PSD, AI, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, DOCX, LOG, RAR. Files that exceed the size limit, exceed the attachment limit, or use an unsupported file type must be removed before the post can be published.

Members can mention other members in the post and it will tag that member, and alert them to check out the post, or the replies to that post.

Any full URLs included in a post will automatically register as live links and open in a new tab for the user.

Posts and comments always remain in the language they were originally written. Translation only changes how the content is displayed for each viewer.

Once a post is published, attachments appear within the post and can be downloaded by signed-in members who have access to that Forum board. Guests will be prompted to sign in before downloading. Attachments open as downloads only and do not display an inline preview.

Post Templates help you organize your post by providing a recommended format for sharing questions, support requests, or ideas.

When creating a post, you can select an available template for your chosen Post Type. The template’s content will automatically appear in the post editor, where you can edit it to fit your needs.

To use a Post Template:

You can switch to a different template while creating your post.

If you haven’t edited the content provided by your current template, selecting another template will automatically replace it.

If you’ve already made changes to the content, you’ll be asked to confirm before replacing it with another template. You can cancel to keep your existing content.

If you change the Post Type after selecting a template:

Templates are available when creating a post and cannot be reapplied or switched when editing a published post.

Product & Service Area helps organize Forum posts by the product, feature, or service they relate to.

When this field is enabled for a Post Type, it appears in the post editor. Depending on your community’s settings, selecting an area can be required or optional.

To select a Product & Service Area:

Product & Service Areas can be organized into up to three levels. You can select a main area or a more specific sub-area, depending on how your community has organized them.

Only one area can be selected per post.

Your selected area is displayed on the post details page.

The post author and Forum moderators can update the Product & Service Area after a post has been published.

To update it, open the post, select Edit from the three-dot menu, choose a different area, and save your changes.

Posters can select from the designated board topics to assign their post to a topic board, or they can select from any of the tags loaded in the community. Users cannot create a new topic or tag, they must pick from the list available.

The poster can also select other topics to tag the post and relate it to other content pieces and events in the community. The topics that are listed for the user to select from are pulled from the loaded ‘Tags’ in the community. New topics must be added by admins in the dashboard in the ‘Tag’ menu item to appear in the topics selector in the Forum. A poster can select up to three topics to tag onto their post.

Every post must be assigned to a forum Board by the author. Boards organize and group posts by topic, etc. The boards listed for a member to select at the base are any Board they have access to (space restricted or not). Learn more about forum boards here.

Members cannot create new boards on the front end when creating a post, but admins can add Boards in the dashboard. Currently, posts can only be moved to a new board by a forum moderator.

If a post or comment has not received any reactions or comments, the post's contents can be edited by the original poster. Or admins can enable posters to edit their work and comments even after it has received comments and reactions in the dashboard.

To edit a post, simply select the three-dot menu in the upper right of the post and select Edit. Make any updates necessary, including adding or removing attachments when attachments are enabled, and ‘Save’ the post. If timestamps are visible, the system will list a new ‘Edited at’ timestamp.

If you want to block members from commenting on a post, you can lock it from the front end as a Forum moderator or board moderator. This can be done immediately when the post is created, or after it has received some comments.

To lock a post, moderators can simply select the three-dot menu in the upper right of the post and select 'Lock the post'. This will block any members (Forum moderators and admins included) from commenting on the post. Reactions like up voting and comment claps are still accepted.

This can be reversed at any time by Forum or board moderators, by selecting the three-dot menu in the upper right and selecting 'Unlock the post'.

Members can stay updated on forum conversations by watching posts and receiving notifications for new comments. When someone comments on a watched post, Gradual sends an in-platform notification and email to the members who is watching it. Learn more about watching posts here.

If a post or comment violates the community rules, members can report it to moderators. The reporter must include reasoning and action can be taken on the front end or in the dashboard by Forum Moderators and admins after they've reviewed the reason for reporting.

Learn more about Forum Moderation here.

The community-wide, federated search includes Forum titles and body text, but does not include comments’ text in its results.

Members can also find posts on similar topics if they are tagged with topics, and posts with similar titles, content, and tags will be suggested to them at the base of each post.