Navigating the AACRAO Exchange

To login, click the Log In button in the upper right corner of the screen using your AACRAO credentials. If you do not have an account you can create one online. 

Once logged in, you will see your home page. From here you can view the latest activity from your community, see a quick overview of your member profile, access your communities, and more. If you ever want to navigate back to this page, click Home from the navigation bar.

• In the center of your Homepage you will find the latest updates from your communities.

• On the right side, you will find your Profile Card

• On the left you will see useful links and reminders.

To access your Communities, navigate to Communities>My Communities in the navigation bar. To see which communities you are able to join, navigate to Communities>All Communities. 

Click on the community you want to access, this will take you to the Community Home. This will show you an overview of the activity happening in that community.

From here you can see recent activities and navigate to Discussions/Threads, Library, Events, or Members. Not every community will utilize all features, but these are four key ones to checkout.

• Discussion/Threads - Participate and start new conversations with colleagues in your community.

  • Click on a thread to see the original post and any follow-up discussion. They are numbered to help you keep track of the order. 1. Is the original post.

• • Add to the conversation by clicking Reply next to the post, write a question or share information other community members might find beneficial and select Post.

• Library - Review or add any pertinent resources to this community. Library are organized by folders. To add a new resources, click on the Create Entry button. To keep things organized, make sure to select the appropriate folder for the resource.

• Events - Check out any upcoming community events. If you want to see a list of all AACRAO upcoming events, navigate to AACRAO Events>AACRAO Events Calendar.

• Members - Find a list of all current members in the community. If you are an AACRAO member, you can also search for a specific member in any community using the Exchange Directory in the top navigation bar.

Review your Profile

Much like Facebook and LinkedIn, your AACRAO Exchange account includes a profile, where you can perform a number of actions like:

• viewing your profile information,

• updating your profile picture,

• configuring privacy settings and email preferences,

• and more.

To access your profile, click your user portal at the top-right, followed by Profile.

Available Profile Options

My Profile

This is your primary profile, where you can share any information about yourself you'd like to your fellow community members to know, such your bio, education history, professional associations, job history, and honors/awards. If you need to update your contact details, click on the Pencil icon next to Contact Details. (This is only available on your laptop or desktop. Please allow up to one day for this to update in the AACRAO Exchange.)

My Connections

To make it easy to view and message your contacts (people you've chosen to connect with), these personal connections are accessible from the My Connections menu. Included are four pages:

• Contacts - Here, you can see each user you've connected with, either by sending invitations they've accepted or by accepting theirs.

• Networks - Users who share a characteristic in common, such as living in the same state or sharing a previous or current employer are automatically grouped in a common list called a network. On your Networks page, you can view the networks you belong to, along with the total number of users in each. Clicking a network's Members button allows you to view everyone belong to it, allowing you to easily connect with others you already share a commonality with.

• Communities - This page lists each community you belong to, making it easy to quickly access them.

• Following - This page lists all of the content you've followed across your community, providing a one-stop shop for you to quickly jump to the content you're interested in.

My Contributions

The pages in this menu make it easy for you to view and access every piece of content you've contributed.

• Summary - This page provides a breakdown of your earned achievements and points, along with a graph providing a breakdown of all the content you've contributed, color-coded by type. You can click the graph and its index to see the associated content.

• Achievements - This page lists your earned Badges and Ribbons to you and others who visit your profile. In essence, it's a "trophy case" for those who engage in gamification, and helps to promote additional incentive to continue contributing by also showing Badges and Ribbons you've not yet earned.

• List of Contributions - This page shows all of your contributed content in a single, scrollable list.

My Account

From the My Account section, you can manage user preferences and privacy settings.

• Privacy Settings - While site staff set the default privacy settings for your profile information, you can update them at any time, giving you complete freedom over what personal information you want visible to other users viewing your profile.

• Email Preferences - This is where you set the email address where you'd like to receive email communications from across your site. In addition, you can control what email messages you want to receive at this address by toggling the various email categories to YES or NO.

  • NOTE: You will always receive these messages in your account profile inbox, regardless of these settings: Opting-out only controls whether a category's associated messages are sent to your listed email address.

• Community Notifications - On this page, you can manage your community email notifications.

  • To get an email notification every time someone posts in a community, set the Discussion Email to Real Time.

  • To get one email a day with all your communities' updates, set the Discussion Email to No Email and check the box for Consolidated Daily Digest.

• Discussion Signature - Here, you can use the available variables to create your default Discussion signature that will be added to the bottom of each of your Discussion posts.

My Inbox

Your private inbox stores all of the messages you've received from other members, as well as the notifications you've received from various system-generated prompts, like when an admin impersonates you, another user has commented on one of your uploaded files or blog articles, someone has replied to one of your Discussion posts, etc. 

Inbox Overview (see image above)

1. Your inbox is divided into four categories: Inbox, Sent Items, Contact Requests, and Community Invitations. (The Inbox tab shows all messages, including contact requests and community invitations).

2. The search bar enables you to quickly locate specific types of messages or all messages from a specific person, or of a specific title. 

3. Mark as read or unread and delete selected messages (if you want to delete all messages at once, check the ALL box to select them all).

4. Click Compose to create a message to send to the private inbox of another user. Note that you can only send a private message to a single user at a time.

Mark for Moderation

This option is available to all members, both admins and non-admins alike, enabling everyone to help moderate a community's content.

Navigate to the post or resource that you think violates the Community Guidelines. On the right-side, using the drop down menu, select Mark As Inappropriate.

• The drop-down for a library post is next to the blue Actions button

• Next to a discussion or Q&A post, the Reply button has the same drop down option to Mark as Inappropriate.

Upon selecting it, the content is sent to the moderation queue where an admin can decide whether to approve the moderation request to keep it in moderation or reject it to add it back to the discussion.