--- 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/customer-service-management/communities/r\_setup-communities-admin.html release: brazil product: Communities classification: communities topic_type: reference last_updated: "2026-09-10" 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. **Important:** Starting with the Brazil release, Communities is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer installed on new instances but will continue to be supported. For details, see the [Deprecation Process \[KB0867184\]](https://support.servicenow.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0867184) article in the Now Support Knowledge Base. ## 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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/customer-service-management/communities/copy-permissions-from-parent-forum.md). - **Debug user permissions** [Debug user permissions](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/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/brazil/markdown/platform-user-interface/guided-setup.md). **Parent Topic:**[Configuring communities](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/brazil/markdown/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]()