What are the Professional communities?
Our professional communities provide a secure, social-media-style platform where electric cooperative employees and directors can network, ask questions, share ideas and exchange documents with peers. We will be adding new communities on an ongoing basis.
How do I join?
Some of the communities are open for all Coop.com members to join, others are locked down to a specific group. If a community is open, you will need to be logged in and then click on the link to the community. From there, you can click on the Join button to become a member.
For secured communities, access must be requested to join.
I received an "add me as a contact" request via email, what's this?
Accepting this request simply adds you to this person's Contacts on the platform. It's basically just a list of people they may want to communicate with regularly, and you've been added to a space that's easy for them to find--like an address book.
As we roll out more of these communities on Cooperative.com, a user might belong to one or more communities with dozens or evens hundreds of other members. Using the Contacts feature allows users to easily add colleagues and people you may need to directly message to a central location within your profile.
How do I add someone as a contact?
You can certainly add anyone to your contacts, but the feature may be most useful when adding only the users you anticipate frequent communication and collaboration with.
How to add someone to your Contacts:
- From a user's profile.
- By searching for a user in the Member Directory
- From a Community's Member section.
- By viewing a discussion or library resource post that the person has participated in.
After using any of the methods above to add someone as a Contact, they're sent a notification email letting them know you want to connect with them. Only people who have accepted your invitation to connect are added to your Contact List (and vice-versa), and you can view and manage them from your profile's
My Connections >
Contacts page.
From there, you can:
- Click their name to view their profile.
- Send them a message.
- Remove them from your Contact List.
Who can see the things I post to the community?
Only people who are logged in to Cooperative.com and are members of the specific community you post to can view and respond to discussion posts or download resources.
Who can join the communities?
Some communities are secured to a specific group of members and only those who are given access will be able to join. If a community is closed, but you think you should have access, please contact a site administrator.
Open communities are available for any interested Coop.com member to join, they simply need to be logged on to Cooperative.com.
How do I change my email notification settings?
Community members can select to receive real time email notifications of discussion posts to the community (like a listserv), or to have all the posts from the day collected into a digest and emailed to them the next day. To change your settings, click on the "Settings" button next to the community name, and select Real Time or Daily Digest from the dropdown. Be sure to click "Change" when you're finished.
Can I respond to discussion posts via email?
Yes! When a community member receives an email (whether a daily digest or in real time), they have the ability to reply to the discussion within their email. Simply click on "Reply to Group" within the message and a new email will open up with an auto generated address.
If a user clicks "Reply to Sender," they will be taken to the community platform where they can then send a direct message to the original poster.
If you have any questions,
email Michael Lynch.
