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Shared drafts: a new collaborative editing experience in Guru

Hi Guru Community! Many of you have asked for this feature, so I’m excited to let you know that we began releasing collaborative editing in Guru this morning. Thanks to the feedback shared in posts like Indicate when two people are editing a Card, Real-time collaboration on Guru Cards, and Implement shared drafts, we created a new Card editing experience that will let authors collaborate on content, right within Guru.We understand that SMEs and authors often need to get feedback, iterate, and refine what they've written before publishing it. With this new functionality, you can say goodbye to workarounds and keep the process of content collaboration inside of Guru. Shared drafts are available for both newly created and pre-existing Cards, so the whole process of knowledge management can take place right within Guru. The experience should feel similar to other apps you’ve used:Authors working together on a draft.Shared drafts open up a whole new world of publishing workflows! For example, an author can write a draft of a Card, share that draft with someone who can approve and verify it, and then let that approver publish the Card. When it comes to updating existing Cards, we’re making it easier for authors to let readers know what’s changed. Authors can choose to add some context before publishing, so readers that follow Cards can get a TL;DR update before opening the Card. Anyone with access to the Card can also review this note in Card Details.Here’s what’s changing with shared drafts:Users will no longer have their own individual drafts of existing cards.  There will be NO automatic update for existing drafts. Individual drafts of existing cards will be available until November 30, 2023. Individual draft owners can delete, copy, and publish these drafts as necessary before then. These changes will be communicated in-app leading up to the deletion of these drafts after November 30, 2023. You will be able to share drafts of new Cards that you made before this release began if you’d like. Drafts of new Cards that you created before this release will not be removed in November. Drafts will auto-save (just like the editing experience in apps like Google Docs).  The “Save a draft" button no longer appears. The editor will be in full-screen (vs. in an overlay). A new Publish modal will make it clearer whether an author wants to verify the Card and notify followers of the changes.  This modal includes an open text box so publishers can notify followers with a summary of changes to the Card. In the Drafts area of Tasks, you will see collaborators listed next to each Draft, if there are any. Revision history on Cards will show publish change notes and collaborators on that draft. We're consolidating the actions related to publishing a card to the top right of the Card.  We’ve added new filters to the Drafts area of Card Manager. How are you planning to use shared drafts? Let us know how this feature will help your team by leaving a comment on this post!

Related products:Card Creation

Introducing Workspaces: Separate Guru instances you can share knowledge across

Greetings Guru Community!Today we launched Workspaces: a feature that gives you the control and flexibility to manage multiple teams, brands, partners, etc. in their own Guru instance, while giving you the ability to share your knowledge across them.  Each Workspace will have separate:Users  Billing Workspace name  Theme colors (if you choose to customize) Dashboard right rail (featured cards + content widget) What can you do across Workspaces:Share knowledge Collections - Shared Collections will be read-only  Send Announcements  Here are some examples of how Guru customers are using Workspaces:Sandbox trial: If you’d like to start with content, there’s no risk of messing up your existing team/Workspace. You can also use this as a way to try out features that you’re not ready to switch on for your main workspace (like Answers or Assist). Expand Guru to a new team at your company: Any new Workspace you create, will begin as a 30 day free trial. You can share some collections from your existing Workspace with the new team, giving them a realistic Guru experience with company knowledge already built in. Subsidiaries, multiple brands, or new acquisitions: Reduce noise and maintain control with separate Workspaces that contain relevant knowledge, users, and custom branding.  BPOs or Partners: Create multiple Workspaces to keep separate login/security, and billing, while sharing relevant knowledge across them. We’d love to hear how you’re using Workspaces! Leave a comment here to share. 

Related products:Guru Administration

Updates to popovers on images in Cards

Hi (again) everyone 👋I wanted to highlight a small set of UX improvements that we finished releasing today. With these updates, we’ve improved the usability of the popovers that appear on images contained in Cards. They also clean up confusing icons and buttons and give editors the ability to add alt text without having to use Markdown. If you’ve been keeping a close eye on things you’ll know the alt text update was released a few weeks ago, we’re including it here to make sure more teams are aware of that change!Here’s what’s changing for editors:The download button now downloads images instead of opening them in a new tab. Use the magnifying glass button to see the image at a larger size. Rename the file by clicking on the name of the file. (The name is no longer a link to view the image at a larger size).  A “refresh” icon has replaced the pencil icon for when you need to replace the image. A new “Alt text” button makes it easy to add alt text to the image for people using screen readers. Popover for editors. Here’s what’s changing for viewers:For most images there will be no popover. The buttons will appear in the top right corner of the image on hover. A popover will appear for very small images where the buttons wouldn’t fit. File names will no longer appear because we believe they aren’t useful for most viewers and for cards with many images they can be distracting.  Popover for viewers. We hope these updates make it easier to work with images in Guru!

