Hi BeccaJones,

1. Is there a site-wide search form that searches all discussion
Yes, on the right rail of the discussions page, there is a widget that has a search bar.  This will search all public discussions.

Additionally, there is an advanced search (try it out here) for discussions that allows you to narrow down results, as well as display them in different views.

2. Can users tag their posts with meta-tags? Can Admins assign these to posts as well?
You may use categories to help tag posts, but they will have to be created by admins first.  This is the closest we have to tagging posts.  You may want to post about this in our feature request blog.

3. What control do we have over the layout of the site? Can we move the search button within the page template or can we remove the discussions list box?
We offer drag and drop pages with a widget library.  This will let you choose which widgets you want to have on a page and where they go.  You can allow users to have the option to add/remove/move them around, or you can lock the widgets in place.

If you have site interface access, you can modify templates, however once they are modified, the overrides will prevent any updates we make to them in our releases.  You can delete the override to get our updates.

If you wanted to hide the discussions list, you could do this via CSS by targeting its ID.

4. Do we have the ability to make a discussion topic private/invisible to users? How do you do that?
You can do this through social objects.  If a group is hidden or private, its discussion will be as well.  

If you create a group, be sure to set its privacy setting and create the discussion.  This discussion will only be accessible/visible to the group's members.

I hope that answers all of your questions.  But please let us know if you have any further questions or if you need anything clarified.

Thanks!

KF Edit: I just repeated literally what Cory said a minute late...which is a pretty impressive display of company synergy, but because its duplicate information I'll just like his response.

Thanks for the reply Cory.

A couple of clarifications:

1) To search in discussions, you can only do this by going into each discussion topic. The advanced search is only available within each discussion topic, right? I don't see an overall advanced search on the main discussion page.

2) We can only make groups hidden/private, but not actual discussions, right? However, we do have the ability to lock discussion topics and related threads as "read only" as we have in our current forums? (We haven't switched yet).

Thank you,

Becca

Hi Becca,

1) Yes.  The advanced search is available within each discussion (but not from the main page).  Although if you think this would be useful we can certainly add it to the main page - a great feature request if you would like to see that added.

2) You are correct again.  Discussions associated with a hidden or private group will also be hidden/private.  For Community discussions (non-group) you can lock topics or an entire discussion which will make them read only very much like your current forums.  The lock function is also available for group discussions.

It seems to me that it might be helpful to add that while access to the Advanced Search feature is currently only available to the user within individual discussions, the search parameters allow the user to search across any combination of multiple discussions.

A few other folks have mentioned this off line as well.  Based on the feedback we'll get the search widget added back to the main discussions page in an upcoming release.  Not sure on timeframe yet but I will post here when we get one.

Thanks!
Kevin