Profile

On your profile page, you can choose to display as much or as little information about yourself as you'd like. Used in conjunction with the Preferences options, you can customize exactly who sees which parts of your profile. By default, your profile information is only accessible by other IAAP members, so unless you change your preferences, your information will not be public to non-IAAP members.

• As long as you are logged in, you can edit each portion of your profile directly on the page using the edit links within each section.


• For your profile image, the optimal size is 200x200px, so if you are able to resize your photo first, it will look better on the site at those dimensions. Profile pictures should not be larger than 600x600px.


• Your main contact information is pulled directly from the IAAP member database. The information here is the company for which you work, your geographic location (like city/state) and the offices, committees and groups to which you belong. You can edit this information by clicking edit contact information. Keep in mind that this will change your information with IAAP, not just in this web community


• Your Bio is a freeform field that you can edit any way you choose by clicking edit.


• Your Certifications can be changed by clicking Enter Certifications. You might wonder why IAAP doesn’t simply pull Certification information from your member record. The answer is this:
  While we do know who holds the CPS and/or CAP rating, we also know that lots of our members have certifications we don’t track. As a result, we’ve left this field free for you to edit.


• Under Interests, you can choose some of the more popular interests from a list or enter your own. If any two people have the same interest in the system, that interest is immediately added to your networks, described more below. This is a powerful way to connect with other members who share interests with you that you may otherwise have no way of communicating with. We recommend adding any and all interests you have. You might be surprised how many of our members share those same interests.


• You can also edit your Education Details on this screen, as well as your Job History.

Moving down the left hand side of the screen, you’ll see:

• My Blogs. This section is where anyone who visits your profile can see your most recent blog posting.


• Under My Contacts, you’ll see a count of how many contacts you’ve currently got in your contacts list. Contacts are people you’ve defined as “I know this person and they’re a part of my IAAP network.”


• Under Groups, there are a few different fields. First, you’ll see Chapter, which lists your chapter name. Under Committees, you’ll see any committees of which you’re a part. (Please remember that we only list international level committees here) If you’re registered to attend any events, you’ll also see that information appear here.


• Under Networks, you’ll see a list of all the interest groups you’ve identified earlier in your profile.


• Under Groups and Networks, notice that each group listed is a clickable link. Why? To make it easier to communicate with people with whom you already share a connection. Clicking the group name brings up a list of people who are also a member of that group. Clicking each individual name will let you message that person or add them to your profile as a contact.

Along the top of your profile, you will see additional tabs. Let's look at the "My Contacts" tab first (this is the same page you will get if you click the "Contacts" link from the Network drop-down menu).

My Contacts

My Contacts brings up a list of the people you’ve designated as your contacts within the IAAP network. Want to add a contact? Click the green plus sign next to “add contact(s).” From this screen, you can also message any of your contacts and sort your contacts by name, rating, organization, city, state or country.

Inbox

Your Inbox tab (also available via the Network drop-down menu) brings up a screen where you can see all your one-to-one communications in one place.

• You have an inbox, which holds all the incoming messages in the system,


• Sent items, where you can read all the messages you’ve sent,


• Requests where you’ll see where people have requested to add you as a contact (you’ve got to approve each new request), and


• Invitations, where you’ll receive any invitations to join new groups that are formed in the system.


• Need to find a message fast? Every section of your message center is searchable… so you can quickly find the message in which Joyce told you all about Excel, for example.

Blogs

Next you’ll see Blogs. Next to eGroups, this is the fastest way to communicate with lots of people at once. This section, like your Inbox, has its own submenu. Moving from left to right:

• My Blog shows you all the blog entries you’ve made.


• My Contacts brings up all the blog entries of people on your contact list.


• Most Recent shows all the most recent blog posts of any blogs throughout the system you’ve got access to.


• Top Rated shows all the blog entries rated highest throughout the system,


• Most Read shows the most popular, by readership, blogs throughout the system, and


• Unpublished shows any blog entries you’ve started but not published yet.


• Start a new blog entry by clicking the green plus sign next to “New Blog.”

Let’s stick with Blogs for a second. There are a lot of things to keep in mind when working with blogs, and a lot of ways to communicate around them. Click Most Recent tab, and let’s start there. You’ll see a list of blogs come up, again, ordered by date. Click the title of the first blog you see, and we’ll take a look at all the things you can do.

• You’ll see the text of the blog post come up in the center of your screen. To the right of the blog, notice all the author information. You can view the author’s profile (View
  Profile), add the author as a contact (Add Contact), add this blog entry to your own blog (Blog This) or send the author a private message (Contact Author).


• You can also rate the blog post, depending on how useful you find it to be. See the stars underneath the author’s information? Click the first star
  (counting from left to right) if it’s not very helpful, the second star if it’s a little better than that, and so on. All the ratings everyone’s ever given the post get averaged
  together to create the "score." (Don’t worry, the author never sees exactly what you rated the post!)


• Under that rating, you can see the number of times the post has been rated, the number of times people have commented on the post, and the number of times people have viewed the post.

Now scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog post. The first thing you’ll see is the section marked Permalink. You can copy and paste this URL into an email or into a web page to link directly to this blog post.

You can also add a comment to the blog post (if the author’s opened it up for comments) or add a link to the post.

Posting a blog

Want to create a blog post? Let’s scroll back up to the top of the screen to see how. Up at the top of the blog menu, to the far right, you’ll see the green plus sign next to “New Blog.” Click there to add an entry to your own blog. You’ll see a new screen come up with an editing box in the center. Here’s how to make your very own blog post:

• Give your entry a title by typing in the box marked Title of Your Blog Entry.


• Then, use the editing box to type whatever you’d like. The buttons are very similar to Microsoft Word.


• When you’re done typing, select who is allowed to read your blog entry. You can select from:
  
  • Public, which means that anyone can read your blog entry.
  • Authenticated, which means that anyone who’s logged in to the system (but not necessarily an IAAP Member) can read your post.
  • IAAPHQ Members, which means that only IAAP Members can read your blog post, or
  • My Contacts, which means that only people you’ve added to your contact list can read the post.
  
  
• After that, you can decide who can comment on your post, using a similar list. The difference here is that you can allow no one to comment on your entry.


• Then, either click Publish, which takes your blog entry live, or save for later, which means you can come back and edit before it goes live. Let’s go ahead and publish your blog entry.


• Now you’ll see the beginnings of your blog, with one entry. Click that entry’s title, and you’ll see that you have very similar options to someone else’s blog entry, with one key exception. On the left hand side, there’s an icon for you to delete your blog entry.

Communities (Groups and Networks)

Moving back to the top menu, Groups is the last item. At last count, there were a few thousand networking groups in the IAAP web community… this is the part of the site that makes that number manageable. When you click this tab, you’ll see a list of groups and networks come up automatically. These are the groups to which you already have access, because of how the system has identified you. You probably have a chapter group available to you and some special interest networks. Want to find a specific group? Just type in the search for a group or community box. This section also brings up its own submenu… let’s move across each tab:

• My Groups is a list of the groups you already have access to.


• My Contacts groups shows a list of all the groups your contacts belong to.


• All Groups shows a list of all groups within the system.


• Recently added shows a list of new groups, and


• By Size shows a list of groups by their member count.


• Last but not least… want to create a group, say for “Microsoft Excel users?” just click the green plus sign next to “Add a new Community.”

For more information about how communities interract with eGroups and libraries, see the eGroups section of the User Guide.