Related products:Card CreationUser Experience
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Use Assist to create content from scratch + more!

Hi Guru Community!Big news today: you can now create new content or edit existing content using custom prompts with Assist. Our existing out-of-the-box actions – such as adjusting tone to make it more conversational or simplifying vocabulary – are still available. But now, you’ll also be able to tell Assist exactly what you want it to do - whether it’s producing content from scratch or refining the knowledge you’ve already written. This new enhancement will give you and other authors on your team the flexibility to create and edit knowledge in ways that fit your company’s specific needs.  Here are a few examples of using custom prompts within Assist:Editing existing knowledge:In the past, you may have used Assist to edit your writing or existing content. For example, you may have selected a paragraph, used Assist to refine/formalize, and then inserted the suggested improvements. But, you also wanted to adjust the tone and simplify vocabulary, which meant using Assist multiple times, performing each action one after the other.With custom prompts, you can have Assist perform all of your intended  improvements and edits in one shot with something like “Refine the flow of this text, then adjust the tone to be conversational, and add a summary to the top of it"Creating knowledge from scratch:You’ve asked an SME on your team to create a card on design best practices, but starting with a blank card can be intimidating. It can be even more intimidating if your SME is a novice writer and not sure where to start. But now they can use Assist to help them by using a custom prompt like: "Create an outline that walks through product design best practices" "Write me a few paragraphs on product design and best practices to keep in mind"From there, your SME has a solid jumping off point to edit and share out their knowledge.  While we encourage you to experiment with custom prompts for yourself first, we also wrote a best practices guide you can reference here.What type of custom prompts are you using? Share in the comments below! 

Related products:Card Creation
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Guru’s navigation and hierarchy: simplified and standardized

Hey Community 👋We’ve heard from our users that the hierarchy of Board Groups, Boards, and Sections can make it challenging to organize your content in Guru. Each level behaves a little differently, and users can’t store Cards at some of these levels.  That’s why as of today today, Guru has migrated all teams to a familiar “foldered” structure. The Board Groups, Boards, and Sections you’ve already created are now folders. This means you can move Cards to any level of the hierarchy–including storing Cards at the Collection level. This new hierarchy will make it easier to organize your content, as well as making it easier for users to browse and find what they need. Here’s what’s changed:Your existing Board Groups, Boards, and Sections have been converted into folders. Your content hasn’t moved. You can start moving Cards to any level of the hierarchy. Collections have an updated, cleaner appearance that removes the Board Group, Board, and Section icons. The Cards Not on a Board area at the bottom of each Collection has changed: If you have zero Cards not on a Board, this area will no longer appear. If you have one or more Cards in this area, it has been converted into a new folder labeled “[Legacy] Cards Not on a Board.” You can move Cards out of this folder and delete the folder when you’re done reorganizing. The drag and drop experience will be smoother and more consistent. We’d love to hear how you’re using the new, flexible, foldered version of Guru! Leave a comment here and share your thoughts. 

Related products:User Experience
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New analytics experience: more insights, more context, and new benchmarks

