| Setting* | Description |
| Hide My Profile ON | Private Account. This limits visibility to a per Group or Circle membership basis. Users with this setting will not be able to invite Public users or be invited by public users outside of their Groups. |
| Hide My Profile OFF | Public Account. This allows your account to be searched by public users who are inviting other users to join Groups or User Circles. |
* Settings are accessible in 'My Account Settings' area of your account, or from the Account Holder (AH) panel.
**Supported Users are made private (Hide my Profile ON) by default so will not be searchable. This can only be changed by their Account Holder, they cannot update their own settings.
| Area | Previous system | Changes from March 2020 | Possible issues and Solutions |
| Ability to 'Join' a Community | You used to be able to 'Join' a whole Community and then subsequently join it's Groups. Community Admins could invite people to join the Community or create new users in the Community. | We have simplified things so Communities do not require 'Joining', only Community Groups can be joined. This also gives Community Admins more control over who can interact with who in different Groups. Communities are now public pages that can publish information and provide a portal where users can request to Join Groups. Communities also now have their own Public About Page Wikis (if this feature is enabled), Stories and Events. | |
| Ability to search and view user profiles | This used to be based on a per Community basis. So if you were part of a College Community for instance, you would be seen by and able to search all other users who were also in this Community. | Search visibility is now based on a per Group basis. So if a College Community has various class groups, e.g. a, b and c, users in class 'a' will only be able to see other users in this class. This is a security and control enhancement as a Community can now create its own private Groups, e.g. separate Groups for Parents, Teachers and Students. The exception to this is if you are in the Users Circle, are an Account Holder or Buddy of a User. | 1) Users who used to be able to search each other who were not in the same group but were in the same Community will not be able to see each other anymore. Solution: If you want all users in your Community to see each other you could just create a general Group and add everyone in so all users can see each other. |
| Ability to search Public Profiles and add them to User Circles or Groups | Public profiles could only be searched via the 'invite to Community' option for Community Admins. | Now all Public users (who do not have 'Hide my Profile' on) can invite and be invited by other Public users to join their Groups or Circles. This makes it easier for users to join a number of different Communities, for example a health worker may want to be added to a number of students Circles from different schools. | 1) If another user wants to add a Supported User or Private User (that they do not already share a Group with) into a Group or User Circle they will not show on the list of 'Show Public Profiles'. Solution: Invite the user by email and then they have the option of logging into their own account if they already have one. Or if you invite the user with their registered email address they will just be asked to log into their account to accept the invitation. 2) You may have this setting as Public by mistake and be searchable when you don’t want to be. Solution: Update you're settings in the 'My Account Settings' area to change your Profile Visibility settings. |