Using Local Government Q & A

The Local Government Q & A is a discussion forum available to Municom subscribers.  It has been set up within a “Community”; a website feature that provides a central depository for news items, discussion forums and documents related to a specific subject, group of members, committee, etc.  Members/subscribers of a community are free to post and respond to various questions and issues within the listed discussion forums.

Getting Started

As with all Municom subscription areas, you must login before you can see the Local Government Q & A content.  You can login from any page of the AMO website by using the Member Login/Logout option in the upper right corner.  Or, upon choosing one of the Municom main page options listed in the left menu, you will be prompted to login.

Once logged in, the first time you access the Municom>Local Government Q&A menu option, you can either choose to enter the community by clicking Municom Local Govt Q&A – Members Only, or if you’d like to subscribe to and/or set preferences for this community you can click Global Preferences.

It is not necessary to subscribe to the community; as a Municom subscriber you already have access to its contents.  However if you would like to receive email notifications of new postings – you have the choice of receiving notifications of each post, or a daily or weekly digest - you will need to subscribe to the community and then set your notification preferences.

Community Components

Communities are arranged into three areas:

News

• Lists news items relevant to the community
• Items are posted by the community administrator(s)
• Items are dated and automatically archived accordingly

Forums

• Main component for Local Government Q&A
• Discussion topics are set up by the community administrator(s)
• Topic questions/responses can be posted by any community user
• Topic questions/responses can be posted anonymously, if desired
• Topic questions/responses will be marked ‘New’ until the ‘mark all read’ button has been clicked
  (upper right area of each forum’s main page).
• Topic questions/responses can only be edited or deleted by the user who posted them

Document Archive

• Documents can be arranged in a multi-tiered folder structure, set-up and managed by the community administrator(s)

Using Discussion Forums

The Local Government Q&A section of Municom allows users to post questions/issues to the community of Municom subscribers, respond to other posts or just browse its content.

To post a topic question/issue:

1. Enter the Community.
2. Click on the desired forum, eg. By-Laws.
3. Click the Create New Topic button (above the list of topics, to the right side).
4. Enter a topic subject, then the message (both are required fields).  If you’d like to post anonymously, enable the checkbox under the subject line.
5. Once finished, you can click post, preview or cancel.

To respond to a topic post:

1. Enter the Community.
2. Click on the desired forum, eg. By-Laws.
3. Click on the desired topic, eg. Idling By-law.
4. Find the desired message and click Reply.
5. Enter your response in the message area.   If you’d like to post anonymously, enable the checkbox under the subject line.
6. Once finished, you can click post, preview or cancel.

To edit a topic post:

1. Enter the Community.
2. Click on the desired forum, eg. By-Laws.
3. Click on the desired topic, eg. Idling By-law.
4. Find the desired message and click Edit this post.
5. Enter your changes.
6. Once finished, you can click post, preview or cancel.

To delete a topic post:

1. Enter the Community.
2. Click on the desired forum, eg. By-Laws.
3. Click on the desired topic, eg. Idling By-law.
4. Find the desired message and click Delete this post.
5. You will be asked to confirm the deletion, and note the message alerting you that any replies to this post will also be deleted.  Click OK.

We hope you find the new Local Government Q&A Community of value and easy to use,
 and we welcome your comments anytime.