Here's what's been improved in ConcourseConnect 2.0. You'll find that we have worked towards robust functionality, better usability, and in the case of the activity stream, new features.

ConcourseSuite Community Management

• Using the separately available ConcourseSuite Community Management plugin, important community management functionality is now available. Community managers can import customer lists, send site announcements, email monthly newsletters and surveys, as well as track the effectiveness of invitations and email campaigns.
• Additional tracking and statistics in ConcourseConnect can be achieved using Google Analytics

ConcourseSuite Community Group Tools

• Using the separately available ConcourseSuite Tools plugin, a feature-complete CRM can be enabled for any ConcourseConnect entity, including departments, partners and special interest groups
• Entities can use the tools to send email announcements and surveys to their members
• Entities can use sales force automation, lead management, account management and more

ConcourseConnect Home Pages

• Users visiting the site will notice an improved layout which includes administrative content areas, site-wide chatter, and links to tags, classifieds and promotions.
• Content areas include 'Welcome to the Site', 'Message of the Day' and 'Site Overview'
• Chatter is a utility for users to post short messages, including replies
• Tags provide the user with the means to find interesting groups and other profiles through user-generated labels
• Classifieds are fully searchable and provide a means for profiles to advertise and solicit help
• Promotions are fully searchable and provide a means for profiles to advertise to other groups and profiles
• Each category's home page now includes an administrative content area, called the 'Category Spotlight'
• Category home pages also have a new photo carousel which showcases the most recent photos on the site

ConcourseConnect 'My Page'

• We've re-thought the user's own home page and now showcase it as a major tab on the site
• The user's home page includes a new activity stream, email preferences and improved photos functionality
• Users now receive an email digest which contains activity stream content from all of their joined groups and friends; the email preferences can be configured per profile and set on a schedule from hourly, daily, weekly and monthly
• We've automated the act of being friends; once a user approves a friend request the workflow handles the rest
• Some safeguards have been added so that on public systems users must use a captcha when sending messages to non-friends
• In the user's photo carousel, the most recent images are shown first
• When enlarging images in the photo carousel, images are now scaled to 640x480 so that large images can be easily displayed

ConcourseConnect Activity Stream

• While the activity stream is used throughout all profiles, it warrants being singled out as a major new addition to ConcourseConnect
• Activities are automatically generated as users perform various actions on the site, like blogging, commenting, and posting; more than 50 action types are recorded
• Activity Streams support replies with full threading of messages
• Access controlled activity streams means users only see the information that they have subscribed to and have been granted access to based on the user's membership and participation in other profiles
• The activity stream is used as the basis for sending a personalized email digest to each user
• If enabled, users can use Twitter to post directly into their activity stream
• The activity stream can also log information via the API

ConcourseConnect Profiles

• When creating groups, users have the option to create public groups, in which any user can join, but they now have the option to create 'members only' groups which can either be added to the public directory or kept hidden and by invitation only
• Ideas have been improved so that the number of points and number of votes is prominent
• Entity profiles have additional content areas for adding content, photos and videos
• When users join an entity, email digest preferences are promptly displayed so that users benefit from activity stream notifications
• Profile managers receive emails when users join their entity
• The activity stream is now opened up on entity pages which means users can post comments to the profile if they have permission to
• Each group can have access to ConcourseSuite Groups Tools via an optional plug-in

ConcourseConnect Blog

• The blog UI has been updated and the usability improved
• YouTube videos can be inserted into the a blog post
• The Publish/Draft/For Review functionality when posting a blog now uses buttons instead of an often overlooked set of radio buttons

ConcourseConnect Calendars

• There have been several improvements for managing events
• Event participants can be invited by selecting from the group's roster or by typing in email addresses
• Events can be setup so that participants can add themselves to a waiting/standby list
• Dimdim web meetings can be scheduled from any profile's calendar; Dimdim is a service which provides telephone conferencing and screen sharing to participants; as of March 2010, Dimdim changed their public service so right now the Dimdim feature only works with your own open source Dimdim server

