Learn More About How to Use COCPA Connect

COCPA Connect is a civilized public discussion

Please treat everyone with respect and professionalism. Think of Connect like driving: it only works when people obey basic rules of the road, common sense, and shared politeness. When these things happen, this tool works well!

Access COCPA Connect via this website or email

You can start new topics or reply to existing one using the online forum or via email. When you get an email message with a new post on a topic you are following, you can give your public reply to that post just by replying to the email. Your post will appear as a threaded reply online in the forum page as well.

Email messages and notifications are customizable

You can choose which posts to follow and how you’d like to follow them. Some users want an email for every reply to every topic. Others want to see replies only to the topics that they have already participated in. It’s all up to you.

Most members of a community choose one of these options:

• “Watching first post” will email you every time a new topic starts, but you will not see every reply to that topic (unless you’ve already replied or interacted with the topic yourself).
• “Watching” will email you every time there is a new reply to any topic in the particular community.

These email notification settings also control the alerts and notifications that will appear to you on the website view of COCPA Connect.

See more about Advanced Notification Preferences below.

What’s the first thing I should do as a new user of COCPA Connect?

Fill out your profile! Upload a picture, adjust your umbrella notification settings, and configure your experience to be however you’d like it to be.

Which communities can I access?

Your access to various communities in COCPA Connect is provided by your account with COCPA. Some Connect communities are open to all COCPA
members. Other communities are only available to those who are members of specific committees or chapters. These memberships are indicated in your account profile at COCPA.

If you have an active COCPA membership, then you are already a part of COCPA Connect, and you can start participating in all the communities you have access to.

Questions about how to participate in any Connect community can be answered by our member service team at COCPA:

info@cocpa.org
303-773-2877

Post a new topic to start a new discussion, ask a question, or share your insight.

Steps to post a new topic:

1. From any community home page, click the “Create New Topic” located above the list of existing conversations.
2. Give your new topic a title.
3. Select a category or sub-category for your topic.
4. Write the body of your topic. This can include text and images, and multiple formatting options are available to you.
5. A preview of how your post will look with formatting is provided next to your message.
6. Click “Create Topic” when you’re ready to post. Your post remains editable after you publish it.

How to reply to threads via email:

1. Start a new topic or choose to follow a topic at connect.cocpa.org.
2. Wait for new replies to arrive.
3. Reply to the post using your email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc.).
4. Your reply will appear as a new post on the topic.

How do I interact with a post?

There are several ways to engage on COCPA Connect.

• “Heart” a post to like it, or as a way to show appreciation or agreement.
• Click the Bookmark icon to save a post to your bookmarked posts list.
• Click Reply to respond to a post.

What if a member of a community is acting poorly?

COCPA Connect gives you the option to “Flag” any reply to any post.

You are helping the community when you flag a post that is inappropriate for any reason. Sometimes, a post or message might simply be irrelevant in the wrong category. Other times (we hope rarely, if ever!), content might be rude, abusive, or explicit.

When you flag a message, you will be presented with options of how to address the behavior you find objectionable. Options include marking the message as spam, noting that the material is inappropriate, or reaching out to the participant with a direct private message to resolve your issue.

Advanced notification settings

There are many ways to customize your experience on COCPA Connect to make sure you are seeing the content you want in the way you want it. Alert, notifications, and emails are are customizable on a per-topic basis, and with global settings on your account.

Options for following a post:

• Watching: You will be notified of every new reply in this topic, and a count of new replies will be shown.
• Tracking: A count of new replies will be shown for this topic. You will be notified if someone mentions your @name or replies to you.
• Normal: You will be notified if someone mentions your @name or replies to you.
• Muted: You will never be notified of anything about this topic, and it will not appear in latest.

Note that you have many other ways to customize your experience in your account settings. You can also see exactly how you are following posts in each of your communities.

Adjusting your notification settings for an entire community

To follow a community, click the button next to the “Create A Topic” button. Choose the desired level of notification. These settings are also available in your Account Preferences (see the section above, “Advanced notification settings”).