Create a Space, Sections and Custom Menu

This document provides instructions for the Super Admin on how to create a Space.

What is a Space?

Open Atrium provides spaces for knowledge sharing among public, donors and IASC community. Spaces are activity hubs for public knowledge sharing. Private Spaces are activity hubs for non-public conversation.

Open Atrium is organized into Spaces, Sub-spaces, and Sections. Sections might include Documents, Meetings, News.

For more information on the structure of the site, visit: http://interagencystandingcommittee.org/sitemap

Create a new Public or Private Space

1. In the Admin view (http://www.iasc.ch/admin), from the drop-down menu next to house icon, click “Create new Space”
2. Give the Space a title.
3. If you want the new space to inherit membership from an existing space, expand the Inheritance section in the “Parents” space, select the group it should inherit members from.
4. To allow users to navigate to the page (e.g., if the space is public), you will need to create a menu link. On right side, check “Provide a menu link” to create a menu link.
   
   Give the link a title (can be the name of the Space or something shorter if the full name is too long or unwieldy).
   
   In the “Parent” section, this is where we will determine where the page will live in the site’s navigation. If you select <Main Menu> then the page will live in the site’s top navigation. As the site already has a lot of items in the top navigation, it may be better to select something below this. Click the drop-down menu, and select the menu option you want the page to live in. For example, if we are creating a new subsidiary body, we would want to select “Subsidiary Bodies.”
    
5. Then publish.
6. Adjust group visibility to make it public or private. Use private if it’s a work in progress. When it’s ready for public viewing, come back and make it public.

Create Sections Within a Space

Sections serve as the different “pages” within a space from a website perspective.

1. To create a new Section, in the website view, navigate to the Space you want to create the Section in, and click Edit.
2. In the drop-down menu for the Space in the black bar, click “Create new Section.”

There are different types of default sections, such as calendars or documents. If you just want to create a page with text on it, create a new Document Section.

Get Sections to Appear in Custom Menu

1. Each section will only appear in the Custom Menu if the “Provide Menu Link” button is checked. Navigate to the node you want to edit and click the edit button.
2. Make sure the “Provide a menu link” is checked, and give the link a title. In the “Parent” section, it should say <Group Menu>.
3. Save.

Create and Format Custom Menus for the Space

If you would like custom menus for the Space that show the sections unique to this space, you will need to create custom menus. An example of this is the menu in the Evaluations Space.

1. To create custom menus, navigate to the Space you want to edit and go to “Customize this page” cog icon.
2. Click the “+” button in the Sidebar to add a menu widget.
3. In the left pane of the pop-up window, scroll down to “Menus”
4. In the right pane, scroll toward the bottom and look for the section that says “GROUP MENU.” Click Add.
5. You will have an option to Configure new Group Menu. If you want to change the default title, check “Override title” and type in your preferred title, such as “EVALUATIONS MENU.” Click Finish.
6. Once the menu is made, use the paintbrush function to begin formatting.
7. Select Secondary Content Styles.
8. Select the type of pane option (e.g., featured image listing). Save.
9. At the top of the page, click "Save as custom."
10. Repeat this process for every page in the Space you want the menu to appear on.