This brief PowerPoint presentation was created to provide MCAS employees with a basic understanding of the capabilities of Commons Groups.

1. Intro: How to Use Animal
Services Group Pages on
Commons

2. Commons- Home Page
To locate the groups
you are a member of,
select “groups” at the
top next to your name.
To view all of the
groups available on
Commons, select “All
Groups” below the
Commons logo.

3. This is what your list of groups will look like:

4. This is the county-wide, general Animal Services
group page:

5. General Countywide Animal
Services Group on Commons
• All county departments must have a
general group with basic information for
county employees.
• This group is semi-public and available to
all county employees.
• Please do not post anything on this page.

6. There are 4 private sub-groups set up for private internal communication
amongst shelter employees: Main (for everyone), Field, Client Services and
Animal Care.

7. You can create content on any of these group pages by selecting
“Create Content”.

8. Options for Content Creation
• These groups are currently set up to allow
people to post blog posts or polls.
• It works just like a regular blog, with newest
content at the top.
• Individual blog posts may be commented on.
• You must click on the post headline to view the
entire post and comments.
• You may also attach photos or insert hyperlinks.

9. Things to Consider
• The benefit of using a group site to share info
with coworkers is that all important, recent info
can be viewed in one place (rather than
numerous emails, each with endless streams of
reply emails).
• There are many other content creation options
that we can consider adding.
• For now, “blogs” were enabled, rather than
“news” because blog posts allow comments,
whereas news posts do not.
• Other potential features include documents,
pages, events, webforms, policies and news.

10. How to Join Groups
• All of the private animal services groups
are set up to allow any group member to
invite new members.
• When new people join the MCAS team,
please invite them to join the group(s).
• The county wants people to use only
actual headshot photo avatars. No cats
wearing bunny ears. 

11. Under
“manage
members”,
select
“invite
members”.

12. If you start
typing in
someone’s
name,
options
appear in a
list. (Just
like in
gmail.)

13. What’s Next?
• Please consider how this tool might be
utilized for communication both within your
work section and shelter-wide.
• Might this work better than email?
• We can always try it out and make
adjustments and/or create rules as needed.