--- title: Community setup guide for admins description: Define your requirements with community and forum stakeholders and set up your forums for community users to start creating content. locale: en-US canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/customer-service-management/communities/r\_setup-communities-admin.html release: australia product: Communities classification: communities topic_type: reference last_updated: "2026-03-12" reading_time_minutes: 6 breadcrumb: [Configuring communities, Communities, Customer Service Management] --- # Community setup guide for admins Define your requirements with community and forum stakeholders and set up your forums for community users to start creating content. ## Requirements The roles required to define requirements and set up forums include sn\_communities.admin or sn\_communities.forum\_admin. ## Before you begin - **Meet with the stakeholders** |Stakeholder|Responsibilities| |-----------|----------------| |Forum administrators|Define and oversee the forum processes for day-to-day operations related to topic creation, user management, and moderation.| |Community administrators|Configure advanced settings for Communities features.| |Community users|Contribute content in the form of questions, answers, blogs, and comments.| - **With stakeholders, determine your community requirements** - Who are the consumers of the community content? - Which content types can users contribute? - Who can contribute content and who should have read-only access? - What should the names of the initial forums be? - Within these forums, what should the names of the initial topics be? - Which keywords should be banned? - How should the system moderate content and users? - What should the default notifications that users receive for various community activities be? ## What to do Use the following steps as guidance to setting up your community. 1. Create a forum user: [Create a forum user](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/add-user.md) to use to define memberships to a forum. 2. Create a permission: [Create a permission](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/create-permission.md) to use to define a user's access to a forum and its content types. 3. Add access and content types to your permission: [Add access types to a permission](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/define-access-type-permission.md) to determine the access that users have to certain forums and content. 4. Create a forum: [Create a forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/create-forum.md) to provide a place for users to share content and configure the forum to allow registered users to request access to join. 5. Configure content types for a forum: [Configure content types for a forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/add-content-type-to-forum.md) to define which types of content to use in a particular forum. 6. Create a forum permission: [Create a forum permission](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/create-forum-permission.md) by adding a forum user and a permission to a forum. If required, perform the following actions: - **Invite users to join the forum** [Invite users to become members of a forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/invite-users-forum.md) to encourage greater community involvement. - **Create permission exceptions** [Create a permission exception](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/manage-permission-exceptions.md) for users who require specific permissions for a forum. - **Copy permissions** - [Copy permissions from a forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/copy-permissions-from-another-forum.md) to copy all permissions and content types from one forum to another. - [Copy permissions from a parent forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/copy-permissions-from-parent-forum.md). - **Debug user permissions** [Debug user permissions](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/debug-user-permissions.md) to investigate and diagnose problems with user access to forums. ## Next steps [Create a topic](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/create-topic.md) for users to create and share content. [Add a topic to a forum](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/add-topic-to-forum.md) so that users can associate content to that topic. [Moderate a community](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/moderate-communities.md) to set up how the system moderates content and users. ## Using guided setup to implement Communities Communities guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help you configure Communities on your ServiceNow instance. To open Communities guided setup, navigate to **Community** > **Administration** > **Guided Setup**. For more information about using the guided setup interface, see [Using guided setup](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/platform-user-interface/guided-setup.md). **Parent Topic:**[Configuring communities](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/customer-service-management/communities/configure-communities.md) **Related topics** [Community content types]() [Community feedback types]() [Community access types]() [Platform Analytics Solutions for Communities]() [Migrate Social Q&A data to Communities]() [View community logs]() [View community feedback and bookmarks tables]() [Create a case from a discussion]() [Enable knowledge harvesting]() [Activate Communities plugins]() [Configure community content types]() [Configure video sources for a community]() [Configure community forums]() [Forum and user permissions management]() [Configure the community profile]() [Create community Terms and Conditions]() [Enable users to self-register to a community]() [Moderate a community]() [Administer gamification]() [Community Service Portal]()