Hi Guru Community! I’m happy to share the news that analytics has gotten a major upgrade, and users on Builder plans and above can see the glow-up today! We’ve kept all the reports you’ve come to rely on, plus we’ve added a whole host of new insights as well as best practice benchmarks so you have context for your company’s usage patterns. Whether you want to drill down into a team’s or an individual employee’s engagement with company knowledge, see what features and integrations are getting the most usage, or understand the performance of announcements over time, the new analytics experience will get you the insights you need, faster than ever. Analytics are now organized into three categories so different types of stakeholders can understand how Guru is being used:Knowledge Health: admins, champs, and knowledge managers can see the overall health of info stored in Guru plus usage stats. Guru Impact: admins, champs, and leaders can understand the strategic influence of Guru by seeing who's using what features and information. Performance: shows overall performance of Guru and allows team managers to drill down and see how their teams (Groups in Guru) are using the app. We’re especially excited to share that we’ve added benchmarks to several charts so you can see how your team is performing against knowledge management best practices. You’ll see benchmarks for Verification Score and Total Adoption, giving you an actionable jumping-off point to improving your overall Guru health.  On-Card analytics have also been improved in this release. On every Card, you’ll be able to see views, favorites, and follows over time. We’re also introducing the ability to see where people are viewing Guru Cards–whether it’s in the web app, in the extension, or in Slack or MS Teams. Admins will also be able to see Card views by user, right on the Card. You’ll notice a couple of housekeeping changes in this release:Analytics navigation has been moved to the left, so it’s consistent with navigation across Guru. Trust Score has been renamed to Verification Score to better reflect what’s being measured. If you’re using scheduled reports, you’ll need to set up new ones to correspond with the new charts. You’ll receive communications with help on how to do this.If you have feedback on the new analytics experience, please log it in the Product Feedback section of the Community. We’d also love to hear how you’re using analytics in Guru. Drop us a comment on this post and share your story!

Related products:Analytics
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Slack + Guru: More powerful than ever with Assist

Hi Guru community! We have a two part announcement today to cover all the goodness of our latest feature, Assist. Assist is a feature powered by generative-AI that helps to refine and edit your writing. Not only do you have the power of Assist directly in Guru, but we've also added its summarization abilities directly into our Slack integration. If you’re using the Guru Slack app, you’re probably familiar with this workflow: You come across a Slack message or a thread that contains knowledge that should be added into Guru You click on the message to either create a new card or update a card through the Guru integration  The raw text is pulled into a card, which typically requires some cleanup and refinement  You publish or update the Guru cardNow, with the power of Assist, you can wave goodbye to step 3. Assist will automatically summarize or create an FAQ format for you, removing the frustration of editing and cleanup for you and your SMEs. Looking for an even better way to identify knowledge gaps and get them into Guru, without manually scanning through your Slack channels? Guru’s Trending Topics for Slack is the AI-powered solution that sifts through your busiest Slack channels and delivers knowledge nuggets directly to your inbox. Not using Trending Topics yet? If you have the Guru Slack integration, all you need to do is: Subscribe by selecting which Slack channels you’d like the Trending Topics digest to include. Select when you want to receive your digest, and how often. And, you’re done. Guru will deliver Trending Topics digest to you directly in your Slack app. When you find a topic that includes vital knowledge that should be in Guru, you can simply create or update an existing card right within Slack, and automatically have Assist summarize or create an FAQ format of that information. With Trending Topics + Assist, you can discover knowledge gaps and get them added into Guru with ease - no more manual work of sifting through channels, or cleaning up and summarizing long Slack threads.  

Related products:Apps and Integrations
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Assist is here: Empower authors to create and share knowledge with AI

Hi Guru Community!The wait is over! Assist, powered by generative AI, is now available in beta to all customers. Authors can use Assist to help them edit, adjust, improve, and bring clarity to the knowledge they've created. You can access Assist when you edit a card in the web platform, applying it to the entire card’s content, or highlight specific text and use Assist to refine that selection.So what can you do with Assist?Summarize: Add a summary to the top of your card for easier readability, and empower your readers with up-front context. You’ll be able to choose from:Quick summary Detailed summary Bulleted list Numbered listImprove: Apply a variety of improvements to your knowledge, including:Fix spelling and grammar Simplify vocabulary and remove jargon Refine and formalize Decrease wordsAdjust Tone: Assist can help adjust the tone of your writing without losing your message or voice. Here are the tones you can apply to your knowledge:Conversational Direct Empathetic Professional WittyTranslate: Have Assist automatically translate knowledge into another language:Chinese English French German Japanese Spanish But wait, there’s more! The power of Assist is also available in Slack to help take Slack messages and threads and turn them into digestible knowledge that you can add instantly into Guru. Read more about Assist in Slack here.We are working on some exciting updates to Assist over the coming months including the ability to add custom Assist prompts, and empowering card readers with Assist functionality, so stay tuned!  If you have any feedback on Assist in the meantime, please share them in the Product Feedback area. 

