The decision re which Profile fields to use in the system, and how to use them depends on the customer preferences and needs, and can play a crucial role on important KPIs like engagement and efficiency.
By recognizing the value of profile fields and setting them correctly, you can enhance user engagement, simplify moderation tasks, and gain valuable insights to drive your platform's success.

The purpose of this article is to help you take the best decisions to your system.


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The only "mandatory" profile information is the Full Name, Email, and username (which can be identical to the email). The customer can add additional profile fields by via the system self admin page as described in this tutorial.



Why Do We Need Additional Profile Fields?


The value of having accurate profile information on your users can be any/all of the below:


Enhanced Engagement: Knowing more about the other users in the system increases the sense of community and encourages interactions and by that increases engagement and collaboration.

In addition, users can be searched and/or selected based on their profile information.


Moderation and Targeting: Having Profile fields (specifically from "category" types) allow running targeted campaigns for specific portions of the community and sending targeted emails.
In addition, it enables role assignments based on the submitter's profile.


Insightful Reporting: Analyzing the system activities, efficiency, ROI and any other KPI based on the users' profile information facilitates better decision-making and strategic planning.

Multi-Tenancy Support: Profile fields streamline the auto-assignment and re-direction of users to the appropriate tenants, ensuring seamless management in multi-tenant environments.


Take the time to think about which profile fields are truly important for your platform and why.




How the profile fields information can be collected?


The easiest way to collect profile information is via the automatic user provisioning process that is based on integration with your organization Active Directory (AD).

Via a simple mapping the Qmarkets team will help you to map the profile information in your AD to the relevant profile fields you will create with the assistance of your CSM in the system.



On top of that, additional information on the user can be collected by the user itself as part of the registration and/or login process.
This can be relevant for information that cannot be retrieved from the AD like: expertise, areas of interest, private email address, and even profile picture.
The private email address is crucial in cases of having users without a corporate email address, as it will be the main method to communicate with these users.


Naturally, profile information can also be updated by the system moderatos but this method is not recommend as it is not efficient.


*** 2 notes re profile fields that are mapped to your AD:

  • Which fields to map:
    We recommend to  map only profile fields that will bring you any value as explained in the first section.
    Many times, the AD contain profile information that is not relevant for your Qmarkets system.
  • Determining the field type:
    While select fields can be helpful, it's crucial to keep the number of options manageable, and prevent overwhelming your system with excessive data.
    In case that there are more than 500 values, use a text field and not a select field.
    Contact your CSM is case you see a problem with this.



 

What should be considered per profile field and how it can be reflected
in the system configuration



1. Identify Key Profile Fields: Determine which profile fields are the most important ones / most interesting ones.
Based on this, perform the below
 


  • Define the 2 most important fields as Primary/Secondary Fields.
    These 2 fields will be displayed alongside the user's full name.



  •  Include them in the Mini Profile.
    The mini profile is accessed from various places in the system, including the community page.


  • Consider including a widget in the dashboard that segment activities, ROI and other KPIS based on these profile fields.


        Watch this tutorial, starting from min 4:52, to learn how to do it.




  • Make sure these fields are included in the Profile Filtering Options when searching for users for different reasons.
    ** In order to customize the filter options, please contact your CSM.



  • In case these profile fields (or the profile image) are not integrated with your Active Directory:
    •  Set Field Reminders: 
      Set reminders to prompt users to fill them out upon login or as a reminder every X weeks
    • Manage Mandatory Fields:
      Consider defining these fields as mandatory, ensuring data completeness.


  • Optimizing Sonar: Include segmentation by profile fields in your Sonar analysis to gain insights on which are the users that are submitting the idea and analyse the popularity, quality and ROI of their ideas.
    ** In order to customize the sonar segmentation, please contact your CSM.

 


2. Consider sensitivity of the Profile Information:
Decide which profile fields should NOT be exposed to all users.
Based on this, perform the below


  • Configure restrict the visibility of these fields among users by changing visibility from "All Users" to the relevant setting. 
  • GDPR compliance -
    Consider including this field in the anonymization settings once users are leaving the organization (and/or blocked from accessing the system). Learn more about it in this article.



Watch this tutorial, to learn how to self-define most of the above settings.