Join Communities

Communities are sites within the portal designed for a specific audience or task, such as collaborative projects. The portlets, layout, community preferences, and subcommunities within a community are determined by community administrators. After you join a community, a link to the community displays in the My Communities menu.

Note: Only those communities that you have permission to join are listed on the Join Communities page. If you are not able to join a community, ask your portal administrator to change your access privilege.

This topic discusses:

• How to join a community
• How to navigate inside the Join Communities page
• How to search for a community

To join a community:

1. Click Join Communities:
• If you do not belong to any communities, this link appears at the bottom of any My Page or Knowledge Directory page.
• If you belong to one or more communities, this link appears at the bottom of any community page.
  
2. Under each community you want to join, click Add <community name> to memberships.
   
   Note: You can also remove yourself from communities you belong to by clicking Remove <community name> from memberships.
   
3. Your selected communities are listed at the bottom of the page. Click OK to save your changes or Cancel to revert your changes.

To navigate inside the Join Communities page:

The Join Communities page looks different depending on how many communities are available to you. If there are fewer than 50 communities, you will see a simple list. If there are more than 50 communities, the portal organizes the communities into their folders of origin and presents only 10 communities to you on the first page. You can navigate in the following ways:

• To see more communities from one of the folders that is already open, click More >>.

• To jump to a specific folder, click the folder name. The portal displays communities contained within that folder; it might also display the names of other folders.

• To see the communities that have been changed most recently, in the Sort by drop-down list, select Last Modified Date. The portal displays the most recently modified communities first. You can page through the list by clicking Next >> at the bottom of the page.

• To browse through all administrative object folders (even those that do not contain any communities), click Browse All Folders. When you are browsing all folders, you can perform the following actions:
  • To return to the default Join Communities view, click Search for Communities.
  • To open a folder, click its name. Any subfolders or communities stored in the folder are displayed.
  • To return to a folder's parent folder, click Up.

To search for a community:

1. In the Search for Communities text box, type the text for which you want to search. For searching tips, see Text Search Rules.

2. Click Search.

The results of your search are organized according to the communities’ folder of origin. Some folders will already be open.

• To see more communities from an open folder, click More >>.

• To jump to a specific folder, click the folder name.

• To change the results to show the most recently modified communities first, in the Sort by drop-down list, select Last Modified Date.

To see a list of access keys that allow you to navigate the portal with your keyboard, refer to Access Keys.

To learn about the functions available at the top of the portal, refer to My Home, My Account, Logging Off, Help, and Searching.

To learn about the My Pages menu, refer to My Pages.

To learn about the My Communities menu, refer to My Communities.

To learn about the Directory menu, refer to Browse Directory.