Related products:Card Creation
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A leaner, cleaner Chrome browser extension experience

Hey Guru Community! Starting today, you’ll see that the Guru Chrome extension has received an update to make it simpler and faster to use. We see the browser extension as an important part of Guru’s promise to work where teams are already working. That’s why we’ve updated the extension so users can focus on the actions they use most frequently: Creating new cards Search for cards Seeing recently viewed cards, favorites, and new cards Getting suggestions (Knowledge Triggers, pinned cards, AI Suggest Text) Reading announcements  This simplified extension makes room for exciting feature updates we’re currently working on. First up on our priority list is revisiting Knowledge Triggers so it’s easier to push proactive knowledge to your teams over top of the apps they use everyday. More news on that as the work moves forward! Part of this project has been improving the accessibility of the extension. With this release, you will see improved keyboard and screen reader support within the extension. As part of the extension redesign process, we took a look at things we could clean up. As a result, some actions have been removed from the extension. Don’t worry–you can still do all of these things in the web app! Here are the actions with very low engagement in the browser extension that have been removed: "Collections" link and icon from the top nav Ability to browse Collections in the extension "My Tasks" link and icon from the top nav Ability to look at and respond to tasks in the extension "More" dropdown from the Cards menu "Ask an Expert" button  If you have ideas for the extension, we’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the Product Feedback area of the Community.

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Guru’s New Editor Is Live and a Peek at What's Next 🎉

Hi Guru Community! I’m here to share an update that I know is important to a number of you: as of yesterday, Guru’s new editor has shipped to all Guru accounts and users 🎉. It’s been a long process, and we appreciate your patience as we worked through what’s been a very complicated undertaking.With this release, we’ve removed several friction points and squashed some pesky bugs. Here are a few highlights: No more empty placeholders: When users insert elements into their Cards, Guru will no longer insert an empty placeholder element before they’ve finished the insert flow. This reduces the amount of placeholder content that accidentally gets published and provides a cleaner experience when a user decides not to finish inserting an element in the middle of the flow. Consistent linked Card styling: The titles of linked Cards will always appear, even if the user doesn’t have access to the Card. This removes the red error text that used to appear when a user did not have access to a linked Card. But don’t worry! When a user clicks on a link to a Card they don’t have permission to see, they won’t be able to open it. Improved table functionality: We've made column resizing more intuitive, with the columns resizing as you drag them rather than when you release your cursor. It’s also now possible to have blocks inside of table cells, including lists! Better support for IMEs: for teams who add content to Guru in languages like Japanese or Korean, improved support for IMEs means a much smoother experience. Additionally, Grammarly has been re-enabled for Guru. The new editor works much better with Grammarly so you can now rely on this trusted tool again while working on content in Guru. While those improvements are great, the real goal of this release was to take an important foundational step that unblocks us from developing and releasing new features, faster. For example, Guru’s upcoming Assist feature was built on the new editor. Up next, our priority is creating a more collaborative editing and content creation experience, all while staying true to Guru’s simple, intuitive UX. Community super-users will notice that the shared drafts and collaborative editing product suggestions have been scheduled and the inline comments suggestion has been accepted, so that’s a sneak peek into where we’re focused right now!If you have any top-of-mind editor suggestions, please share them in the Product Feedback area and help us prioritize what’s next.

Related products:Card Creation
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New Org Chart: Visualize relationships between Guru users (plus more employee profile updates!)

