Welcome to the CM Community FAQ. Below are the answers to the questions that come up most often. If your question isn’t here, ask in Community Feedback and we’ll add it.
Contents
- Getting started
- How the community works
- Recognition
- Contributing
- Practical how-to
- Migration
- Who’s who
Getting started
Q: Who can post here?
Anyone with Customer Portal access can post, reply, and react — CM staff, partners, and customers. Reading is public; you don’t need an account to browse. To participate, sign in with your CM identity via single sign-on (OpenID Connect).
Q: I signed in but my post isn’t showing. Is something wrong?
No — new members’ first posts and replies are held for a quick moderator check before appearing publicly. It’s a standard sanity check, not a value judgement. Once you have a track record of good contributions, your posts publish immediately. Moderators aim to review as fast as possible.
Q: I don’t know which category to post in. What do I do?
Read the “About this category” post at the top of each category — it tells you what belongs there. If none fits perfectly, use the Lounge and moderators will help move it if needed. Don’t overthink it — the wrong category is always fixable.
Q: I posted in the wrong category. What happens?
Nothing dramatic. Moderators may move your topic to a better home and leave a one-line reply explaining the move. No penalty, no drama.
How the community works
Q: What’s the difference between this community and the Customer Portal?
This community is for discussion and knowledge sharing — questions, patterns, articles, and conversations. The Customer Portal is for formal requests: support tickets, bug reports, enhancement requests, and feature voting. Anything blocking your production work goes to the Portal so it enters the tracked pipeline; anything you want to learn, share, or ask about goes here.
Q: What are trust levels?
Trust levels are Discourse’s built-in reputation system, the platform this community runs on. As you read and participate, you’re promoted automatically through Basic (TL1) → Member (TL2) → Regular (TL3) → Leader (TL4). Each level unlocks capabilities — longer edit windows, invitation rights, recategorization. Reaching Regular (T3) also lets you mark accepted solutions in any topic and makes you eligible to be invited to publish on the Blog. Leader (TL3) is a manual promotion reserved for a small number of nominated members.
Q: Can I post in a language other than English?
Yes. English is the default. Spanish and Simplified Chinese are also supported — Discourse’s built-in translation renders your post in other supported languages automatically. For other languages, moderators may ask you to translate or move the topic to the Lounge.
Recognition
Q: How does recognition work in the community?
The community recognises contributions in two ways: identity badges (who you are) and achievement badges (what you’ve contributed).
Identity badges
- CM Moderator — granted to nominated advocates across CM and partner organisations. Champions are the front line for keeping conversations moving.
Achievement badges — per-category solution ladders
Each of the six knowledge categories has a three-tier badge ladder awarded automatically as your replies are marked as the accepted solution:
| Category | Bronze (5 solutions) | Silver (20 solutions) | Gold (50 solutions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Deployment Contributor | Rollout Specialist | Deployment Master |
| Modelling & Configuration | Modelling Contributor | Configuration Specialist | Modelling Master |
| Extensibility | Extensibility Contributor | Extensibility Specialist | Framework Master |
| Integrations | Integration Contributor | Integration Specialist | Integration Master |
| Data & Analytics | Analytics Contributor | Insight Specialist | Analytics Master |
| Cloud Services | Cloud Services Contributor | Cloud Services Steward | Cloud Services Master |
Badges are revised weekly and granted automatically once you cross the threshold — no need to ask.
Q: The badge thresholds seem high. Will they change?
The 5 / 20 / 50 numbers are our starting point for launch. We’ll review after six months and may lower them if solution volumes suggest the ladders are too steep, or raise them if they’re too easy. Any changes will be announced.
Q: How do I display a badge as my title?
Once you’ve earned a badge that supports it (higher-tier badges typically do), go to your profile → Preferences → Account → Title → pick the badge you’d like to display next to your name.
Contributing
Q: How do I contribute to the Blog?
Blog authorship is invitation-only to preserve the editorial voice. Members who reach Trust Level 3 (Regular) automatically become eligible to be invited. Editorial reaches out — you don’t need to ask.
Q: Can I share customer or project details in my posts?
Not without explicit written approval from the party being named. Anonymise customer names, site names, product identifiers, and project details in your posts — use placeholders like “Customer A”, “Fab 1”, “Product X”. This applies to screenshots, code, configuration files, and logs. Exception: you are the customer sharing your own case. Moderators will edit or hide posts that expose confidential information. See the Community Guidelines for the full rule.
Practical how-to
Q: How do I follow a category or a topic?
For a category: navigate to the category page → click the bell icon (top-right) → pick Watching (notified of every new topic) or Tracking (unread indicator only). For a topic: the same bell at the bottom of the topic. You’ll get notifications inside the community and, depending on your preferences, in an email digest.
Q: How do I edit or delete my own post?
Look for the pencil (edit) or “…” (more) icon on your post. You can edit within 24 hours of posting; the window extends to 30 days once you reach Member (TL2). To delete, use the “…” menu → Delete. If the edit window has closed and you need to correct something, flag your own post and ask a moderator to help.
Q: I have a suggestion for the community itself. Where do I share it?
Use the Community Feedback topic (or category, if we split it into a full category later). We read and respond to every post.
Migration
Q: What happened to the dev blog and the old forum?
Both are being replaced by this community. High-value threads and blog posts have been migrated in with author attribution preserved and a banner noting the migration source. Old devblog URLs will be redirected to their new location here. The old forum is being decommissioned; a redirect period is in place so linking to old content still works.
Who’s who
Q: Who runs this community?
The CM Architecture & Advocacy team owns the community. A network of Moderators across CM moderates each category. Global moderators handle cross-category issues and escalations. If you need to reach a moderator directly, send a PM to any of them or use the group PM to @moderators.
