Setting your rules of engagement

This article is for the administrators who run an organisation's Portava portal.

In short

• Members tick each rule and accept before they can enter the portal. Turned off, nobody is asked anything.
• Saving asks one question: whether members who already accepted should accept again.
• Each member’s record shows whether they accepted and when.

Most organisations have expectations of their members: how people behave in discussions, what the directory may be used for, what happens when someone breaks the rules. The portal lets you state them, and keeps a record that every member agreed.

Writing the rules

Under Portal settings, then Membership, the Rules of engagement card holds an opening line and a list of rules. Keep each rule to a single sentence, because members tick each one on its own. Add, edit, remove and reorder them, then choose Save rules.

Turn on Ask members to accept to start asking. Turned off, nobody is asked anything. The default is off, so nothing changes for an existing portal until you switch it on.

What members see

On their first visit, before profile setup, a member sees the rules and ticks them one at a time. There is no tick-all box. They cannot enter the portal until they choose Accept and continue. Members, content managers and company colleagues are all asked. Administrators are not, because they wrote the rules.

Rules are shown after joining, not on the public join page, so one gate covers self sign-up, invitations and imports alike.

Changing the rules

Saving asks one question: Ask members who already accepted to accept again, with the number of members it would interrupt. Tick it when the change is significant and everyone is asked again on their next visit, with a note that the rules have changed since they last agreed. Leave it clear for a corrected typo, and the new wording applies to new members only.

The record

What each member agreed to is stored with the date and the wording at the time, so a later edit never rewrites what someone accepted. Their record under Members shows Accepted with the date, Accepted an earlier version, or Has not accepted. The record is included if the member exports their data, and it never reaches the AI assistant.

Once accepted, the rules are not shown to a member again unless you ask everyone to re-accept. There is no page in the member portal where they can re-read them, so if you want them always to hand, publish a copy in Resources too.