MFGx Quick Tour

Welcome to the MFGx Tour! Use this tour to get a step-by-step view of some of the things you can do with MFGx. As you read through the tour, it will point out features and suggest things you can do to start putting MFGx to work for you and your team. Here are the steps:

Get Started
Find Content
Create Content
Collaborate on Content

Get Started

Get to know MFGx. When you first log into MFGx, the home page offers links to places where you can dive in. By default the changed items are listed with the most recent first. Use the document type icons, titles, and change age ("3 hours ago") to decide if there's anything of interest for you here at the top level.

The content type icons are your first clues as to the kinds of content you'll find and create in MFGx: wiki documents, blogs, and discussions. You'll learn more about the types later in this tour. From the home page you can also get a feel for how you can find content. For example, through the sections on the home page you can browse by space, browse by content types or browse by tags (more about tags later, too).

Also, notice that menu bar near the top of the page. It's available on all the other pages, too. Use it to:

• Create new content.
• Browse for existing content, spaces, and people.
• Get history for your recently viewed items.
• Check in on your stuff for items you've created or are working on.

After you've gotten to know what's inside pretty well, use the Your View link at the top of the What's New box to choose which content you want to appear here.

In the Find Content section of the tour you'll learn how to stay on top by using spaces, searches, tags, notifications, and something called "feeds."

Find Content

As you saw on the MFGx home page, you've got a number of paths into the content. You can browse by space, by content type and tags, and you can search. (You can even browse for content by other people — just try clicking someone's name.) This section of the tour will introduce you to MFGx's content-finding features.

Browse spaces. Most content in MFGx is organized by spaces (some blogs aren't connected to a particular space). In spaces, you create, find, and organize content.

1. On the home page, click the Browse menu. Notice that spaces are organized in a hierarchical list.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the name of a space. If the space's home page overview has been customized, you're likely to see an arrangement of content that's tailor made for you as a visitor to the space. You'll also find lists of the latest content of each other content type: discussions, documents and blogs (if the space features blogs). Use the All Content, Discussions, Documents, and Blog Posts tabs to get more of each kind of content.
   
   

If you haven't already, take a moment to browse your spaces.

Browse by tags. When you browse by tags, you're using a community-made indexing system. You and other people apply tags like index keywords to new content to make the content more findable. You look for content you want by clicking tag names to see a list of related content. Wherever you go in MFGx, you'll see tags that group your content into categories.

1. Look for the tag cloud. If your team has had a chance to add and tag content, the home page for a space also shows something you'll probably find yourself using quite a lot: a tag cloud. A tag cloud visually groups tags so that you can look by popularity (more popular tags are in a larger font) as well as look by alphabetical order.
   
   
   
   
2. See the content associated with a tag. Hover over a tag to see the number of times it is assigned to content. Click the tag to see a list of the items it's assigned to.
   
   

Search for content. Search for the content you want, filtering your search to refine the results.

1. Take a look at the Search box in the upper right corner.
2. Type in what you want to search for, then click Search.
   
   
   
   
3. See results on the Search page. You can filter search results by content type, by space, or by date.
   
   

Through browsing and searching MFGx you can look for the content you need. But what if you've found something you want to keep your eye on? By subscribing to RSS feeds or email notifications, you can get updated on changes to content you care about.

See the next part of the tour for an introduction to RSS and email notifications.

Subscribe to RSS feeds. Ever want a way to see what's new or changed on your favorite web sites without having to visit the sites? You can use Real Simple Syndication (RSS) to get a digest of updates to the stuff you're interested in. When you "subscribe" to an RSS feed — say, for particular search results or a tag or the content of a space — your RSS reader (which might simply be your web browser) does the checking for you. With RSS, you can subscribe to nearly anything in MFGx!

• Click the RSS icon at the right side of your browser's address bar to subscribe to an RSS feed for the content you're looking at. For example, if you're using a recent version of the Firefox browser, you'll get a list such as the following if there are multiple feeds available.
  
