Auto Reply to New Member with Greeting Welcome Message & Guidelines Tips

[#1]

Hi All,

Can we have auto reply mail to new member's post registering with new ID for the first time on Connect ? In the same message, we may include the links for program Guidelines, Rules, The 5 Core Values, Help & Search Engine etc. This will give uniform inputs to all new members.

At present one/two/three LGs are welcoming the same new LG with some variation in their reply, then Moderator will brief his/her expert tips to the new entrants.

In my opinion, this is overdose to new entrants, even I remember, on one occasion concern new member has replied, I have already received it twice/thrice.

This will save quality time of Moderator and other LGs and may utilities it in some other creative area.

"Any idea is an opportunity towards sucesss".

Vijay Desai.

[LucioV]

Very nice idea. This could be the only single place where LG team could update rules and welcome tips.

And could reduce presentation threads with canned answers (like the great answers you give, that are nice, anyway).

[VijayDesai]

Hi @Julien44 @

Thanks for your a suggestion, in fact your post make an opportunity for me to reply you and others for open discussion.

Please refer my answer in "Idea Exchange Board", in which, I posted one idea yesterday(also attached in this post), please read it and if you feel it is genuine, you may support it and may ask other to support it.

For your information, it has already received five votes for the idea and a motivational comment from senior LG @LucioV . Bro LucioV thanks for your support.

Here I would like to tagg my fellow LGs, who are also regularly welcoming new comers, @Rezgar @bdmafuz @Buddhadeb @NirajBhusal @AnuradhaP Thanks, all of you.

Hope our efforts may earn favorable result in welcoming new members.

Vijay Desai

Draft copy of Idea Exchange Board :

Can we have auto reply mail to new member's post registering with new ID for the first time on Connect ? In the same message, we may include the links for program Guidelines, Rules, The 5 Core Values, Help & Search Engine etc. This will give uniform inputs to all new members.

At present one/two/three LGs are welcoming the same new LG with some variation in their reply, then Moderator will brief his/her expert tips to the new entrants.

In my opinion, this is overdose to new entrants, even I remember, on one occasion concern new member has replied, I have already received it twice/thrice.

This will save quality time of Moderator and other LGs and may utilities it in some other creative area.

"Any idea is an opportunity towards sucesss".

Vijay Desai.

[VijayDesai]

Can we have auto reply mail to new member's post registering with new ID for the first time on Connect ? In the same message, we may include the links for program Guidelines, Rules, The 5 Core Values, Help & Search Engine etc. This will give uniform inputs to all new members.

At present one/two/three LGs are welcoming the same new LG with some variation in their reply, then Moderator will brief his/her expert tips to the new entrants.

In my opinion, this is overdose to new entrants, even I remember, on one occasion concern new member has replied, I have already received it twice/thrice.

This will save quality time of Moderator and other LGs and may utilities it in some other creative area.

"Any idea is an opportunity towards sucesss".

Vijay Desai.

[ErmesT]

Hi @VijayDesai

This subject have been discussed several times in the community. I think the correct places to post this is the Idea exchange board, where in fact you posted while, if this is a reply to another post, should be in there.

In any case, just to share my thoughts, I think that the first thing to do is a check on the profile, to see is a welcome message was already given.

The second, and most important, is to READ the posts first, and avoid to drop a canned response, if not appropriate. This behaviour generate discomfort. People write because they aspect their posts to be read. It is not necessary to respond to everyone and, many times, is better to avoid a reply, if we don't have anything to say.

This is of course a general note, not related to some specific LG

Ermes

[Julien44]

I like the idea!

[ErmesT]

I want to add a small note, @VijayDesai

This is a community of Local Guides that talk to Local Guides. This give as a special condition, in the universe of the communities around the world, and this makes a big difference.

Of course, everyone is welcome in responding to a new member. My guidelne for responding is "The 5 core values of Connect:

We’re welcoming, of course

We’re thoughtful and We’re helpful, so we take care of others, considering to give the correct reply, to help them

We’re watchful, so if we see something wrong, we follow the indications of this post: How do I report inappropriate content on Connect?

This give us a way to follow. Dropping a canned response can be helpful, sometime, but also inappropriate, in many cases

Taking care of others is taking care of the whole community, so the last point (We’re watchful) is for me very important. Thanks to the possibility that Google gave to the Connect Moderators, we can also clean the community a bit, merging posts and sending in spam the inappropriate contents. Let say that is not something nice, to send a post in spam, but is helpful for the community. What really surprise me is to see that, several times, the spammer receive one or more kudo. This is not (my point of view) a nice action, because is not respectful of the people that, in the community, is taking time for writing good contents

[GeorgesHR]

Hello @VijayDesai,

I will move this topic to your original idea, to keep Connect more consistent.

I would like to advise you to go over this topic Welcome to the Local Stories board to learn what the Local Stories board is for.

On another note, if you would like to address another Local Guide on Connect, the correct way to do it is to send them a Private Message.

Please also note the reply that @ErmesT already gave you.

[bdmafuz]

very goodidea @VijayDesai@ 

[Atsukot]

Hello @VijayDesai, thank you for sharing this idea. It is a nice idea, but it is not something the team is able to implement at this time but we will consider all ideas, regardless of status, in future program iterations. Thank you!

[Raphael-Mahumane]

Caption: Photo of an entrance representing basic knowledge required to effectively use Connect

 The platform has changed for the better, as the local guide team try by all means to make it more easy to navigate around and easy to access, prioritizing the most important content. Not everyone will be happy here but at least we are all accommodated.

Problem description

It is always nice to welcome new comers and is a good feeling to be welcomed here but doing the same thing again and again can be irritating to our beloved local guides, moderators and googlers, especially sharing links for introduce your self and others, it takes time to put together all that information which reduces the amount of work you can do here. Others have tried to simplify this by collecting all the mostly used posts into one post, but still, what if you need to refer someone to one or two posts? they do not have to go trough all the post to get one.

Possible solution

What I would like to see in future is to have a separate category for the new comers, where they can get their relevant required posts they need to familiarize them selves with this platform before they start using connect, such as having the introduce your self post for that specific current month, how to write a great post, rules and policies.

Once we have this, it will be easy to refer someone to a certain post by name or post number. The more time we save, the more data and energy we are going to have to do even more work to improve Google map, and help each other here.

I hope others will comment here and share their thought about this idea. Thank you.

[StephenAbraham]

@Raphael-Mahumane This post below: 14-tips on how to use Connect, is a very good read for newcomers, maybe one way is to have all newcomers after signing in, be prompted read this, and check off that they have read it. 

https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/Help-Desk/14-helpful-tips-for-using-Connect/ba-p/1238710
Until then, we can share this link manually in reply to those who need it.