A much requested feature is now live in Outverse – community admins can now drag to reorder spaces and space groups. We’ll be adding further drag & drop customisation to other parts of Outverse soon. Spaces can now be reordered within groups, moved between groups, and also removed from all group via drag & drop.
We’ve improved the UI for our compact thread view within forums. The updated compact view now contains a high density of information for quickly scanning and navigating busy forums within Outverse communities.
Community members and admins can now quickly filter forum threads on unread activity/notifications. Threads containing unread direct replies, mentions or any new reply within a thread members are subscribed to – along with new threads within forums that members are subscribed to will all now show in the new notifications tab within forum spaces. Switch between compact and expanded views within forums by using the view selector in the top right hand corner.
Inviting people into your community is a core part of Outverse and we've improved the flow that makes it easier to send and accept invites and enables more granularity & security when doing so.
You can now send granular 1:1 email-based invites to new members via the ‘Invite member’ modal. These invites will automatically expire after 30 days with more functionality coming soon
In addition, community admins can now also regenerate their generic community invite link. Regenerating a community invite link will immediately invalidate the previous link, with the ability to auto-regenerate on a schedule coming soon.
Forum content (both at the thread and reply level) can now be more easily flagged by admins and members by clicking the ‘…’ icon on a thread/reply card, followed by the ‘Report’ option.
Following the recent addition of embedding threads
To embed/reference a reply, simply copy the reply’s link (via hitting 'Copy link"in the reply card menu) and then paste it into your custom space or forum thread/reply. Embedding replies can be used for further curating/organising community content, as well as quoting within threads.
Expect much more to come from thread embeds, including increased interactivity, external embedding and more.
We’ve added a new advanced block to custom spaces – the space contents block. Adding a space contents block will show an outline of your space based on the content within it. Community members can also click on subsections within the contents block to scroll directly to that section in the space (you can also now deep link directly to subsections within custom spaces!).
Helping community teams & members avoid distraction and noise is core to the Outverse mission.
We’re taking great care with out notifications design, and have recently rolled out more in-app activity cues so members can understand what’s new, without being overwhelmed.
Community admins can now choose to hide the member directory and events calendar as default sections/pages within their community. To Hide/unhide default sections – head to community settings and the ‘Default sections’ tab.
At Outverse, we want to make finding & surfacing great community content as easy & seamless as possible. Thread embeds are the next step on this journey. Threads can now be embedded and referenced in both custom spaces and forum spaces, opening up new ways for communities to organize & unearth great content.
To embed a thread, simply copy the threads link (via hitting 'Copy link"in the thread card menu) and then paste it into your custom space or forum thread/reply. You can then choose whether to show the expanded or collapsed view of the thread.
Expect much more to come from thread embeds, including increased interactivity, external embedding and more.
One of our most requested features is now live. You can now close your composer when drafting both threads and replies without losing your changes. If you close your composer mid-draft, the draft will be automatically saved, ready for your return
Another small but frequently requested feature is now live in custom spaces. Type three dashes or underscores “---” / "___" (without any intervening spaces) to create a horizontal rule and help organize & format your custom spaces.
v1 of community search has arrived in Outverse. To search within a community, hit the Search button in the top bar (alternatively, you can hit ⌘K).
You can now search across threads and replies with speed and accuracy – with results showing the author, thread and space.
This is just the beginning for community search – we’re working hard on further search features that will enable quicker, more granular filtering and more detailed results.
Thread locking is now live! Once a thread is locked, members will no longer be able to reply within the thread (until it’s unlocked) – although they can still emoji react tot the thread and its replies. Only admins or community members with the ‘Manage forums’ permission will be able to lock threads.
Thread locking can be used in a number of different ways – including…
To lock / unlock a thread, click the menu button on a thread card followed by the Lock thread / Unlock thread option.
You can now quickly copy links to replies within threads ⚡️. Reply links will also now auto-scroll to the specific reply, making it much easier to share community content!
You can now pin threads within forums! Pinned threads will be pinned to the top of forums and you can pin as many threads as you want at any one time. Thread pinning can be used in a number of ways, including...
✍️ Highlighting threads you want to encourage activity in
👀 Highlighting threads for increased community visibility
ℹ️ Adding specific space guidelines, instructions and descriptions
To pin/unpin a thread, simply click the menu button on a thread card, and click the Pin thread or Unpin thread option.
When composing a reply within a thread, we’ve added the ability to minimize the composer – making sure you can always see all of the thread content whilst you’re composing your reply!
We've added rich syntax highlighting to our code blocks in the thread & reply composer (along with custom spaces). To add a code block with rich syntax highlighting, simply type three back-ticks followed by the programming language name, e.g. ```python or ```css. 🦾
One of our most popular feature requests from the community has been emoji reactions – which we are excited to have just launched in Outverse! Sometimes, an emoji is all that’s needed…head into threads to react to posts & replies – the entire up-to-date emoji set is available for all! 🪐💙💫
Keyboard shortcuts & commands are a favorite of power users, enabling them to control their most common actions directly from the keyboard (and helping them find some of the less common!). We’re exciting to begin introducing more keyboard shortcuts to the Outverse product to help you navigate, explore and interact within communities ✨🦾
To begin, bring up your command menu by hitting ⌘ + K – from which you will find a list of common/helpful actions along with any accompanying shortcuts.
Some of the Outverse team’s favourite shortcuts are:
We've got a lot more commands and shortcuts in the works! ⚡️
We’ve added the ability to align and resize embed blocks. Embed blocks can now be left, center, and right aligned – along with small, medium and large sizing options. To align or resize an embed block in either a custom space or a forum post – just hover over the block and select your desired options! This includes image GIF, YouTube, Loom, and Figma embed blocks (with more on the way!) 🎨
You can now natively embed YouTube videos in custom spaces and forums using the YouTube embed block. Our first embed blocks include: YouTube, Loom & Figma blocks.
To add an embed block to a custom space or thread/reply post, simply paste the URL directly into your editor or navigate down to the correct ‘Embed block’ option in your / command menu. Once you’ve added the block, you will be able to choose between small, medium or large sizing before hitting publish or send!
GIFs have arrived in Outverse. Sometimes, a GIF can speak a thousand words – and they can now be added to both custom spaces and forums via our Giphy integration!
To add GIFs, use the /giphy command or the 'GIF' block in the / command menu.