Hi again! I’m back with an update to our new employee profiles feature. We built employee profiles to underscore the fact that behind every piece of Guru content is a person at your company who’s responsible for that information. They invested the time to record that knowledge, share it, and make sure it stays up to date. Now with the new org chart feature, you can see how these knowledge superstars fit into the company and help move your organization towards its shared goals. The org chart that lets employees quickly see how people within your company are related to each other, alongside the context of their areas of expertise.We believe that when you make it easy to see the “who” behind the “what” of company knowledge, relationships are strengthened, collaboration gets stronger, and engagement goes up. It’s a big win for internal comms and knowledge management!You can access the org chart by clicking the link in the top left navigation menu.Here’s what you need to know to make sure your org chart is populating correctly: Employees need to specify their manager in their profile for the org chart to populate relationships.  The fastest way to do this is through an HRIS sync. This will automatically populate employees’ profiles with their manager’s information. If you don’t yet have an HRIS sync, you will need to manually add managers for each employee. Employees can do this themselves by editing their profiles, or an admin will need to manually edit employees’ profiles and select the correct manager. Read more about the org chart in the help center. In addition to adding the org chart visualization, we also added a couple of new things to the profiles page: Slack profile link: Accounts with the Slack integration installed will see links to employees’ Slack profiles in their Guru profile. It’s a great way to go from identifying an expert to opening a conversation with them. Pin Cards to your profile: Employees can customize their profiles with their choice of Guru Cards (whether they’re the author or not). Share projects you’re working on, highlight areas of expertise, and help your colleagues learn what’s most important to you by selecting relevant Cards. You can also search and view profiles in the extension! This means that you’ll be able to search and find the same information in both the extension and the web app.Here’s how profiles will show up in the extension: Search results in the drop-down results menu will show a list of Cards and employee profiles that match your criteria. When you type in a keyword and hit enter, you’ll see a tab with Card results and a tab labeled People that shows employee profile results. Click on an employee profile from either the drop-down results menu or the People tab, and the profile will open just like a Card. Read more about employee profiles in the help center.  

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New Weekly Insights email: Personalized, actionable updates on can't-miss knowledge, expired Cards, and more

Hi Guru Community! Starting next week, all Guru users will receive a weekly insights email on Mondays that includes a roundup of knowledge and updates they may have missed. This email will replace the verification digest email in hopes of providing more valuable, can’t-miss knowledge, while also surfacing expired or close to expired Cards that need action. The email will include three sections: Your curated updates: A highlight of the week’s top priorities. This section can include: Cards you’re a verifier of that are expired  A Card that you’re a verifier that’s close to expiring (within the next 7 calendar days) Updates to Cards you follow that you have not yet read New Cards from authors you follow that you have not yet read Cards just for you: Personalized recommendations that can include:  Personal recommendations (“Recommended for you”) that you have not yet read New featured (pinned) Cards from your team (featured within the past 2 weeks) that you have not yet read This week’s most viewed Cards from your team that you have not yet read Stay up-to-date: What you may have missed. This section can include:  A summarized reminder of any outstanding unread announcements (company wide and team specific) Users can unsubscribe from the weekly insights email (or all Guru emails) at any time. Please note that to keep your inbox tidy, users will only receive these emails on the weeks that they have items to catch up on (all caught up = no email). Learn more about the weekly insights email in our Help Center.

Related products:Guru AdministrationUser Experience
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Trending Topics for Slack, new and improved: Share insights with teammates, send digests on demand, and more!

Last month, we released Trending Topics for Slack, a new tool to surface conversation trends in your busiest channels, identifying where knowledge gaps may exist in Guru. We have been thrilled with the engagement we have seen thus far, having heard from many Guru authors about how helpful it has been in saving time and elevating trends that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and buried behind a slew of Slack threads.At the same time, we have also heard from many Guru authors about all the ways that Trending Topics could improve, so we were eager to get back to work to ensure the best possible experience. More specifically, we are excited to announce the following improvements geared toward not only identifying trends in your busiest channels, but doing so efficiently and across your entire team. Share trends with teammates: Every Guru Author is able to create own Trending Topics subscription, following the specific channels that are most applicable to their role or area of expertise. However, we know that sometimes, trends can pop up that might be more applicable to someone else on your team. Using this new share functionality, you can quickly and easily share trends, and their associated messages and threads, with specific teammates or relevant Slack channels. Quickly and easily exclude trends using the “Excluded Keywords” list: We know that we’re not going to get it right every time. Despite our best efforts and cutting edge artificial intelligence, your Trending Topics digests might sometimes include trends that you already know about, have already addressed, or are just not relevant to your knowledge management strategy. When this happens, you can now quickly and easily add those trends to your “Excluded Keywords” list directly from your digest, ensuring that you won’t see them again in future reports. Send the the digest ad hoc: After updating your Excluded Keywords, you can also now jump back into the report and re-run your report without having to wait until the next scheduled run. Get those insights whenever you need them, on demand! We hope these improvements make your life a little easier, but we’re not done here! We have more improvements in the works, but of course, we’d love to keep hearing what you think. Drop a comment on this post and let us know about your experience!And if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, head over to Slack and subscribe now! ​​If you have any questions, you can read more about this feature in the Help Center.