  
  
  If you've chosen to be prompted to pick an RSS reader (also known as an RSS reader), you might see a page such as the following. You can choose the reader you want to use and see what the feed would currently bring you.
  
  

If RSS sounds appealing, take a moment to get it set up. Select one of the MFGx RSS feeds and subscribe. If you select a reader to use for all feeds, subscribing is as easy as clicking the RSS icon where you see it in MFGx.

Note: When subscribing to MFGx feeds, you might need to associate your MFGx user name and password with the subscription.

Get notified by email. In addition to RSS feeds, you can also stay on top of content using email notifications. When you sign up to receive email notifications, MFGx will send you email whenever the content you're interested in changes.

• Navigate to a document you want to be notified about, then click Receive Email Notifications under Actions.
  
  
  
  After you click, notice that MFGx will change the link to Stop Email Notifications. You can always come back here when you want to stop getting the email. You can also manage all of your notifications from your profile, as you'll see later in the tour.

In the Create Content section of the tour you'll learn more about the kinds of content you can create in MFGx.

Create Content

You'll find the content you need with MFGx. But if you use it long enough, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to want to make your own contributions. And that where things really get interesting. As you join others in the space — getting answers to your questions, finding documents you need day to day, reading others' thoughts in a blog — you'll discover ideas you wouldn't otherwise have seen. And you'll want to get them out of your head and into MFGx.

Ask a question, get some quick feedback. Discussions are great for those brief questions and comments. It might start with a simple question.

1. Click New > Discussion to start asking a question or make a quick post to find out what others think.
   
   
   
   
2. Mark your post if it's a question. You can simply post a comment for feedback from others. But if you're asking a question, be sure to mark your post so that others know you'd like an answer.
   
   
   
   
3. Tell others which responses got you where you wanted to go. When someone responds to your question with a post that's helpful or correct, mark it as such so that others know which is the best answer. You and other people get status points for helpful and correct answers.
   
   
   

Create a document to preserve team thoughts. Wiki documents and uploaded files give you a way to get content into MFGx. With wiki documents, you edit the content right in MFGx. You and others can work on the same document and it's searchable. As you'll see later, you can also specify that other people should review or approve the content. By uploading a file, on the other hand, you can add something that was created outside MFGx. Uploading the file makes it available to other people; you can tag the uploaded file to make sure it gets found.

A wiki document is for capturing information that others on the team would be interested in (or might just need) — things like agendas, plans, meeting notes, equipment lists, and the like. They're team documents.

1. Click New > Document to start a new document.
   
   
   
   
2. Start a new wiki document. Anyone will be able to edit this document. (Later in this tour, you'll learn how to limiting a document's visibility.)
   
   
   
   
3. Give the document a title and type your content in the editing window. Notice that you've got two ways to edit the document, along with a preview pane to see how your work is coming along. The rich text editor is like a word processing program, with tools for more advanced formatting.
   
   
   
   The plain text editor (shown below) offers simple formatting features, but is designed primarily for editing in the wiki markup style. Click the help link at the right side to see a list of wiki markup conventions you can use.
   
   
   
   
4. Add tags to describe the document to other people. This is one of best things you can do for your team. As you and other people add tags, you'll develop your own expressions to describe the content you all use. For those expressions to be most useful, try to use existing tags whenever possible.
   
   You can type the tag names, letting MFGx finish the name where the tag already exists; you can also click the tag in the Popular Tags list to add the tag to the document.
   
   
   
   
5. You can click Save and Continue to save your work and keep writing or click Save Draft to finish later. Click Publish when you're ready for others to see your document.
6. After you've published the document, notice that the Actions box lists tasks related to the document. In particular, notice the Manage versions and Manage collaboration links. Click Manage versions to display a page that lists versions of the document. You can select document versions in the list to compare changes to the document over time. The comparison shows additions and deletions.
   
