Get your bearings. Learn how to navigate and use the important features of the GEF IW Community Platform even if it's your first time to login.

1. 1. Editing my profile and joining the Experts
Roster
2. Joining a community/CoP and participating
in discussions
3. Setting my preferences - e-mail
notification/alerts, my communities
GEF IW COMMUNITY PLATFORM

2. The GEF IW Community Platform is an
interactive online platform where
stakeholders and communities of practice
(CoP) can CONNECT and COLLABORATE
with other practitioners, and SHARE
knowledge, experiences and resources
within a trusted community.
Designed for the practitioner on the go. Members, CoPs can interact on the
platform itself by signing in or directly thru e-mail without the need to login.
Nothing is ever lost in the GEF IW Community. Even when members
participate thru e-mail using the platform’s built-in e-mail integration feature,
exchanges will be automatically archived and updated in the platform, giving
CoPs unparalleled access to review what had gone before.
The Community Platform was designed to
enable distributed communities and
practitioners to remotely yet jointly
conceptualize on projects or initiatives,
continue discussions after an event, or to
collaborate on documents, as just some of
the use case.

3. Clicking on any of these links
will show items relevant to
your communities and public
updates and lists (tags,
communities).
MAIN NAVIGATION
Create a
shortcut to your
favorite
communities.
Clicking on
these quick links
will take you
directly to these
useful links and
recent activities.
Switch between 66
major languages thru
GoogleTranslate
Search by free
text or keyword,
or drill down by
type (people,
blog, file, etc.)
Welcome message
and updates from
the IW:LEARN
team.

4. Freshest news from
IWLEARN.NET
which updates thrice
a day.
More useful links – Terms and
Conditions, link to the manual
and to the IW:LEARN Team

5. Your profile is equivalent to an "About Me" page supplemental to
your presence in the Community Platform. You can describe
yourself and your involvement in the IW community, share your
interests, and also include a photo of yourself.
Your skills and experience act as links to other practitioners who share the
same things and to members in the community who might be in need of your
expertise.
1
2
3
Click ‘My Profile’
Click ‘Edit’
Fill up the form or modify your details as you wish but make
sure you fill up the marked required fields. If you would like to
be included in the Experts Roster, make sure to provide
details about your work experience and post your CV.

6. Click ‘People’ to see the
list of members and the
experts roster
Click ‘Staff’ to view members or
‘Experts Roster’ and be able to
filter the list based on expertise,
regions worked in and availability.
Print
Save list as
CSV/spreadsheet
Click ‘Name’ ‘Expertise’
‘Availability’ or ‘Region’ to sort the
list alphabetically.

7. As a trust-based platform, we safeguard each community workspace
from disruptive or irrelevant participation. Membership is based on certain
merits, e.g., relevance of involvement in projects and events, skills and
expertise, etc.
Because of this, it is good to remember that in the platform,
you will SEE activities and updates from communities which you are
a member and those from public communities. The same principle
applies when using the Search tool. The platform will only show you
results connected to your membership and public communities.
You will see public communities and be able to participate BUT to
receive updates, you need to ‘Join’ (by pressing the Join button) so
the moderator can add you to the community.
I can see two
communities.
I have six.
Mine is
four.

8. While some users appreciate getting updates as soon as there is a new
activity in a community, yet to some, instant notifications can be a
noise. Make sure to set your notification setting based on your
preference.
Click ‘My Profile’ then
‘Manage Communities’1
2
Set the notification you want
for each of your community.

9. 3
Set the notification you want
for each of your community.
Options available are:
Immediately, *Daily Digest,
*Weekly Digest and Never.
* The Daily Digest and Weekly Digest are currently on beta release so we
recommend not to use these options in the meantime. We will send an
announcement when the final release has been made.
If you want to be able to participate through e-mail, set your
notification to ‘Immediately’ so you can receive individual alerts
per post and reply directly to it without the need to login to the platform.
Simply hit the ‘Reply’ button from your e-mail and your message will be posted
to your community and sent to members.
Another tip, to limit the chances of your e-mail getting into your
colleagues’ Spam box or getting stuck in the system’s spam filters, delete
elaborate signature lines from your e-mail especially those containing images,
hyperlink, etc., that may get stuck in spam filters.

10. Each community has access to a
shared blog, which serves as a place
for users to post updates, new ideas
and other collaborative information.
A checkbox allows blog authors to
automatically email the content of
the post to the community members,
and logged-in users can add
comments under each blog
post. Members also have the ability
to post blog content via email.
Blog posts are indexed in a manner
consistent with the other components so that locating information is
quick and easy. Furthermore, the notifications are not intrusive such
that members will receive them based on the notification setting they
have selected.

11. Brief introduction to CoPs by Etienne Wenger
Basic ingredients needed in setting up productive and sustainable
Communities of Practice in the brochure by Leah Arboleda and
Olivier Serrat (Asian Development Bank):
Communities of Practice 101
World Bank study of the effectiveness of three CoPs funded in the
Middle East and North Africa
Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge
by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William Snyder, Harvard
Business School Press, 2002