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.
In this article:
How to Set Your Community Access Settings
Managing Individual Student Enrollments
Impact on Existing Students When Changing Access
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: Get Started 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There is no longer an 'Only me' option as this has been replaced by draft publish status.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 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)
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:
- Manually enroll an individual student
- Manually unenroll an individual student
- Update a student's expiry date
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:
- For the "Students in selected courses or bundles" access type, access can be overridden by buying a product associated with the community in it such as a membership or bundle (even if that membership/bundle is not linked to the community via the access type)
- Any more recent purchase of a linked course/bundle will take precedence over any existing purchase/override only if the expiry is further out than the override
- 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
- If an expiry date is set manually by a Site Admin, the date can be overridden if the student repurchases the product or a subscription renews.
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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged 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 remain unchanged but can be reset in the student's user profile
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