Community & Engagement
Build vibrant customer communities with forums, ideas, events, and gamification — all integrated with your CRM.
Community & Engagement
Turn customers into advocates. HotCRM's Community Cloud provides a full-featured platform for building branded customer communities — with discussion forums, ideation portals, events, and gamification — all natively connected to your CRM data. When a customer asks a question in the forum, your support agents see it alongside their case history. When they vote on a feature idea, your product team has the data to prioritize.
Package Overview
The packages/community package provides eight core objects:
| Object | Description |
|---|---|
| community | Top-level community definition with branding, domain, and member settings |
| forum_category | Hierarchical forum categories for organizing discussions |
| topic | Discussion topics with status tracking, pinning, and tagging |
| reply | Threaded replies with voting, accepted answers, and moderation flags |
| idea | Feature requests and improvement suggestions with voting and status tracking |
| user_group | Member groups with access levels (public, private, hidden) |
| community_event | Events — webinars, meetups, workshops, hackathons, AMAs |
| badge | Gamification badges with automatic or manual award criteria |
Forum Capabilities
Discussion Topics
The forum is the heart of the community. Topics support rich content, tagging, and status management:
- Status Lifecycle:
open→closed, withpinnedandarchivedstates - Pinning & Locking: Pin important announcements to the top; lock resolved topics to prevent further replies
- Tags: Flexible tagging for cross-category discovery
- View & Reply Counts: Built-in engagement metrics per topic
- Categories: Organize topics into hierarchical categories with parent-child relationships and sort ordering
Threaded Replies
Replies support nested threading for natural conversation flow:
- Accepted Answers: Mark the best reply as the accepted answer — highlighted for future visitors
- Voting: Upvote and downvote replies to surface the most helpful content
- Moderation: Flag inappropriate content with a reason for review
- Nested Threads: Reply to replies with
parent_reply_idfor contextual sub-discussions
Ideation Portal
Capture the voice of your customers and channel it into product decisions.
Feature Requests
The idea object powers a structured ideation workflow:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
title | Short, descriptive idea title |
description | Detailed explanation of the idea |
category | Product area or theme |
status | Lifecycle status: submitted → under review → planned → in progress → delivered → declined |
vote_count | Community votes — the primary signal for prioritization |
priority_score | Calculated priority based on votes, engagement, and business value |
assigned_release | Target release or version for delivery |
product_area | Maps the idea to a specific product domain |
Voting & Prioritization
- Community members vote on ideas they want to see built
priority_scorecombines vote count with engagement signals for a balanced ranking- Product teams can filter and sort by status, category, or priority to build data-driven roadmaps
Events & Engagement
Community Events
Host and manage events directly within the community:
| Event Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Webinar | Online presentations and demos |
| Meetup | Local or virtual gatherings |
| Workshop | Hands-on learning sessions |
| Hackathon | Build-and-ship challenges |
| AMA | Ask Me Anything sessions with product or leadership teams |
Events include capacity management and RSVP tracking to keep attendance organized.
User Groups
Organize community members into groups for targeted content and access control:
- Public Groups: Open to all community members
- Private Groups: Visible but require approval to join
- Hidden Groups: Invitation-only, not visible in group listings
- Built-in member counting and access level management
Gamification
Reward active community members with badges to encourage participation and recognize contributions.
Badge System
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
name | Badge display name |
description | What the badge represents |
icon | Visual icon for the badge |
criteria | JSON-defined award rules |
points_value | Points awarded when the badge is earned |
is_automatic | Whether the badge is awarded automatically based on criteria |
badge_type | Category: achievement, milestone, special, seasonal |
rarity | Rarity level to create aspiration and exclusivity |
Badge Types:
- Achievement: Earned by completing specific actions (e.g., "First Post", "Helpful Answer")
- Milestone: Earned by reaching cumulative thresholds (e.g., "100 Replies", "1000 Upvotes")
- Special: Manually awarded for exceptional contributions
- Seasonal: Limited-time badges tied to events or campaigns
AI Capabilities
Content Moderation
AI automatically reviews new topics and replies for policy violations, spam, and inappropriate content — flagging issues for moderator review before they reach the community.
Auto-Categorization
When a member creates a new topic, AI suggests the most appropriate forum category based on content analysis, reducing miscategorized posts and improving discoverability.
Answer Suggestion
For unanswered questions, AI searches existing topics, documentation, and knowledge base articles to suggest potential answers — reducing response time and surfacing institutional knowledge.
Cross-Cloud Integration
The Community Cloud connects deeply with other HotCRM modules:
| Integration | Description |
|---|---|
| Community → Support | Escalate forum topics to support cases when community answers aren't enough |
| Community → Product | Route voted ideas to product feedback channels for roadmap planning |
| Community → Marketing | Identify community champions for advocacy programs and case studies |
| Community → Sales | Surface community engagement data on account and contact records |
Topic-to-Case Escalation
When a community discussion reveals a product issue or a member needs direct support, topics can be escalated to the Service Cloud as a new case — carrying full context from the discussion thread.
Idea-to-Product Feedback
Top-voted ideas automatically feed into the product feedback pipeline, connecting customer voice directly to product planning with full vote counts and discussion context.
Getting Started
- Create a Community: Define your community with branding, domain, and language settings
- Set Up Categories: Organize your forum with a category hierarchy
- Configure User Groups: Set up access levels and member groups
- Enable Gamification: Define badges and award criteria to encourage participation
- Launch Events: Schedule your first community event
- Connect to CRM: Configure cross-cloud integrations for support escalation and product feedback