Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

Score9.1 out of 10

2 Reviews and Ratings

What is Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board?

Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions.

For Microsoft SharePoint

Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The discussions continue to provide answers to commonly asked questions to other employees who may be looking for information. The structure of Social Squared forums means that users can find answers to questions through logical forum structures, tags, and built in search. Features such as Mark as Answer provide business users with confidence when reading posts.

For Microsoft Teams

Social Squared for Microsoft Teams provides a platform for multi-threaded conversations within Microsoft Teams channels. Users will be able to engage with each other with business-related questions in the context of the Teams channel. Answers to questions can be verified, moderated, and found through search, tags, and intuitive navigation.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.

Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.

Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.

Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.

Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.

Screenshot of MICROSOFT TEAMS DARK MODE
Social Squared supports all three display modes within Microsoft Teams. Social Squared is designed to work optimally within each display mode, whether default, dark, or high contrast.

Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD APP ON MOBILE DEVICE
Social Squared is a responsive designed SPFx based App and can be used within the Microsoft Teams App on a mobile device. Teams Notifications arrive on the user's phone from Topics or Forums that subscribed to, as well as being able to access photos or take photos from the phone.

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Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.

Mobile Access
Mobile access is the ability to access the software from a smartphone or tablet.
Category average: 8.6
Search
Users can search for related materials across files, discussions threads, schedules, etc. using project keywords or tags.
Category average: 8
Chat
Instant messaging tool allows users to communicate with select other users in real-time threads.
Category average: 9

Audio files
Supports audio file types, such as .mp3, .mp4, and .wav
Category average: 8.2
Document collaboration
Users can edit files and attach comments to files.
Category average: 8.4
Access control
Users can control access to (shared) files, including different levels of access such as view-only or permission to edit.
Category average: 8.3

Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our CPA firm uses the forums for various Tax, A&A & Operations discussions regarding updates, procedures, training, etc. We're on our 2nd year and have built up a very nice resource for the firm. We would definitely recommend the forums to any businesses looking to house a lot of information in one place.

Pros

Organizing Data
Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
Easy to setup

Cons

I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)

Return on Investment

We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)

Usability

Other Software Used

Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Viva Engage

Class for Web

Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board