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Employee Profiles: Connect the “who” to the “what” of company knowledge

Hey Community 👋Today, we’ve released employee profiles, a new feature designed to connect information about employees to the company information you’re already storing in Guru. Every Guru user has an employee profile that shows who the person is, their contact information, the Cards they’ve published, and how they fit in your organization.Employee profiles show the people behind the company knowledge stored and surfaced in Guru. Connecting “who” and “what” unlocks insights that lead to more effective conversations, deeper collaboration, and better business outcomes. When an employee needs to collaborate with a person they don’t frequently work with, employee profiles help them get a sense of who they are, what they work on, and where they fit in the organization so they can work effectively together and more easily build a working relationship. New employees can get a sense of who everyone is from day one. We think of employee profiles as a way to elevate the experts within your company, adding a human layer to your company knowledge that’s extra-important for hybrid and remote teams!Users can find employee profiles using the search bar and entering a colleague’s name. Employee profile search results will be visually separated from Card search results, making it easy to see which type of content is being surfaced. Employee profiles can also be accessed by clicking on a user’s name that appears as an author, verifier, commenter, or announcement sender. Users can edit their employee profiles by clicking on the user icon in the upper right corner of the Guru web app and selecting My Profile.Learn more about employee profiles in the Help Center.We’re also introducing a new HRIS integration with this release that’s available on Builder plans and above.This helps HR leaders and employees keep their information in Guru in sync with their records. Learn about the HRIS integration in this Community post.We’ll be continuing to invest in employee profiles in the coming months, and we want to build this feature in a way that will be most beneficial to our users. Let us know how you plan to use employee profiles by commenting below, and post your ideas for future updates in Product Feedback.

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My Library: See favorite, followed, recently viewed, and recently created Cards all in one place

Hi Guru Community! We’ve just released My Library, a new feature that helps employees stay on top of the knowledge they need by making it simple to find the Guru content they’ve curated for themselves. In addition, My Library makes it easy for people to find information that is related to their actions (like recently viewed Cards), even if not manually collected by the user. Here’s what users will find on the My Library page:Followed Cards and Authors Favorite Cards and Boards Recently viewed Cards Newly created CardsIn addition to providing a one-stop-shop for viewing info users have indicated is important, My Library makes it much easier to manage the content and people that they’re following. Instead of needing to remember which Cards and authors they follow and managing them individually, users can now go to My Library and see all of their followed information at a glance.We’ve also improved New Cards and Recently Viewed, you can now find up to 200 Cards from the last 30 days in each of these lists–quite a few more than the previous limit of 50 Cards from the last 7 days!Guru’s left navigation will be changing with this release. My Library is being added, and Favorites and Recently Viewed are now accessible within My Library. But don’t worry–we’ve added quick access to menu items that have moved! You can use the following keyboard shortcuts from anywhere within the web app so long as your cursor is not in a text box. If you’re on a Mac, use option instead of alt. For quick access to Followed content, type control + alt + l (lower case L) For quick access to Favorites, type control + alt + f  For quick access to Recently Viewed, control + alt + r For quick access to New Cards, type control + alt + nThese keyboard shortcuts are enabled by default but you can disable them if you prefer with the setting provided when editing your profile. We’ve already got a few updates for My Library that are coming very soon. We’ll be adding the ability to rename, delete, and create favorite Card lists for teams on Builder and higher editions later this month, so stay tuned!We’re going to be continuing to develop My Library to make it even more useful in the future. If you have ideas for the future of My Library, share them in Product Feedback!

