Help Center Overview

SharpSpring's Help Center provides a collection of informative and instructional help articles and videos that are designed to guide SharpSpring users to learning more about how to use the application. In addition, the Help Center also has a Community Forum, where SharpSpring encourages partners to ask, answer, and discuss any and all things related to SharpSpring. This article will provide an overview of available help services in the Help Center. Article Contents Searching for Help Articles Navigating the Community Forum Contributing to the Community Forum Subscribing to Community Content Editing Profile Content			Available with:
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Searching for Help Articles

Go to help.sharpspring.com to locate the SharpSpring Help Center.

SharpSpring offers an ever-growing and expansive collection of help documentation and resources. SharpSpring's help documentation follows a hierarchy: categories, sections, and articles. Articles are listed under in sections, and those sections are listed under categories.

To access documentation, search for what you are looking for via the search bar. By searching for keywords, you can find documentation that closely (if not exactly) matches the issue you are seeking help for. You can also scroll down and locate information via the different categories and sections related to the articles. The categories and sections are as follows:

What's New?

Under What's New, you will find the SharpSpring Release Notes that are updated on a regular basis. These release notes contain information about updated features and brand new features that are now available.  

What's Happening?

Under Featured, you will find the featured help articles for the month. These articles are typically related to either new features that are available, or based on articles with the most views for the past month.  Under Recent Activity, you will find all newly published articles and release notes.

Navigating the Community Forum

The SharpSpring Community Forum provides a way to reach out and receive personal answers to your questions. Forum content also follows a hierarchy: topics, posts, and comments. Comments are attached to posts, and posts are nested under topics.

Topics

Like documentation, community content is listed under appropriate sections. You can either look through each section for content, or you can utilize the search function to find relevant content.

Within a forum topic, you can modify how posts are displayed: 

• To show all posts across all topics, click Community Topics > Show all posts.
• To show all topics and hide posts, click Community Topics > Show topics.

Be aware that all of the community posts appear in a list when viewing all posts, regardless of which topic they are associated with.

Posts

Community posts can also be sorted by different metrics:

• To show posts in order of most recent creation, click Sort by > Newest post.
• To show posts in order of most recent comments, click Sort by > Recent activity.
• To show posts in order of the number of total votes, click Sort by > Votes.
• To show posts in order of the number of total comments, click Sort by > Comments.

Comments

Within posts, comments appear chronologically by default. The oldest comment will be displayed first. However, comments can be sorted:

• To show comments in order by the date posted, click Sort by > Date.
• To show comments in order of the total number of votes, click Sort by > Votes. 

Contributing to the Community Forum

The Community Forum is the place to interact with the SharpSpring community. In the Community Forum, you can post questions, answers, ideas, and the like. Be aware that your questions might already be answered, so search older posts to see if that is the case. 

Before creating your first post, check out the following:

• SharpSpring Community Forum Guidelines
• How to best use the SharpSpring Community

Posting Topics to the Community Forum

You can post to the Community Forum at any time. Posts can contain questions, answers, ideas, or general goodwill. To post, do the following:

1. On the top-right side of any page in the Community Forum, click New Post.
2. In the Title section, enter a post title.
3. In the Details section, enter the content of your post.
4. In the Topic drop-down menu, select the topic section where the post will be located.
5. Click Submit.

As a general rule, try to keep the title and content of your post aligned with the most relevant topic section. Otherwise, your post may be overlooked by accident.

Linking to Comments

There may come a time when you want to quote someone or otherwise link to a comment in the Community Forum. For example, you may want to provide a link to a comment on an article or a post to help others. To link to a comment, do the following:

Viewing Your Contributions

You can view your overall list of contributions (or find information on a previous post). Past contributions are saved. To view contributions, do the following:

1. On the top-right side of any page in the Community Forum, click Your Name > My activities.
2. In the page that appears, click Contributions.
3. Click a link to go to that contribution.

Subscribing to Community Content

When you subscribe to something in the Help Center and Community Forum, you follow it. You can follow sections and articles (but not categories) in the Help Center, and you can follow topics and posts in the Community Forum. Following content will alert you by email when new articles, posts, or comments are contributed. You can unfollow content at any time.

Following and Unfollowing Content

To follow content in the Help Center or Community Forum, do the following:

1. Navigate to the Help Center or Community Forum content you wish to follow.
2. Click Follow.

To unfollow content in the Help Center or Community Forum, do the following:

1. Navigate to the Help Center or Community Forum content you wish to unfollow.
2. Click Unfollow.

Managing Subscriptions

There may come a time when you have many different subscriptions—perhaps too many to keep track of. Your profile contains information on all subscribed content, and you can manage which content you follow from your profile.

To manage your subscriptions, do the following:

1. Sign in to the Help Center or Community Forum.
2. On the top-right side of any page in the Community Forum, click Your Name > My activities.
3. In the page that appears, click Following.
4. In the list that appears, click content titles to view the content, or click Unfollow to unfollow the content.

Be aware that unfollowing content removes the content from the page. If you want to follow the content again, you will have to access it by searching the Help Center or Community Forum.

Editing Profile Content

You can edit your Help Center and Community Forum profile at any time. Editing the content in your Help Center profile allows for you to keep your personal information up-to-date.

To edit your profile description, do the following:

1. On the top-right side of any page in the Help Center or Community Forum, click
   Your Name > My profile.
2. In the page that appears, click Edit profile.
3. Enter text in the Description field.
4. Click Update.