Discussion Groups - guidance

A designated project, exercise or training course coordinator can start a discussion group for themselves without any extra approvals! The technical steps are explained in the User Guide.

For discussion groups that are not tied to a project, exercise or training course (i.e., independent), you can request one by free-form email sent to ECHO-CP-KNOWLEDGE-NETWORKPLATFORM@ec.europa.eu. For example, to start a group on a specific theme researched by your organization (e.g., wildfire preparedness) which you wish to promote and use the EU platform as a common ground. You should address, for example, the following basic characteristics in your request:

• Purpose & need for the group
• Assessment of how sustainable the group idea is
  • Or what is your goal and timeline with the group?
• Is it intended to be public or private?
  • (If private: Which kind of audience are you intending to invite as members?)
• A short description of the topic or theme
• Who will be the (initial) moderators?

You own the group! Thus, you encourage, activate and moderate the discussions as well as handle the build-up of content, future direction, membership, etc. per your own discretion. The Commission by default does not support in content creation, member acquisition, etc. within the group, but naturally we are here to help you on technical matters and good practices.

You can find more info on the User Guide as well as on the different community roles. Please also bear in mind the platform's Terms of Service.

As a moderator, go to the 'Invitations' tab when you are viewing the group and then press the blue 'Invite members' button. Search and select the community member(s) to invite and press 'Apply to selected items' to proceed. You will have one more screen to view the email(s) that are about to receive the invitation email sent by the platform. Press once more to confirm!

If the person loses the invitation email or it has expired, we suggest that you add them manually by going to the 'Members' tab in the group and pressing the blue 'Add member' button. Sending a new invitation is not technically possible on the platform at the moment.

A moderator can create news or events tied to their independent group via the blue 'Manage content' dropdown menu. These are the same items as used by the Knowledge Network core staff team. Naturally, in a public group these will appear in the respective news and events indices for everyone to view - whereas in a private group they are only visible for members in the indices.

A project discussion group cannot create news or events tied to the group because a project coordinator can create public events and news already on the assigned project space via the blue 'Manage content' dropdown menu.

Only the group members (incl. moderators) see the content. This includes the member list, all discussions, all attachments to discussions, all files and media, as well as all news and events created within that group. The short description of the group and the moderators are public.

Note! If you are a member of the group and logged into the Knowledge Network platform, you will see the news and events of that group in the respective main catalogue of news and main catalogue of events - but they will not be visible to non-members of the group.

Site administrators of the platform's core Commission staff team can monitor the content of the groups as well for maintenance and security reasons, but naturally they are bound by confidentiality.

Pinned Discussions are visible on all Group types for Group Members. For "Thematic Groups" which are Public types of groups, there is an option to have Pinned Discussions visible as well as a Recent activities list since outsiders (Community members that are not part of the Group) have access to the Latest contributions and Content list.