Document Actions
Posting Information about Community Organizations
Plinkit’s Community Organizations feature allows you to create and maintain a searchable online directory of organizations in your community. To build your community organizations database, you will create special Plinkit items called organizations. These items are all stored in a special Community Organizations folder within the eShelf & Research folder.
When public users click on the Community Organizations folder, a search page opens that they can use to search for organizations by keyword or by organization title words. Users can also view the complete list of community organizations by submitting a search with no search terms specified. Clicking on a particular organization name in the search results list opens a page that provides detailed information about the organization.
You can use feedback from your patrons to help you maintain and expand your community organizations database. Links on the search results page and the individual community organizations pages open a form that patrons can use to recommend additions to the community organizations database and to submit additional information or corrections about organizations that are already included. This feedback is e-mailed directly to an address you specify to your Plinkit Administrator during the site configuration process.
To add community organizations to your Plinkit site:
1. Log in to Plinkit.
2. In the navigation portlet, click eShelf & Research and then Community Organizations.
The default Community Organizations search page opens with the view tab selected.
3. To view all of the contents of your Community Organizations folder, including unpublished organization items, click the contents tab.
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Tip: This step is optional when creating new organization items, but it can be helpful to review what organizations have already been created and whether any organizations exist in an unpublished state (see sample screen shot in next step). Only organizations with a published state are visible to the public. |
4. On the green menu bar, click add organization.
A blank Edit Organization page opens.
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Tip: You can click add organization from either the view tab or the contents tab of the Community Organizations page. |
5. In the Organization name field, enter the exact name of the organization.
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Tip: The small red square indicates that this field is required. You must enter a name for your new organization. |
6. Fill out the remainder of the form as completely as possible. A sample completed form is shown below.
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Tip: The organization name is the only required piece of data for an organization item, but the more information you provide about each organization, the more useful the Community Organizations feature will be for your patrons. You can add valuable information, such as programs and services offered, hours of operation, closure dates, and additional contact information, in the About this organization text box. |
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Note: The About this organization text box functions a bit differently than the Body Text area of other Plinkit editing forms. This text area does not allow text formatting, such as bolding and italic type. The information you enter in the About this organization box will be displayed to the public exactly as you enter it. We recommend using capitalization and line breaks to organize the information and to emphasize sections and headings, as in the example shown on the next page. |
7. After you have finished entering information about the organization, click save.
The main content area automatically switches to the view tab so that you can review your organization item.
Notice that the new organization item is in the public draft state, which means that it has not yet been published and is not visible to the public.
8. If you are satisfied with the organization item, click the public draft status indicator on the green menu bar and select publish from the drop-down menu.
A message at the top of the page confirms that the publishing state of the organization item has been changed, and the publishing state indicator changes to published.