Read BaanboardTerminology for explainations on key terms and common words.

Introduction

Partner forums aim to provide forum services/hosting to companies and/or organizations who do not possess the resources/skills to setup and maintain a user/developer/staff/support forum of their own. Alternatively some may prefer to take advantage of the experienced and best-in-class services that can be offered through the popular Baanboard.com forum.

A basic definition of partner forums/hosting can be formulated as the existence of 3rd party (partner) driven (sub)-forums integrated into the standard forum portfolio of Baanboard.com.

Baanboard.com has its forums organized in (main) categories (level 1) which allow for logical grouping. Partner forums are situated in one of such main categories and are divided into subcategories of forums (level 2) per partner.

For e.g.:

--- General Topics
+----- General Dicussion and Chat
+----- Board News, Questions & Suggestions
+----- Polls & Surveys

--- Partner Forums
+----- ACME Inc
+----- Foobar Ltd

For example:

Within each forum subcategory (level 2) a partner orgnazation has the freedom to setup any number of sub-forums (level 3) and use these completely as if these forums were its own.

For example:

Motivation

Here are some reasons why partner forums can be beneficial for your organization:

• Baanboard.com is world's most popular and biggest Baan related forum. Partner organizations enjoy the same userbase as Baanboard.com and this facilitates a single sign-on for your Baan customers/users/consultants/developers
• Baanboard.com uses the best-in-class forum software (vbulletin) which provides many advanced forum features and allows for a very flexible approach in forum setup, maintenance and management. Please see the Vbulletin3 Features topic for more information.
• Partner organizations benefit from the high-profile image and visibility of Baanboard.com by incorporating their own forums into Baanboard.com

Partner organizations signing up will receive following benefits :

• the ability to unlimited amount of (sub)-forums in their partner forum section
• the ablity to use custom forum icons (max size: 16 x 16 pixels)
• the ability to place its company/organization logo or webheader on top of their partner forum section. This logo will replace the standard Baanboard.com logo banner. (max size: 480 x 64 pixels)
• a maximum of 5 moderatorships to moderatere their partners forum
• an announcement in the Baanboard.com public calendar and Today's Events section (announcement will last 1 week)
• an announcement in the next Baanboard.com newsletter following the installation of the partner forums. Newsletter are sent out to all members and appear typically once every quarter (no fixed publication date)

For pricing please see the BaanboardServices topic

Partner organizations must adhere to the standard Baanboard.com Disclaimer statement and to the specific Partner Forums Disclaimer statement.

Setup

Access/Permissions

Partner forums are created outside the normal scope of the standard Baanboard forums. This means that by default partner forums will not be visible to the average Baanboard.com user. There are 2 good reasons for this approach:

• Baanboard.com is an independant forum which cares greatly about the content it delivers to its users. We aim not to burden our users with information they do not care about or for which they have no interest.
• Partner forums will typically carry information that is only relevant to (potential) customers of the partner organization.

Keeping partner forums out of sight from the normal Baanboard.com user does not mean that partner forum are inaccessible. On the contrary, by using the flexible system of usergroup permissions offered by the forum software it is very easy to combine transparancy with easy access.

Usergroup permissions are useful as they allow to hide/shield forums or even make a forum totally inaccessible to any number of users who are not part of the group to which a particular forum is assigned to. In conjunction with group permissions we can offer password protected forums which guarantee an even higher degree of granularity in access permissions.

Two types of (user)groups can be used in the setup of a partner forum in order to limit or facilitate forum access:

1. Public partner usergroups

Public partner usergroups are created on the assumption that any user must be able to voluntarily take up or abandon group membership. Typically a partner will have 1 public group created for itself. A user can join a public partner usergroup by adding him-/herself to the group through the Group Memberships section in their User Control Panel. By doing so the user will achieve the following:

• Make the corresponding partner forum(s) visible to him-/herself
• Be allowed to participate in the discussions in the corresponding partner forums.

Note that it is possible for a user to leave a public partner usergroup at any point in time. By leaving a particular public partner group, the user will loose access to its corresponding partner forums and will not see of its related content anymore in the Search, What's new? or Archive section.

Typical use in: forums available to customer of partners for news, support, etc purposes.

2. Private partner usergroups

Private partner usergroups are identical to public partner groups with the single exception that group membership cannot be taken up by a member him-/herself but rather must be assigned by a forum administrator. This gives total control who is allowed acess to both usergroup and corresponding forums.

Typical use in: forums available to small group of predefined people, e.g. staff forum.

An example of forums set up with public partner usergroup, private partner usergroup and a password protected group:

The above image is only true to live if seen by a user who is a member of both the public and private usergroup. If the user is only a member of the public usergroup then he/she will not be able to see or access the bottom two forums.

Layout/Style

Partners forums will (re)-use the standard layout and style of the Baanboard.com site except that the standard Baanboard.com logo/web header may be replaced by a company/organization specific version. This will re-enforce the idea that users are visiting the company/organization forums and not just the regular Baanboard.com forums.

For example:

Disclaimer

• Request approval: Baanboard.com reserves the right to accept or refuse the offer of any partner organization to engage in the Partner Forums scheme.
• Data protection: partner organizations will not receive direct access to the forum database unless specifically permitted by a Baanboard.com administrator. Baanboard.com runs a daily, single-point-in-time backup of its forum resources. Backups are stored both on-line (for fast recovery) and off-line for at least 30 days. Partner organizations will not receive whole or parts of a backup copy of the forum site unless specifically permitted by a Baanboard.com administrator. Baanboard.com provides an Archive section that powers a low-bandwith, text-only version of all forum content. This Archive section can be used as a base for a web indexer/spider program to create a slimmed down and offline version of the original forum content.
• User privacy: partner organizations will not receive access to private information of the Baanboard.com members except for those informations publicly made available by members either through forum messages and/or user profiles.
• Information availability: Baanboard.com provides access to its forum resources at a 'best-effort' basis only. Baanboard.com cannot be held responsible for any type of unscheduled server/application downtime, network outages or any accidental loss of information including those caused by malicious hack attempts.
• Outages: Baanboard.com reserves the right to plan, schedule and execute hardware and software upgrades as it sees fit in order to ensure maximum availability and security of its resources. Scheduled outages will be announced by e-mail at least 2 working days in advance. Partner organizations must provide at least 2 (technical) contacts to receive downtime notifications.
• Indemnifications: Baanboard.com will indemnify the partner organization in case of unscheduled outages by extending the duration of its contractual agreement with Baanboard.com for no extra charge for the amount of days the outage occurred. Under no circumstances will Baanboard.com provide financial refunds.
• Forum Rules: partner organizations are held by the standard Baanboard.com Site Rules for its own partner forums except that:
  • it may allow unlimited use of advertisements
  • it may allow cross-posting
  • it may allow an unlimited amount of attachments per message (although Baanboard.com recommends to limit the use to max 5 per message)
  • it may allow posting in any language
• Termination: at termination of the agreement the partner organization retains the right to choose whether forum content can remain on-line as part of the Baanboard.com forums or whether its partner forums and content must be removed. In case the partner organization chooses the first option then all its partner forums will be permanently locked for use and will become read-only (for reference only)