Kaitlyn Mooney · Turbulent

Well, when is a little bit of a loaded question. I'm sure you guys hear. But what I can talk about is what we've been working on over the last couple of weeks and some details about our plans to bring it into Spectrum a little bit more.

Kaitlyn Mooney · Turbulent

So one of the biggest things, obviously, we want to bring the orgs into Spectrum right now. So our UX department has been working closely with the design team and with the devs to try and figure out a way to make this a little bit more seamless. Right now, obviously, with the orgs in Spectrum, the org forums and chat system, all the communication is already happening there. So when we revisit orgs, it only naturally makes sense to bring it into Spectrum. So we started with the first question our UX designer asked, which is: what does it mean to discover a new org in Spectrum? And of course that brings up multiple different ideas of interfaces that we have to introduce into Spectrum. So the first thing, obviously, if we're allowing users to discover a new org in Spectrum, we have to create the possibility for an org public page, so that you can actually search and see this information about the orgs. And then we're also playing with the idea of an org public forum, which we think would be a really cool opportunity for potential recruits to interact with the org members and admins. So that's one part, introducing a new public page, public forum. And then along with this, of course, is how do you search for a new org? How do you search the org database? Right now all of that is happening in the org section on the RSI site, but we would want to bring that into Spectrum. So what filters and functions do users currently use? To explore that a little bit more, we're looking back in terms of what worked for people in the past. How are our filters functioning currently today? Do we need to be adding new filters? Are some of the filters totally useless? What do we need to introduce? Is the search function the most important feature? How do people search and find new orgs that they want to join? So that's something that we're looking into, and then of course bringing that functionality into Spectrum. And then the other part that comes with this whole discovering a new org through Spectrum is of course we have to create the ability to apply, and for admins to manage recruits. So there's going to have to be a new interface to introduce applications and admins receiving those applications and managing them, and of course being able to manage blocked users and all of that functionality. Of course with that comes notifications. How do those notifications happen? How do they look different? So all of this kind of functionality is encompassed by: how do I discover a new org through Spectrum? That was kind of our main question that we asked, and it's kind of channeled out into these new features that we would like to add. So the design work for that is already done in terms of asking the questions. We want to reach out to the community, so you guys might see us starting to engage with you in terms of questions specifically around orgs in Spectrum, asking you guys what information do you think is important? What things, especially in terms of searching the org database and managing, do we need to make sure that we give functionality for? And then one thing that I can say that's super exciting that you guys are going to see very soon with the next release of Spectrum is custom roles. And I know that the full section of org settings is still going to be controlled through the RSI site in your accounts. However, the ability to add a new custom role and control all of the permissions within the forum is going to be right there in Spectrum. So that's pretty cool.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

That'll be a big step to making our org forums fully usable.

Kaitlyn Mooney · Turbulent

Absolutely. It's going to give you so much more functionality to be able to section out people, recruits, and the members of your org into the sections that you guys need.