Forums

Interactive forums are used to share messages that may include map bookmarks, attached sketches and documents.

Forums are the primary means by which SeaSketch users collaborate. Messages may include rich text (including styling, bullet points, hyperlinks), in-line bookmarks to the map state (the map extent and any active data layers), attached sketches and documents. Each message also contains a unique URL which may be copied and shared via email or other media. Messages are only accessible to those that have permission to access the forum to which they are posted.

To create a new forum, click the "Add + button under the Forums tab. If this is your first forum, you can also click "Create your first Forum" and give it a name.

Create your first forum.

After creating a forum, you will be presented with the forum editor.

The forum editor includes tools to update translated text, set access permission, and archive or delete a forum.

Editing a Forum

Name and Description

Both the name and description support setting translated text for your project's supported languages. See the Language Support documentation for instructions on how to provide these translations.

The description will appear below the name of a Forum in forum listings, if provided.

Access control

Users will only be able to post if they are logged in, even for public forums. Forums support both read and write (post) permissions being set independently. This covers several useful scenarios.

• Public forums in which all users can both read and post

• Forums which anyone can read (public read), but require membership in a particular group or admin privileges to post. These can be used for announcements.

• Closed forums which require particular group membership to read and post.

Project administrators will be able to read and post to all forums. See the Users and Groups documentation for details on how to assign users to groups.

Archiving a Forum

Enable this setting if you would like to disable and hide a forum, but not delete the content. Only administrators will be able to view these archived forums. Disabling the archive setting will restore the visibility of the forum to authorized users.

Deleting a Forum

Deleting a forum is a permanent operation. To prevent loss of important information, it is only possible to delete a forum which has fewer than 10 posts. In almost all cases, it is best to simply archive a forum that is no longer used unless it was only used for evaluating or testing SeaSketch functionality.