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Slack Trending Topics: Guru surfaces trends in your busiest channels

Hi Community members 👋 I’m excited to share details on the latest update to Guru’s Slack app. Slack Trending Topics will surface conversation trends in your busiest channels, identifying where knowledge gaps may exist in Guru. Cut down time spent scanning through channels like #product-questions, #it-help, and #hr-questions (every company has ‘em!) and get hot topics delivered directly to you via Slack DM, on your schedule. This feature uses machine learning to save you and your experts time while turning your busy Slack instance into an info goldmine. During the private beta for this feature, we learned about so many ways to get value from this feature: Help teams get started building Collections: Guru admins can scan channels and pick up the signal on info that should be stored in Collections that don’t yet exist. Want to help your benefits manager document open enrollment processes? Set up a Slack Trending Topics digest and demonstrate where they can get started. Track evolving themes around product questions: Tons of product questions get asked in Slack, so it can be hard to keep up with the most important themes. With Slack Trending Topics, you’ll be able to spend your time wisely by documenting the most important answers. Fight FOMO, stay focused: Let’s face it: it’s difficult to focus on deep work when you’re monitoring Slack channels. Trending Topics helps take some of the burden off your SMEs by surfacing the hottest topics in the busiest channels, so they don’t have to have one eye open for the red dot alert. We’d teased this new feature during the Knowledge Fest Keynote, and starting today, Slack Trending Topics is available to all Guru customers. Here’s how it works: If you have Guru Author or Admin access (the ability to create Cards in Guru) goes to their Home tab in Slack, they will see the option to Subscribe to Trending Topics After clicking “Subscribe,” you will see a window prompting you to choose their Digest Settings. From here they will be able to: Choose specific channels to analyze (maximum of 5 channels per user). The only channels that appear in this dropdown will be those where the Guru Slackbot has already been invited.* Designate which keywords or phrases to ignore If a user is subscribed to Trending Topics, they will also be able to exclude specific keywords or phrases that might create unwanted noise. For example, at Guru we exclude “Guru” and “knowledge base” from our trending topics. Designate a delivery cadence Choose what day/time to receive the digest, and schedule it to arrive every week, 2 weeks, or 4 weeks After clicking “Save,” you’ll receive a DM from the Guru Slackbot confirming: “You have successfully created a scheduled Trending Topics digest. You are subscribed to receive the digest weekly/bi-weekly/monthly on (Day) at (Time) for the following channels: (List of Channels). Your first Digest will be sent on (Day), (Date) at (Time).” When the first Trending Topics digest is sent via a Guru Slack message, you will see the topics discussed in the channels you have subscribed to After saving the Digest, the “Subscribe” button should change to “Manage.” Clicking it will open the same Settings window and allow the user to remove any or all subscriptions. Read more about this feature in the help center.We’re eager to hear how you’re using Slack Trending Topics. Drop a comment on this post and let us know about your experience!*NOTE: By subscribing to Trending Topics, you are authorizing Guru to scan a specific channel for recurring keywords. This is an opt-in feature, so Guru’s Slack app will not be scanning any channels where 1) the bot is not invited and 2) there is no Trending Topics subscription. Users can unsubscribe from Trending Topics at any time, which will remove the Guru Slack app’s ability to listen to messages in that channel.

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Guru Product Updates: 2022 Year in Review