   
   

 Tip: You can make a document from a discussion! View the discussion in MFGx, then click the Convert thread to document link under Actions.

Post your views to your blog. While wiki documents are often authored by the team, blogs are for more individual kinds of content. A blog might be the voice of a department (such as human resources) or of an individual (such as you). A blog is a like a column in a newspaper — it's there when you look for it, now and then offering something new to read. Unlike a newspaper column, though, others can comment on a blog.

If you've got a blog, you might post your views on something you just read that others in the organization might be interested in. Or you could evaluate or summarize something for the team, providing a way for others to give feedback through their comments on your blog.

1. Click New > Blog Post to post to your blog.
   
   
   
   
2. If you're prompted, select the space in which you want your blog to appear.
3. Notice that the blog editing page is very much like the discussion and document editing pages: the same rich text and plain text editors are available, along with a preview tab. Notice, too, that you get a number of shortcuts to tools that are specific to blogs. You can view the posts you've made,  comments to your posts, trackbacks (links to other sites that have linked to your blog), and blog options such as moderation and RSS feed settings. The Extended Options section expands when you click its title. There, you can set options specific to this post — even set it to be published at a certain time.
4. In the editing window, type a title and the content of your blog post.
   
   
   
   
5. You can Save a draft of the post before you publish. As with discussions and documents, be sure to add tags before you click Publish; tags will help your post be easier for others to find.

Create a profile. Your profile is a quick way for other members of your team to find out more about you. It can be bare bones or more thorough. If you fill in the optional fields, you can give others a sense of who you are and what you know. It can be very useful in a team to know who to go to when you've got a question or suggestion in mind.

1. Click Your Stuff > Profile to view your profile.
   
   
   
   
2. On your profile page, notice that the Actions box lists a few things you can do. On the preferences page you can adjust your notification and subscription settings.
3. Click Edit Profile.
4. Fill in as much profile information as makes sense. Keep in mind that your profile will be found when people search, so if you have professional roles or interests that would be useful for others to know, be sure to include them.
   
   
   

Collaborate on Content

Nearly everything you do in MFGx is about collaboration. Content you add is almost always visible and searchable by everyone (unless you've explicitly indicated that its visibility should be limited to certain people). Other people read your work, you read theirs. You get ideas from someone else's blog, they comment with suggestions on your document.

But MFGx provides ways through which you can manage collaboration. For example, you can say that only certain people are collaborating on a document with you. You can say that some of these people can edit the document, while others must approve it before it's visible to everyone.

Note: Publishing a document always makes it visible to everyone who can ready documents (which is typically everyone using MFGx). If you want to limit a document's visibility, save it as a draft!

Add collaborators. When you first create a wiki document, you limit its visibility by setting its collaboration options. When you add people to edit and approve a document, you're giving them special roles in what's called the document's "workflow." In other words, work on the document starts in one place — a draft — and moves through a process — possibly more drafts, review, and approval — until it's ready for publishing.

1. Click New > Document to create a new document.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Collaboration Options.
3. In the Specific Users box, enter the MFGx user names of the users you want to be able to see and edit the document. (You can also click the Just <my_name> option if you want to be the only person who can see and edit.)
   
   
   
4. If you want certain people to be required to approve the document before it's published and visible to others, enter their user name in the box under Users who must approve...
5. Under Comment Policy, choose how you want comments to the document handled.
6. When you're done editing the document, be sure to click Save Draft rather than Publish. (Clicking Publish will make the document visible to everyone!)

After you've saved the document, you can come back later to edit these options by clicking the Manage Collaboration link in the Actions box. The people you added to edit and approve the document will be able to get to this document from their Your Stuff menu and from the Overview tab of their own profile.

The document itself will also let approvers know that it's time to approve.

 
This is the end of the MFGx tour, but it has really only scratched the surface. The best way to get to know MFGx is to put it to work by adding content and responding to the content other people have added. Give it a try!