User Generated Content: Examples & Setup

User Generated Content is a great way to allow your employees to get involved, and engage with your app. With this feature, you can allow your users to post directly from their phones - in specific designated sections (Lists) in your app. Users can add text, images, videos and files, and you can optionally moderate the posts before they go live if you want to.

Examples of use-cases for User Generated Content include:

• Employee photo galleries
• Discussion forums
• A space for employees to share their ideas
• Buy & Sell
• A space for line managers to share documents & info with their teams
• A space for senior managers to share their thoughts directly with employees

 Setting up User Generated Content

1. Choose List Type

In your new list, go to the List Type tab and choose User Publishing List. This tells the CMS that it's a list that's going to receive its content from users in the app itself, so there will be a button in the app for users to press to make a new post.

The default list (posting only from the CMS) is on by default, and you can find more information about the Recognition List here.

 2. Choose Who Can Post UGC to the List

Next, you get to decide if everyone can post in this list, or if only specific user groups get to see the button to post. Remember though, the List's Audience still governs who can see the list - this bit below just governs who can post to the list.

If you want everyone in the list's Audience to be able to post, you don't need to do anything here.

But if you want to restrict who can post, you'll need to choose those user groups. This is useful if you wanted to create a section where for example, senior managers can post directly - where you want everyone to be able to read the posts,  but only for the managers' user group to be able to post there.

3. Choose Your Post Button Text

Now, choose what the button in the app is going to say. This button appears at the bottom of the screen in your UGC list. App users press this button to initiate the action of creating a new UGC post. If your list is a photo gallery for example, it might say 'Post Your Photos', if it's a Buy & Sell section, it might say 'Post an Ad', or for a Share Your Bright Ideas section, you would enter 'Share an Idea'.

4. Choose your Posting Options

These are the various options and settings that you can apply to your UGC List and the UGC posting form. 

The UGC posting form is the screen that appears when the user press the 'post' button at the bottom of the screen... where they compose their post, add text, attach their images, etc. You can see an example of the UGC posting form in an image below. 

Here are the details of what each of these options do:

• User must include content within Main Text field: Ticking this means that the user must include some text in their post. If they fail to do so, they will see a message to let them know that they cannot post without adding some text. You may want to enable this as a validation option where, for example, your list is for employees to Share Ideas - something that would always require some text.
• Users must include an image with their post: If your UGC list is for users to post images, you can use this option to make sure that your users include at least one image with their post. With all UGC posts, users can include up to 5 images in a single post.
• Allow users to upload files: Ticking this option gives a separate button on the UGC posting form in the app, which allows users to attach a PDF with their UGC post. You may want to enable this if your UGC list is for something like allowing managers to share rotas with their employees - so that the manager can simply post the rota as a PDF. These PDFs posted by users will display and open in the same way as any other PDF that you would manually post to a page. For more information on posting a PDF manually to your app, please see the guidance on posting content to a Page.
• Allow users to upload videos: This option also adds an additional button to the UGC posting form, which allows the user to add a video to their post. Most videos that users have recorded themselves on their phones will work, but the maximum size is 1GB, which is usually enough for a 1 minute video on a modern phone camera.
• Enable Post Moderation: With this option ticked, when the user tries to publish their UGC post they'll see a message saying that it needs to be checked by an app admin, and that they should come back later to see if their post has gone live. You or your app admins will receive an email to let you know that a new post is awaiting moderation. Go to the UGC list indicated in the email and look for the post(s) that are currently in Draft status. Go to the page in the CMS to make sure you're ok with it, then press Save and Publish Now to publish it to the app. 
  
  Note: To choose which email addresses receive the UGC moderation emails, in the Thrive CMS click on Org Settings at the top of the screen > Workspaces > Click on your workspace > Tick: Moderation Notifications. Then in the second 'box' labelled Recipients of Content Moderation Emails, enter all of the email addresses that should receive these emails. Separate multiple email addresses using a comma like the example below.
  
• Allow users to send Push Notifications with their post: With this option enabled, the person making a User Generated post in this list from your app, will also see the option to send a Push Notification with their post. Enabling this option is usually only a good idea if the UGC list is limited to be visible to only a small community of employees. If everyone can see the List though, you probably don't want to turn this option on so that your users get spammed with notifications every time someone makes a new UGC post here.
• Require Consent Checkbox before posting: You can use this option to remind users of their responsibilities before they submit their post. It simply adds a checkbox and some text that the user needs to agree with before they can press Submit on their UGC post. Like the example below:
  In the above example, we're using this check-box to remind users of the app's terms of use. Some Thrive customers use this space for text like: "I confirm that all employees in the photo have given permission to be posted to the app." But you can use it in any way you want to.