Well, Guru Community: the end of another year is coming right up, which means it’s time to look back on all that has happened in 2022 and reflect on the highlights. And there have been a bunch of highlights when it comes to what we’ve updated in Guru. We’ve picked three of the top focus areas for our product to show just how much of a glow-up Guru has gotten!Search Updates and Machine Learning InvestmentsImproved search results, with filtersWhen companies use Guru to capture and curate company-wide information, they quickly find themselves with dozens of Collections and thousands of individual Cards. Guru’s investments in search and machine learning (ML) are at the core of how we connect people to those thousands of knowledge nuggets when they’re needed.In January, we updated our search algorithm to be more flexible and support future updates to Guru's search function. We quickly followed up with an ML update that allowed Guru to serve up more relevant search results, even when people don’t use exactly the right keyword. To put it another way: Guru gets that you type “WFH” and your company’s documentation spells out “work from home,” and will make sure you get connected with your company’s latest policy. Because Guru’s search is powered by ML, it means that the more people on your team search and successfully find what they’re looking for, the better search gets for everyone, in a way that uniquely suits your company. Once you get search results, you may need help prioritizing them. That’s why we’ve added the ability to sort and filter search results in our web app. And we’ve heard how it’s making an impact on your teams! A Knowledge Manager from a large media company recently shared that 88% of his support team was saving time just by using this new feature.Guru’s ML goes beyond search results. In November, we introduced the “Recommended for You” section on the dashboard, a feature designed to connect people with useful content. Whether it’s recently updated Cards, new Cards, or Cards that someone might not have seen in a while, consider the “Recommended for You” section as another way Guru keeps your knowledge flowing.Revisit the product updates in detail:New search algorithm - a solid foundation for the future A Major Machine Learning Update for Search New: filters for search results in the web app Dashboard update: personalized recommendations “Recommended For You”AnnouncementsAnnouncement insightsOne of the powerful things about Guru is that it’s designed to keep evergreen information fresh while making it easy to share point-in-time communications. Announcements are a key part of Guru’s internal communications feature set, because they let leaders push information to the right groups of people to make sure information is being seen and acted on. When you use the announcements feature, you create a feedback loop between leaders and readers. Leaders can quickly see who is interacting with announcements, and readers can share comments and reactions to let leaders know how their messages are landing.Revisit the product updates in detail:Introducing Company-wide Announcements on the Dashboard Announcements updates: new options for tracking engagement, commenting, and notifications Announcements updates: reminders and improved reader experience Schedule your announcements: available now! Announcements Analytics for Internal CommunicatorsDashboard and Customizable GuruCustomizable dashboardYou’ve invested in making Guru your source of truth, and now there are new ways you can make Guru feel even more like your company.The Guru dashboard now features announcements, a customizable right sidebar with areas for company-wide messages and featured Cards, as well as recommended content. This gives everyone in the company one place to go to see what’s most important and relevant, so they can prioritize their work. We’ve also added new ways to customize the appearance of Guru to reflect your brand. Choose custom colors for the web app and pick your own colors for Collections.Revisit the product updates in detail:Introducing Company-wide Announcements on the Dashboard Customize your Dashboard with Custom Text and Featured Cards Dashboard update: personalized recommendations “Recommended For You” Custom colors: make Guru feel more like you! Choose Custom Colors for your CollectionsThat’s a whole lot of goodness for a year of work, and we didn’t even mention the updates in Slack, the ability to follow a Card or author, the navigation improvements, and the new API endpoints that help Guru connect to the rest of your tool stack. We love hearing how you’re using the new and updated features. Do you have a fave Guru update from 2022? Share it in the comments!

Related products:Knowledge Management ToolsNavigation and SearchGuru AdministrationUser Experience
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Follow an Author: stay in sync with your company’s experts

Hello there Community members! The year may be winding down; however, we have one last update for you: this morning we released the ability to follow an author, giving users a new way to stay up to date with the latest knowledge from your company’s subject matter experts. This new feature notifies users every time an author they’ve chosen to follow publishes a new Card. It’s a great way to stay connected with cross-functional colleagues, understand what’s happening in specific areas of the business, and stay in sync with MVPs across teams.As part of this release, we added a new page type to Guru for user profiles. You can see a user’s profile by clicking on the hyperlinked user name at the top of any Card. User profile pages contain the information entered by that user in the Personal Settings section of account setup along with a list of Cards they’ve authored. There’s more to come here, so stay tuned for exciting updates to user profiles in the coming weeks!Here’s how to follow an author:Navigate to a user profile by clicking on the user name hyperlink at the top of any Card.  Click the “Follow” button next to the user’s profile image. You’ll receive a notification in the channel you’ve chosen (Slack, Teams, or email) every time that author publishes a new Card that you have permission to access.Follow an author is a great complement to our follow a Card feature, which allows users to get notified when specific content is updated. It’s also another way to build your culture of knowledge sharing: authors better understand the impact of the information they’re saving in Guru and leaders gain visibility of the MVP authors within your company. Perhaps you’ll discover some unsung heroes amongst your authors!Helpful hints:Every Guru user will have a profile page. You can view your profile by clicking the “My Profile” link in the avatar menu (this used to be called “Edit Profile”). You can edit your profile from the “My Profile” page. Fill in the blanks and help your coworkers better understand your role! If you created your profile a while ago and your profile picture looks fuzzy, head into your profile and upload a new image. This is a legacy issue with image uploads that has since been fixed.Check out Follow an Author in the Help Center to learn more.Who are you planning to follow? Let us know how you and your team are using this feature by leaving a comment below!

Related products:Card CreationNavigation and SearchUser Experience