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General
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Multiple Communities
A lot of other discussion forum packages support single forum installations. FuseTalk is bred to support any number of forum and blog and wiki communities, each containing any number of categories. Each community can be managed centrally by the Global Administrator. Each community can have different permissions and users. |
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Wizards to the Rescue
Making life easier for Administrators is important to us. Reducing administration time and making common tasks easier helps Administrators get back to their daily tasks. Creating communities, and setting up external authentication are both handled by a FuseTalk Wizard that does just about everything but make you a cup of coffee. |
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Using FuseTalk through E-mail
FuseTalk features powerful e-mail based functionality. Users can subscribe to topics and categories and receive digest subscriptions daily. Forum Administrators can synchronize a category with a mailing list, or enable e-mail posting so that users can follow a category by e-mail. E-Mail posting allows people to receive by e-mail new topics and replies that have been posted in FuseTalk. Users can then read and reply to the e-mails using their normal e-mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook).
** E-mail posting/Mailing list synchronization included with FuseTalk Standard/Education/Enterprise
*** POP Server required to use e-mail posting features |
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Single Login
So, you have a user database, or LDAP repository or just about any other way to store users. Now, you want them to log into a forum without being prompted. Easy. FuseTalk can authenticate with any authentication system to which your web application can talk. Just pass us a few pieces of information, or use the wizard, and your community can be synchronized with an external user repository. The external authentication module allows FuseTalk to use an external user database, LDAP, or other user repository that you currently have in place within your environment (limited capability in FuseTalk Basic Edition). When the external authentication module is enabled, users will not be required to login multiple times in order to access FuseTalk. |
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Blogs
Global Administrators can create blogs for their users. Blogs are a place for single users to publish information to other people, allowing them to share their thoughts and opinions to a mass audience.
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Wikis
Global Administrators can create wikis for their users. Wikis are collaborative in nature, and one or more users may be permitted to edit and/or create linked article pages.
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Clustering
The Clustering feature enables FuseTalk to be installed over multiple servers within the same clustered enviroment. FuseTalk Enterprise Edition includes one Free Server Cluster license. |
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Administration
Administration is a focal point of FuseTalk. FuseTalk can create and manage one forum or manage multiple forums. Each forum can have its own permission structure, which is dictated by the Global Administrator. This allows for FuseTalk to be deployed company-wide, yet managed centrally. |
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CSS
What we think looks good isn't always what you think looks good. FuseTalk's interface is derived from CSS Style sheets, so customizing the esthetics of the product is as easy as changing a CSS style sheet. FuseTalk is packaged with several style sheets and you can create your own. |
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The heart of FuseTalk: the API
FuseTalk was created with integration and the developer in mind. The core of FuseTalk is a web services enabled API, which is fully documented and included within FuseTalk. The API details each and every method in FuseTalk, and allows the developer to integrate FuseTalk completely into their environment.
** included with FuseTalk Standard/Education/Enterprise |
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Section 508 Compliance
FuseTalk complies with Section 508 (the Accessibility Act). FuseTalk uses industry standard tools like Bobby to analyze forum content and ensure that FuseTalk is as compliant as possible. |
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NNTP (News server) Synchronization
Even though NNTP is a dated technology, it's still widely used. FuseTalk features a NNTP symbolization engine that allows a Global Administrator to synchronize a NNTP Group to a FuseTalk Category. That's right - anything posted in FuseTalk goes to the group and anything posted in the NNTP group comes back to FuseTalk.
** included with FuseTalk.NET Standard/Education/Enterprise only |
Content
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SubCategories
Organize your content; create categories within categories to reduce clutter on the entry page to the forum. Each category can have its own status and be viewable to a select group of users. |
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Locked Communities
Locked communities gives the administrator the ability to secure the entire community for only authorized members. This means that users will need to login prior to viewing and posting. |
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Secure Conversation
Within a community, you can have any number of categories, and each of these categories can have different access rights. Categories can be created with full permissions, read only, reply only, locked, password protected and more. Locked categories are especially important as they allow Forum Administrators to create a category and only have a certain group of users access it. |
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Private Topics
Collaboration is key, but so is security. Sometimes a topic is private, and a forum needs to be able to handle that. FuseTalk offers a feature called Private Topics, which allows users to create a topic and select users who can participate. |
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Private Messaging
Users can engage in personal conversations between one another, and save the history of those conversations. These conversations can be controlled by the user by allowing them to ban other users from communication or disabling the feature all together. |
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Share Documents
Attaching files to messages is accomplished using an elegant file selector within FuseTalk. Administrators can control the types of files that are uploaded and how large they can be. Users can attach as many files to a message as they like. |
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Knowledge Base
The knowledge base module in FuseTalk allows authorized users to convert topics/threads into a knowledge base item. Each knowledge base article are stored in a special category for users to reference easily.
