Creating Your First Board: Modes, Categories and Approval

What a board is

In Vitextra Discussions a board is a named forum with its own mode, categories and moderation setting. A site can have several boards — IT Help Desk, HR Questions, Course 101 — and each page or Microsoft Teams tab shows one of them. All boards of a site share the same five lists; a board is simply an item of the Discussions Boards list that topics refer to.

You create a board on the Not Configured screen of the Discussions web part, the first time the web part is placed on a page (see KB10391. How to Add and Configure the Discussions Web Part), or at any later time by adding the web part to another page and choosing New board. Creating the very first board on a site also creates the lists and therefore requires the Manage Lists permission; site owners have it.

Step 1. Name the board

Type the Board name — it is required and may be up to 255 characters. The name is shown in the Board drop-down of the property pane, in the board selection of the Discussions Activity web part and in the activity feed next to each topic, so make it recognisable: IT Help Desk rather than Board 1.

Step 2. Choose the mode

The Mode decides what kind of topics the board holds and which views the topic list offers.

A Question can receive a best answer: the author or a moderator clicks Mark as answer on a reply, the topic gets the Answered badge and moves from the Unanswered view to the Answered view. The answered state follows the accepted answer, so a question keeps it even when a moderator locks the topic, and loses it when the accepted reply is unmarked or deleted. A Discussion has no answered state. In the Discussions only mode the two Q&A views are hidden because they would always be empty.

Step 3. Define categories

In Categories (one per line) list the categories of the board, each on its own line, for example:

Hardware
Software
Accounts and access

Blank lines are ignored, surrounding spaces are removed and duplicate names (regardless of letter case) are kept only once. When a board has categories:

• the new-topic form shows a Category drop-down with the option No category and the categories of the board, so a category is optional for the author;
• the topic list shows a category drop-down with All categories and one entry per category, and the category of each topic next to its last activity — as long as Show categories is switched on in the property pane.

Leave the field empty if you do not need categories; the drop-downs are then not shown at all. Categories can be added or renamed later (see below); topics keep the category text they were posted with, so after renaming a category the old topics still show the old name until the author or a moderator moves them with Edit in the topic view.

Step 4. Decide on approval

The toggle Require approval of new posts turns pre-moderation on for the board:

• No (default) — topics and replies are visible to everyone as soon as they are posted.
• Yes — topics and replies written by members are created with the Awaiting approval status and wait in the moderation queue. The author sees the post with an Awaiting approval badge and the message Thank you. Your post will be visible after a moderator approves it.; other members do not see it yet. Posts by moderators — users with the Manage Lists permission — are approved immediately.

Moderators open the queue with the Moderation button of the board. It lists Topics waiting for approval and Replies waiting for approval, reported topics and replies, and Rejected topics and Rejected replies, with Approve, Reject and Delete actions; Delete asks for confirmation first. A rejected post stays in the list with the Rejected status and is visible only to moderators and to its author, who sees it with the Rejected badge; a moderator can approve it later from the Rejected topics or Rejected replies section.

Step 5. Create the board

Click Create board. The web part creates the lists if the site has none — and adds any list or column that is missing on a site set up by an earlier version — adds the board item and switches to the empty board with the message No topics yet. Start the first one. Publish the page, and members can start posting with New topic.

Changing a board later

Moderators — users with the Manage Lists permission — change a board from the web part itself, in read mode as well as in edit mode. Open the board and click Board settings (the gear icon) in the command bar; a panel opens with the same settings as the creation form:

Click Save. The board reloads with the new settings right away; other pages that show the same board pick them up when they are next loaded.

The board remains an item of the Discussions Boards list, so it can also be edited there like any list item — open Site contents, the Discussions Boards list and the item of the board, and click Edit. The columns correspond to the fields of the panel:

The web part reads the board every time the page is loaded, so a change made in the list is visible after a refresh. Do not delete a board item that still has topics: the topics would remain in the Discussions Topics list without a board to show them.