Communities are databases of identities associated with each channel. Identities allow agents to post messages to various channels within the Engage Digital platform. Before you create a channel, you’ll need to create a community for each type of channel being used.
Once created, a community can be used by several different channels of the same digital or social media type.
For example, if you have multiple Facebook accounts, each Facebook channel can use the same community.
Extra value mapping
You can use communities to configure the data that will automatically populate the customer record. This feature is called extra value mapping, and it allows you to leverage data that may already be present or defined in your business, such as in your social media channels, or customer relationship management application.
This data can include keys that are associated with either a standard or custom field.
For example, you decide to collect data from the
customer_id
field in your Apple Messages for Business community. You create a
Customer Number
custom field to hold this data in
Digital > Custom Fields
. You then map this key to a
Customer Number
field for your community in
Admin > Channels > Community Profiles
. Your customer record will then report the data from the
customer_id
key in your
Customer Number
field.
Communities that require an access token
To connect to certain communities such as X/Twitter or digital communities on the platform, the platform requires you to provide an API access token when creating the community. You may configure API access tokens by selecting
Dev Tools > API access tokens
in the left-hand navigation bar.