Common Room workflows
Common Room is a community growth platform that helps manage, engage, and grow digital communities by integrating data across different platforms, identifying members, and reporting trends and sentiment.
The Developer Relations team uses Common Room to aggregate, review, and take action on insights from across our community platforms. It is also used to track trends and community sentiment.
Accessing Common Room
Access is granted through Okta and is billed per individual seat. Currently, there are no available open seats. Additional seats can be purchased via a Zip request.
To request access to Common Room,
- Add your business case and description to this handbook page.
- Once the MR is merged, open an Access Request for Common Room using the
Individual_Bulk_Access_Requesttemplate. - In Step 2, for Justification for this access, please describe and link to your business case for using Common Room.
Temporary access
Temporary access is available for evaluating the potential purchase of a seat for a duration of 3 months. It requires meeting with Common Room for a 30 minute onboarding.
- Open an Access Request using the Individual_Bulk_Access_Request template. Specify that this is a temporary seat for 3 months.
- Open a confidential issue in Developer Evangelism Meta to document temporary seat expiration date.
@sugaroverflowwill schedule a mandatory onboarding meeting with Common Room and deprovision seat in 3 months.
GitLab Data
Common Room doesn’t natively integrate with GitLab. We have a custom Ruby script which runs via a scheduled pipeline to injest data.
Resources
- Common Room’s getting started documentation.
- Common Room’s playbooks for nurturing community.
Business Cases for Developer Relations
Supporting GitLab Contributors and Super Users
Description:
- Monitor segments Heroes, Core Team, and MVPs.
- See what topics are trending and track negative sentiment in those segments.
- Spot potential new contributors based on their activity.
KPI:
- Number of active contributors and engagement rate in each segment.
Outcome:
- Better understanding of the activities and interests of our top contributors, super users, and new, potential super users.
- Insight into various types of contributions.
Community Engagement Tracking
DRI: Fatima Sarah Khalid
Description:
- Review popular discussions across all community platforms.
- Conduct analysis and reporting by creating custom dashboards or exporting reports.
- Track negative sentiments and trending topics.
KPIs:
- Number of active participants and engagement (posts/comments/reactions) across community platforms.
- Overall sentiment analysis of the community.
- Community response rates.
Outcome:
- Understanding the level and types of engagement on our community platforms.
- Highlight popular trends and negative sentiment early.
- Prompt discussions or strategies around low activity or engagement.
Identifying and Monitoring Keyword Trends for Thought Leadership
DRI: Developer Advocacy Description:
- Track trending keywords and conversations via team alerts.
- Evaluate the relevance of these keywords to our community and goals.
- Create and update a keyword bank for reference and future content creation for thought leadership.
KPIs:
- Number and frequency of trending keywords.
Outcome:
- Stay informed about the trending topics within the community.
- Guide content creation based on trending topics and community interest.
Identifying Opportunities for Open Source Program
DRI: Bryan Behrenshausen
Description:
- Monitor potential organizations for the Open Source program.
- Review the activities, trending keywords, and sentiment of existing partners (via segment) to identify potential collaborations.
KPI:
- Percentage of active participation from existing partner organizations.
Outcome:
- Identify potential members and activities for the OSS program.
- Increase the number and quality of collaborations by proactively identifying opportunities.
Identifying Opportunities for the Startups Expansion Program
DRI: Alex Karsten
Description:
- Monitor potential organizations for the Startups program.
- Review the activities, trending keywords, and sentiment of existing partners in Community Programs to identify potential collaborations.
KPI:
- Percentage of active participation from existing partner organizations.
Outcome:
- Identify potential members and activities based on their activity.
- Increase the number and quality of collaborations by proactively identifying opportunities.
New Member Onboarding (Discord)
DRI: Fatima Sarah Khalid
Description:
- Automatically identify new members in the community and send a welcome message, including key resources and community guidelines. Includes options for an automated follow-up.
KPIs:
- Number of new members onboarded and engagement rates.
- Retention rate of new members.
Outcome:
- Smooth transition for new members into the community.
- Potential increase in engagement and retention rates.
Requesting information from Common Room
For requests to extract information from Common Room, you can open a confidential issue in the Developer Advocacy Meta project with the details of your request and assign it to @sugaroverflow. The DevRel team can then execute the query and export the report as a PDF to the issue.
Requests can be for the export of information or for setting up a team alert to Slack. You can learn more about the types of reporting in Common Room’s documentation.
Here are some request-based business cases:
Tracking specific customer engagement
DRI: Jordan Chivell
Description: Sales may wish to gain key information or context on a specific customer. They would like to see a customer’s interaction patterns in the community - posts, comments, key areas of interest, and any queries they may have raised on our community platforms.
Outcome:
- Enhanced understanding of customer behavior within the community.
- Support the sales pipeline generation process by providing key contextual information from the community.
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