Community

The SmarterTrack Community is a built-in forum that creates a space for customers and support agents to connect, collaborate, and communicate. Rather than fielding the same questions repeatedly through tickets or live chat, the Community gives users a place to ask questions publicly, share ideas, report problems, and help one another — while agents can respond, post announcements, and keep everyone informed about product updates or issue resolutions.

Together with the Knowledge Base and News modules, the Community rounds out a self-service hub that reduces support volume while strengthening customer relationships. A user who finds the answer to their question in a Community thread — or whose feature idea gets marked as Planned — feels heard and engaged in a way that a closed ticket often doesn't provide.

How the Community Is Organized

Every thread in the Community is classified by a Type, assigned a Status, and can be grouped using Categories and Tags. Understanding how these work together makes it much easier to navigate and manage a busy community.

Thread Types

When creating a thread, users choose one of four Types that describe the nature of the post. The Type determines which statuses are available and how agents should engage with it.

Announcements — Used by agents to broadcast important information, such as scheduled maintenance, new releases, or policy changes. Only agents can post Announcements. Announcements do not have a Status since they represent outbound communication rather than an open dialogue.
Ideas — Users suggest features, improvements, or changes. For example, "Add a dark mode to the portal." Agents can acknowledge ideas by updating the status as the idea progresses through evaluation.
Problems — Users report issues or bugs they're experiencing. For example, "Attachments over 5 MB fail to upload." Agents can track the issue publicly by updating the status as it moves through investigation and resolution.
Questions — Users ask for help or clarification. For example, "How do I reset my password without access to my email?" Any community member can reply, and agents can mark the best reply as the accepted answer.

Thread Statuses

Statuses let agents keep the community informed about where a thread stands without requiring a written reply every time something changes. They're visible in thread listings, so users can scan for updates at a glance. The default status is applied when a thread is first created, and agents can update it as things progress.

Ideas: Proposed → Under Consideration → Planned → In Progress → Completed (or Denied)
Problems: Submitted → Known → Being Fixed → Resolved (or Not a Problem)
Questions: Unanswered → Answered

For example, when a user submits a bug report, the thread starts at Submitted. Once the engineering team confirms the issue, an agent updates it to Known. When a fix ships, they update it to Resolved. Users subscribed to the thread receive an email notification at each change, keeping them in the loop without needing to check back manually.

Voting

Users can upvote any thread to signal that it matters to them. This is especially valuable for Ideas and Problems — an idea with 50 votes is a much clearer signal than one with 2. The Votes view on the Community Home surfaces the most-voted threads across all types, giving agents an easy way to prioritize what to address. Individual replies can also be "liked" using the thumbs-up icon, helping surface the most helpful responses within a thread.

Community Home

The Community Home page is where users browse, search, and start new discussions. The main content area lists all active threads, with each entry showing the thread title, type label, category, creation date, original poster, number of replies, and vote count. Color-coded type labels — such as a blue Announcement badge or an orange Problem badge — make it easy to identify thread types at a glance without opening each one.

Users can filter and browse threads using the tabs across the top of the thread list:

Recent — Threads sorted by most recent activity (thread creation or latest reply).
Votes — Threads sorted by number of upvotes, highest first. Threads with the same vote count are sorted by date.
Unread — Threads with content the current user hasn't viewed yet.
My Activity — Threads the current user created or replied to.
My Subscribed — Threads the user is subscribed to. Participating in any thread (replying, voting, or creating) automatically subscribes the user to it. Subscription preferences and notification timing can be adjusted in My Settings on the Portal.
Moderate — Visible only to users with moderation permissions, and only when items are pending review. See the Moderation section below for details.
Banned — Displays users who have been banned from participating in the Community. Banned users can still read threads but cannot post, vote, or reply. The reason for each ban is shown next to the user's name. Clicking on a user opens their profile, where they can be unbanned.

A search bar at the top of the thread list accepts keywords and filters by Category, Type, Status, and Tags, making it easy to find relevant discussions even in a large community. The right sidebar shows a Top Contributors panel recognizing the most active members and a Recent Contributors section showing who has posted recently — both of which help highlight engaged community members.

Creating Threads

Any user with permission to post (determined by Brand settings) can create a new thread using the Create Thread button on the Community Home page. When creating a thread, users:

Choose a Type (Idea, Problem, or Question — Announcements are agent-only).
Select a Category if any are configured (required when categories exist).
Write their post using the WYSIWYG editor, which supports formatting and hyperlinks.
Add Tags by typing a word or phrase and pressing Enter, Tab, or clicking a suggestion.

As the user types, a panel to the right shows related Community threads and Knowledge Base articles based on the title, content, and tags being entered. This helps prevent duplicate threads and often answers the question before it's even posted. Users are automatically subscribed to threads they create and receive email digests when activity occurs.

Agent Participation

Agents interact with the Community directly from the portal, the same interface customers use. When logged in, agents have access to additional actions not available to regular users:

Post Announcements — Agents can create Announcement threads to communicate company news, release notes, or scheduled downtime to the entire community.
Reply to threads — Agents reply using the same WYSIWYG editor available to users. Replies from agents are visually distinguished to help users identify official responses.
Mark answers — On Question threads, agents (and the thread author) can mark a specific reply as the accepted answer, which is then highlighted prominently within the thread.
Update statuses — Agents can change the status of Idea, Problem, and Question threads to reflect current progress. For example, moving a bug from Submitted to Being Fixed when development work begins.
View user details — When viewing a user's profile in the Community, agents can see full contact information, initiate an outbound ticket, or review the user's past interactions.