One of the most unique aspects of Sixent is its "Groups" feature.

A fully open group can act as a public blog, website or forum (or all three combined). A private group can be a collaborative workspace for 2 to 200 people (or 20,000 for that matter) or instead, it might simply focus on sharing links and files.

Where Sixent Groups really shine is in their simplicity and flexibility. I say "simple" because they are made up of topic-oriented pages instead of focusing on a myriad of "tools". Unique to Sixent is the ability to mix and match all types of items on a single page without the need to silo them into separate functional areas. This also simplifies access control as there's only one page to configure for many types of items on the same "topic". Most of all, it's a more natural and effective way to work and access information.

Each group begins as one page but can have any number of sub-pages. Groups can evolve in complexity if they need to and each page can be customized to support any number of "pods" or page sections. The graphical header of every page can be also be customized.

Since a group page can hold multiple item types (i.e. blog entries, bookmarks, files and photos), along with comments on each of those types, it's important they remain easy to browse. This has been improved recently with the addition of new item-type filters in every group page. These filters appear primarily as a set of tabs and are optional.

New Discussions Pod

A pod is a single section of a page. Prior to this update, a Sixent group page started off with three pods:

• Sub-pages
• Recent Items
• Recent Comments

We recently improved groups by adding threaded discussions to all pages. Unlike other types of "content", discussions appear separate of other items as people interact with them differently.

The addition of discussion topics means that comments on items are no longer the only way to converse in a group. This needs to be highlighted so we've introduced a new pod that features recent discussion topics and messages for a given page.

To make room for the new Discussions pod, the Item Listing pod was updated to show recent comments separately of items without needing an additional pod on the page.

The default layout of group pages has therefore been improved without increasing the number of pods:

• Sub-pages
• Recent Items & Comments
• Recent Discussions

Enlarge the screenshot above to see the new page layout closeup.

Comments on items can now be more easily mixed in with items as needed and even listed separately. When filtering on a particular item type, only comments on items of that type are shown. When filtering on a tag, only comments on matching items will be shown.

 

Exploiting the New Features

New Groups

If you're starting a new group at Sixent, then there's nothing to do. The default layout of all new group pages includes an Item Listing with the new tabs exposed. The right column will include the new Discussions pod as shown above.

Existing Groups

If you have an existing Sixent group, you may wish to exploit these new features. To do so, you have two options:

1. Reset the group page(s) in a single step
2. Or, re-configure the existing pods

To reset the page entirely, chose the "Reset Page Pods" option under the page's "Edit" menu. You will be prompted to confirm the action and will have the opportunity to reset all pages in your group in a single step.

Note that you'll lose any other changes you've made to the page such as the addition of additional pods, so if you've spent a lot of time crafting the perfect page this might not be the best way to proceed. Instead,if you have made extensive page customizations, you can re-configure the page and pods on your own.

There are three steps I would suggest you follow:

1. Edit the "Recent Items" pod (left column) and enable the new tabs
2. Remove the "Recent Comments" pod (right column)
3. Add the "Discussions" pod (place it in the right column)

 

To edit and remove pods, first click on Edit to switch into edit page mode. Then use the menu found in the top-right corner of each pod as shown below:

To add the Discussions pod, press the main  "Add" button (top-right corner of the page).

When the "Add Pod" dialog appears, click the "Groups Pods" tab and then "Discussions". Finally, click the "Add" button. Once it's on the page, just drag it to the right column by clicking and dragging on the title of the pod.

Item Listing Configuration

The Item Listing pod is Sixent's most useful and flexible pod and as such, it has numerous configuration options. The pod can list items from any group or page. The items can be drawn from a single page or from all its sub-pages.

The types of items that appear in the pod can be restricted and the new item-type tabs can be exposed or hidden as needed. The inclusion or exclusion of comments is easily configured along with a control that allows page viewers to toggle comment inclusion on their own.

Finally, a number of options are available that affect overall presentation. You can set how many items will be listed at once and how much detail is shown about each item.

To view all the options available to you, enlarge the screenshot shown on the right.

Remember that you can add the same type of pod to the page multiple times. This makes it quite easy to have separate Item Listings for different item types or tag filters.

Be sure to experiment a bit to find the right settings!