** included with FuseTalk Standard/Education/Enterprise |
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Provide Expert Advice
What better way to provide your members with expert advice or solutions than to provide them with a means to discuss their issues or concerns with your experts, confidentially or publicly. |
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Threaded Display
Flexibility is key in FuseTalk's UI design. Topics can be viewed in the popular linear fashion, or in the old style threaded method. Users can also view messages one by one or branch by branch from the threading method. |
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Polling
Create polls for users on which to vote - a great way to form a community and get valuable information at the same time. |
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Surveys
Create surveys on a category-by-category basis, or specific to the member profile. A surveys is a great way to gather user information for just about anything.
** included with FuseTalk Standard/Education/Enterprise |
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Calendar
Calendar administrators can post important events for users to view; just another way to establish a thriving interactive community. |
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Censorship
Ensuring that quality content is maintained within a community is important to anyone. Administrators can maintain a list of words to block, and Global Administrators can maintain a list that all communities adopt automatically. |
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Related Topics
The related topics features enables users to look elsewhere in the community for discussions that are similar in topic.
** included with FuseTalk Standard/Education/Enterprise |
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WYSIWYG Editor
Allow users to enter their content in a familiar and flexible editor, which supports HTML and spell checking. Unlike other packages, the WYSIWYG Editor is also cross-browser and cross-platform. |
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Expressing Emotion in a Text World
Sometimes expressing emotion in text communication can be difficult. FuseTalk is packaged with several graphical emoticons to make text-based communication more personable. Global Administrators can also add and update the emoticons within FuseTalk. |
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Multilingual Interface
Another core component of FuseTalk is the multilingual database access layer and application interface. Communities can be set up for different locales; the entire community interface can be translated into any language. |
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RSS Feeds
Stay up to date using RSS feeds to pull community feeds and publish content from the main web site page. Pull up to 50 latest topics within each category. |
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XML and FuseTalk
XML and FuseTalk are like peas in a pod. Topics can be saved in XML format, Category content can be saved in XML format and messages can be posted to FuseTalk via XML. |
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Reporting
What good is data if you can't report on it? FuseTalk has a built-in reporting system that can report on users, topics, categories and more; all in industry-standard formats like CSV, HTML, and XML.
** limited in FuseTalk Basic Edition |
User
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Moderation
Moderation is important as the user base grows in a community. FuseTalk features full moderation capabilities, such as moving messages & topics, deleting messages & topics, banning users, locking topics, etc. |
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Password Security
Security is important in an ever-changing IT environment. FuseTalk takes security seriously. In addition to the numerous features in the product to control users and communities, FuseTalk ensures data security by encrypting users' credentials using MD5 (Hashing) of passwords. |
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Role Based Permissions
Security couldn't be easier. Create groups of users and assign the group any number of permissions that you want. This is the core of the permission structure for users within FuseTalk - powerful and flexible with over 25 different permission rights available.
** limited in FuseTalk Basic Edition |
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Profile Questions
The Profile Questions feature allows forum community administrators to include their own customized questions to the user profile template, enabling more information to be obtained of the user. |
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Author Icons
FuseTalk is packaged with a set of Author icons for users to select, and Administrators can enable the functionality so that users can upload their own icons (within the parameters defined by the Administrator). |
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Forum Buddies
Keep track of people with whom you interact in the forum community by forming your own buddy list. The buddy list is handy for sending friends a quick message through the Private Message system, and knowing when they are online. |
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Banning Users
Not everyone can behave and FuseTalk can effectively handle those who don't. Users can be banned by E-mail address, domain, username and IP Address. |
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