Communities: Access and Enrollments

In the new Thinkific Community Builder, you have a number of options for determining how students will be able to access your community, and whether they will have unlimited access or access limited to a set number of days. Read on to learn more about your community access settings, how to update access at a per-student level, and what happens if you change any of these settings.

About This Feature

Thinkific Communities represent major untapped potential for your business. They provide an opportunity for students to engage and collaborate with one another on an ongoing basis. They work with courses, memberships, coaching, and events–or as a completely standalone experience. To provide you with more flexibility in managing communities to support your business goals, we have added the ability to sell your community with our most recent update.

This means you can grant access to your community by course or bundle enrollments, groups, account log-in, or by students purchasing your community!

Take your community to the next level by utilizing the Thinkific Mobile app! Allow your learners to connect, learn, and share knowledge on the go using a native mobile app. With features like push notifications and activity feeds you can drive higher engagement and keep your content top of mind.

Looking for a mobile app that spotlights your brand with your logo and own App Store listings? Check out our Branded Mobile App solution: Maximize Your Brand Potential With the Branded Mobile App

How It Works

You'll be prompted to select your global community access settings when you first create your community. These settings define which students can view and participate in your community. Access can be updated at any time on your existing communities should you need it. There are four global access options:

Students that purchase this community via the checkout
All students that are logged into your site
Students in selected courses or bundles
Students in selected groups

There is no longer an 'Only me' option as this has been replaced by draft publish status.

You can also manage an individual student's access through their user profile. This means you can manually enroll students into a community to provide access as well as unenroll or set an expiry date if needed.

Access set at the student level will override your general community settings. For example, if community access was set to Students that purchase this community, you could manually enroll a student to give them access to your community for free.

Important Considerations

If your community access settings are updated, existing students may lose access to your community. Read through Impact on Existing Students When Changing Access before making changes to a community that has active enrollments.

How to Set Your Community Access Settings

Access settings allow you to select who is able to access your community by default, and how.

To open your community access settings from your Admin Dashboard:

Select Manage Learnings Products
Select Communities
On the Community Card for the community you would like to edit, click the ellipses (three dots)
Select Edit
From the Settings tab, select Access (in the left-hand menu)

Access settings Community - Sep 2023.jpg

To open your community access settings while currently viewing your community:

Click your community publish status in the center of the top bar to go to the Community Builder
Navigate to the Access settings as indicated in Step 5 above.

From this section, you can choose from the following access levels:

Students that purchase this community via the checkout

This will provide access to students who have purchased and enrolled in your community
This setting can be used for free or priced communities. See how to set your pricing in the Community Builder

All students that are logged into your site

Students who are logged into your site can access your community regardless of their enrollment status
By default, your community will be marked as private

Students in selected courses or bundles

Limit access to students enrolled in specific courses or bundles on your site. With this option, community members are automatically added (or removed) based on their current course or bundle enrollments
By default, your community will be marked as private

Students in selected groups

Limit access to students in a specific group. With this option, community members are automatically added (or removed) based on the groups they are currently assigned to.
Groups must be created before they will be available in the dropdown menu. Learn more in our article Create a Group
By default, your community will be marked as private

Managing Individual Student Enrollments

If you would like to grant or update community access at an individual student level, this can be done through your student's user profile. You have the following options:

Important note: Any changes made by a Site Admin at the student level will override your global community settings. However, any subsequent change to your global community settings will then override changes made at the student level.

General Expiry Date Rules

Expiry dates for students in communities can be set in a number of different ways, including both automatically (based on global access rules configured at the community level) and manually (based on the expiry date set by a Site Admin at the student level).

By default, all access options, except for 'Students that purchase this community' will provide students with forever access to your community. Students that purchase your community will have expiry dates if you choose to set an enrollment duration or depending on pricing type.

Learn more here: How are enrollment expiry dates determined?

If you make any changes to access settings or expiry dates at the student level, the general rule of thumb is that the most recent expiry date change event will take precedence (whether manually initiated or automatically initiated) except where the student was granted access through a purchase: here the student will have access forever unless a Site Admin manually sets an expiry date for the student.

Other points worth noting:

Expiry date changes made to individual students will be overridden by changes to the global community access type
Expiry date changes made to individual students will be overridden by changes made to eligible courses/bundles for the 'Students in selected courses or bundles' access type
If a clash of different expiry dates happens due to the student getting access to the same community via two different means (Ex. via a bundle purchase and a community purchase, or via a community purchase and a course enrollment) then the furthest out expiry date will take precedence
Students that have an expiry date set for them manually by a Site Admin cannot override their expiry date through any individual action (Ex. enrolling themselves in a course linked to the community)

Impact on Existing Students When Changing Community Access

If your community access settings are updated, existing students may lose access to your community. Before making any changes to a live community, make sure to review the scenarios below to ensure a seamless experience for your students.

The following is applicable to all scenarios below:

Students who are logged into your site and have lost access to an existing community will see the message "You are not authorized to enter" when trying to access the Community URL
Any previous posts and comments from students who no longer have access will remain. The Site Owner and Site Admin can always delete posts and comments if desired.
The community will only appear in the Student Dashboard for those who currently have access

Current Access Type: Students that purchase this community

Impact if access is updated to "All students that are logged into your site"

All of your students, including those who have already purchased, will be able to access this community
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected courses or bundles"

Students that have already purchased this community will still have access, even if they are not enrolled in the selected course(s) and/or bundle(s)
Going forward, only students in your selected course(s) and/or bundle(s) will be given access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected groups"

Students that have already purchased this community will still have access, even if they are not in the selected group(s)
Going forward, only students in your selected group(s) will be given access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Current Access Type: All students that are logged into your site

Impact if access is updated to "Students that purchase this community"

All existing students will lose access
Going forward, only students that purchase this community will be given access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

If you are updating your existing community to sell, see our detailed guide here: Converting and Selling Your Existing Thinkific Communities

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected courses or bundles"

Only students in your selected course(s) and/or bundle(s) will have access, all other students will lose access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected groups"

Only students in your selected group(s) will have access, all other students will lose access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden, but can be reset in the student's user profile

Current Access Type: Students in selected courses or bundles

Impact if access is updated to "Students that purchase this community"

All existing students will lose access
Going forward, only students that purchase this community will be given access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

If you are updating your existing community to sell, see our detailed guide here: Converting and Selling Your Existing Thinkific Communities

Impact if access is updated to "All students that are logged into your site"

All of your students will instantly have access to this Community, regardless of their enrollment
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected groups"

Only students in your selected group(s) will have access, all other students will lose access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Current Access Type: Students in selected groups

Impact if access is updated to "Students that purchase this community"

All existing students will lose access
Going forward, only students that purchase this community will be given access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

If you are updating your existing community to sell, see our detailed guide here: Converting and Selling Your Existing Thinkific Communities

Impact if access is updated to "All students that are logged into your site"

All of your students will instantly have access to this Community, regardless of their group
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile

Impact if access is updated to "Students in selected courses or bundles"

Only students in your selected group(s) will have access, all other students will lose access
Expiry dates set for any individual students will be overridden but can be reset in the student's user profile