Coming changes to User Groups

[markwni]

Good morning NI Community!

We have been hard at work on an upgrade to the User Group functionality, and we are excited to give you a preview.

• What’s new?
  • All user groups can add blogs, idea exchanges, and documents to their existing discussion areas. 
  • The process for joining and leaving a user group has been optimized.
  • Group organizer controls are consolidated to reduce the work to make your group fly.
• When?
  • The transition to new groups is scheduled for this Wednesday, November 11, 2020 at 8am CST. During the transition, groups will not be available. We expect this work to take a few hours to complete.
  • Update at 7pm: The transition is taking longer than we expected. Some functionality will work but some is still in progress. Thank you for your patience.
  • Update at 10am Thursday: The transition is complete. There are a few small issues we are working on, but most things should be working fine. Thank you for your patience.
• Do I have to do anything?
  • For most members, no action is required. If you are an organizer of user groups, you can consider whether you want to add the new functionality to your existing groups.

Here is a screenshot of what you’ll see:

As always, we thank you for being a member of NI Community!

[Bob_Schor]

How can you join a User Group?  How can you find out if you already are a member of a User Group?

Bob Schor

[cbutcher]

Bob,

You can get a list of the groups that you are a member of via the Profile button > "My Groups". (If it's not called a profile button, then I mean the link with your name at the top right, next to your picture).

This has tabs for groups that you've joined, and separately that you own.

To join, I guess most groups (no systematic sampling here, just a few quick clicks) have a Join Group button when you go to them via the User Groups list on the left of the forum layout. Closed Groups require(?) this before you can see posts, open groups like LAF/GLA Summit will let you read posts without joining, but I think you have to join to leave Kudos. Maybe you can post even if you haven't joined, maybe not (I don't remember).
I *think* that some groups are only possible to join via invitation, but now a lot of what look like private/secret groups are visible to me, and have some notice like "This is a closed group. you must be invited to the group or request membership." and then a request to join button (e.g. IES-Internal-Eval-Project-1. 

[.aCe.]

Hello Bob,

Also, if you are not already aware: This Landing page lists all the user groups by region

[Bob_Schor]

Thanks for posting the "Landings" page.

I checked two regions:  Maryland (where I currently reside) and New York (where I also have a professional role).  Maryland lists "Greenbelt", which says "You don't have access to view this page".  Not knowing where Greenbelt was, I looked at a map, and saw it was near the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  I joined the LUGG (LabVIEW Users Group at Goddard) and have given several presentations there -- I found the Users Group through the list of Users Groups on the old Forum Website.

I also checked to see if the Rochester Users Group, to which I belonged and where I had been asking to make a presentation since the Fall of 2016, I discovered that the Group really has vanished!  I asked Viewpoint Systems, where our meetings were always held, why no meetings were being held, and they said that National Instruments had "forgotten about them".  I tried to follow up with NI, only to discover our Local Sales Rep had no knowledge of our group, and it appears to have vanished.

Maybe making things "more visible", particularly if they can be User-maintained so they don't disappear without the knowledge of the users, will improve the User experience.

Bob Schor