GZ Academy Community- Getting Started

You've completed the registration process and waited overnight, and now you can log in to GZ Academy Community! 

• Logging In
• Navigation
• Pages
• Groups
• Meetings
• Conversations
• Notifications
• Profile Options
• Other Functions: Commenting and Reporting

Logging In

Step 1: Enter the username and password you set up previously to log in to GZ Academy and click the Log In button.

Step 2: If you get a blank page, you can click on any of the navigation options to open any of the pages in GZ Academy Community. 

Navigation

You have two options for getting around: the header bar navigation and the Quick Links and Groups options in the left sidebar. The header bar navigation will always be available no matter where you are in GZ Academy Community; the left sidebar links can be collapsed and expanded as needed/preferred. Both menus have the same options: Home, Groups, Social Feed, GZ Academy On Demand, and GZ Academy Hub.

In addition, any groups you belong to will appear below the Quick Links in the left sidebar. If you wish, you can click on the "hamburger" menu option to hide the left sidebar menu.

You can also access your conversations, notifications, profile and any settings preferences in the upper right corner. We'll get to that in a bit.

Pages

Home: Welcome to your landing page! If there are sessions open to ALL GZ Academy Learners, you will see them on the default "Schedule" tab. If you have signed up for sessions (more on that in a moment!) you will see those on the "My Schedule" tab.

Groups: By default you will belong to at least one group. You can view all groups in GZ Academy Community by clicking the Groups navigation links (we'll go more into Groups in a moment).

Social Feed: The Social Feed is an option visible and available to ALL members of the GZ Academy Community. Chat, share, and network to your heart's content!

GZ Academy On Demand: This is where our online courses live. We're still building those out and updating them, so there isn't much here now, but this is our replacement for the GZ University site.

GZ Academy Hub: this is a link back to the GZ Academy Hub just in case you need it for things like resetting your password via the "Forgot Password" link.

Groups

Any/all groups you belong to will appear in the Groups sub-navigation. You can view all groups by clicking on either of the Groups navigation items in the left sidebar or header bar. Clicking the name of a group will being you directly to that group's page.

If you are not a member of a group, you will be able to see an About tab and some basic information about the group, the number of members, and a Member Directory.

If you click into a group of which you are a member you will see the About tab, the member count, and the Member Directory, as well as four additional tabs: Discussions, Feed, Resources, and Meetings.

• Discussions

  • Posted topics to spark conversations and dialogue in the group. Only site or group admins can post/start Discussions.

• Feed

  • Group-only chatter- this can be on-topic or casual/fun chat. Anyone in the group can post in the feed.

• Resources

  • Holds all your group-only resource files.

• Meetings

  • THIS is the important one! Academy Live sessions are one hour, open format sessions, so come prepared with your questions and topics! These sessions are intended to be an active dialogue between onboarding customers/new staff and GrowthZone trainers, will be focused on daily activities and system functionality, and are limited to 10 attendees maximum. 

Meetings

Signing up for sessions is easy! You just go the Meetings calendar for that group and select any of the available sessions on the calendar. Click the "Attend Session" button and you're set! There's no limit on the number of sessions you can attend during your onboarding journey; we only ask that you have at least one question prepared, as these are intended to be interactive and customer-focused.

You can add sessions to your calendar, and the system will send two reminders to your email- one 3 days prior, and one 15 minutes prior.

Joining a session is also easy- just click the Join Event link in the reminder email, or navigate to your My Schedule tab on the Home page and find the session. If the session is live and you have signed up to attend, it should automatically open the session, allow you to choose or set your microphone and camera, and prompt you to join the session.

The interface is very similar to most video conferencing options like Zoom or GoToWebinar, with options to mute/unmute your microphone, enable/disable your camera, share your screen, raise your hand to ask a question, use a reaction emoji, use the chat, apply visual effects to your camera (blur background/use a personal background) and adjust your microphone/camera/speaker settings, view the other the attendees, and review the meeting information. Hovering over any of the icons will display a label and clicking them will open the options.

Meetings will generally be ended by the presenter, but if you need to leave early you just click the red "Leave Meeting" button in the lower left corner of the meeting window. You will get an "Are you sire you want to leave?" prompt before either leaving or rejoining the meeting.

Conversations

What would a Community be without conversations? Depending on settings, you may message or be messaged by other members of the GZ Academy Community. Conversations can be 1-on-1 or small groups. 

Click the message bubble icon to open the Conversations window. You can review past messages, filter to unread or hidden messages, and start new conversations. When a new message arrives, the message bubbles will display the number of unread messages.

Notifications

Notifications will tell you if there is activity you should be aware of. You can review all notifications, filter to unread notifications, mark notifications as read, and delete them as needed. Clicking a notification will take you to the activity the notification is for (for example, a new post in the social feed).

Profile Options

Click on the image placeholder in the far upper right to access some additional areas of your GZ Academy Community: Profile, Settings, and Log out.

• Profile is where you can set your own personal image, banner image, and add any information to your profile that you wish: About, Experience, Education, Skills, and Interests. Some of the options may allow other members to find you in a directory search, and could be helpful if wanting to network with other members in your area or with similar roles.
  
  • If a section is a text-based editor, you will see a small "edit" icon  in the upper right corner. 
  • If a section is more of an entry-based editor with multiple fields to complete, you will see a "plus" icon that will open the options for the entry. 

• Settings will allow you to customize the Notifications you receive while in-app; set your timezone; enable or disable event reminders; make your profile private (default) or public or hide your email address; enable or disable messages (aka Conversations) and those notifications; and even set your microphone, camera, and speaker options.
  
  

NOTE: you can only currently edit the in-app options. Email options are not configurable at present.

• Log Out will log you out of GZ Academy Community and bring up the login page; you will want to bookmark this for future login purposes.

Other Functions: Commenting and Reporting

Like most online communities, you can comment on topic and feed posts, and you can also report inappropriate content. To access these options in posts, discussions, and messages, you can click on the three vertical dots for the mini-menu.

Comment will open a comment field with options to enter text, emoticons, images, and links. If you post a comment, you will have the ability to edit or delete the comment.

Copy Link will copy the link to the post or comment so you can share it in other places in the community or group.

Report Post allows you to report inappropriate content and will notify site admins that a post or comment needs review. You can select the reason why you are reporting the post/comment and give optional additional information. You can also report comments, and will have the same ability to select why and give reasoning.