ConcourseConnect Wiki

• The wiki has been brought up-to-date with many requested features and stability improvements
• A simple 'Add a page' feature allows users to quickly add wiki pages
• When adding a page, users can choose an optional wiki template which populates a wiki with sample content; templates are configured by the community managers
• Each wiki page now has a table of contents which is generated by the underlying wiki content headers
• Wiki pages can now be deleted
• Wiki tables now allow for all of the wiki elements to be used in the table cells, including images, links, lists, headings, and more; wiki tables also allow for setting the width of the columns by modifying the first row of a table
• YouTube videos and video thumbnails can be inserted into a wiki
• Wiki images can have web links and alignment (left, left w/text wrapping, center, right w/text wrapping)
• When adding links, the dialog has been simplified
• Fixes include… commenting on a specific page was broke and defaulted to the wiki's home page; when wiki images are displayed, the version is used in the url to prevent browser caching of older images; locking/unlocking the wiki operated on the home page wiki only

ConcourseConnect Participants

• When adding members to a group, the email format "First Last " is now accepted to speed up inviting multiple people
• There's a new feature to send email to all profile members
• We've improved the management and invitation of team members by automating and setting recommended invitation default values

ConcourseConnect Lists

• Lists help bookmark profiles and link profiles together; now a list can be deleted

ConcourseConnect Search

• Search results are better organized around profiles, wikis, blogs, discussions, documents and more
• The search algorithm was updated to bring more relevant information to the top, as follows…

Results show exact title matches first (previously this looked in the description too)
  Then, results show exact keyword matches
  Then, results show partial title matches
  Then, results show partial keyword matches
  Then, results show exact matches in the complete description
  Then, results show partial matches in the complete description
  
If a location is provided, then the results are shown in order by:
  The exact location match (like zip/postal code, city or state/province)
  The city
  The state/province
  

ConcourseConnect General Improvements

• At installation time, the site can be configured for setting up a Public Community, Private Community, or a combination of both
• An RSS Feed portlet has been added to the portlet library, but must be setup by an administrator
• Custom map markers have been added to Google Maps
• We've added application settings for Timezone, Currency and Locale in addition to the current user defined settings
• Added relative dates in several areas (for example: 3 days ago)
• All the themes have been improved and there is a new 'Steel' theme
• The calendar widget is improved, both visually and functionally
• IE7 and IE8 browser compatibility is now top-notch
• A few fixes were made: email addresses with a single quote (') failed validation during registration, tab categories and subcategories could use ampersand in profile sub category names, and under certain conditions, invited users might not have a profile

ConcourseConnect Administration

• Administrators can see the latest ConcourseConnect product information right from the Admin page via a new RSS Feed portlet
• The application has always used the Locale, Timezone and Currency of the operating system, now those values can be configured in the application using the new properties: SYSTEM.LANGUAGE, SYSTEM.TIMEZONE, and SYSTEM.CURRENCY
• The main application tabs can now be interactively renamed, however the underlying page template cannot be
• There are application properties to turn off holidays on the calendars, to turn off Dimdim, and to change the Dimdim web conferencing server URL
• A new multi-instance capability exists so that a common base of users can have different content based on the application's url; this is an advanced feature

ConcourseConnect Ad and Content Plugin

• Rotating ads, 3rd party ad servers like Google Ads, and content can be injected on specific pages and profiles using the optional Concursive ad service

ConcourseConnect Framework

• System administrators are encouraged to use the AUTO_UPGRADE property when upgrading sites… sites can now be upgraded in as little as a minute when it's time to upgrade
• Third party software has been upgraded including TinyMCE, EHCache and more
• Software developers must now use Ant 1.7.1 for compiling ConcourseConnect
• Web designers please note that we have consolidated the stock themes to use a common layout file, making theming and upgrades much easier; please test your customizations before upgrading
• Email templates have been consolidated as FreeMarker templates and externalized for easier customization

Upgrade Notes

• After the upgrade completes, login and choose to reindex the disk index under 'review application usage.'
• After the upgrade, the enlarged images need their thumbnails recreated, so enlarging an image the first time will create the thumbnail