Community Dojo
Autodesk Group Network Website
  • Welcome to the Community Dojo
  • What's New?
    • NEW Community Conversations
    • ARCHIVE: AU2020 Community Meetups
    • CONTEST: Design a Virtual Background
    • Groups during COVID
  • Best Practice Guides
    • Getting Started with the Guides
    • FIRST: Start with a Simple Spark
    • Starting a Community Group
      • Tips for starting groups
      • Group mission & vision
      • Setting ground rules & etiquette
    • Running a Group
      • Tips for running groups
      • Community management & engagement
      • Partnerships & sponsorship
    • Hosting Events
      • Event strategy
      • Pre-event planning checklist
      • Event facilitation
      • Larger events
      • Event marketing
      • Tips for events
    • Tools for Groups
      • Tips for community tools
      • Tools list & links
      • Survey Results (2020): Community Tools
      • Autodesk's Meetup Pro Network
    • Online Groups
      • Tips for online groups
    • Company Practice Groups
      • Tips for company practice groups
  • Resources for Group Network
    • Benefits Guide
      • Welcome Guide
    • Brand Guidelines for Groups
    • Content & Speaker Database
    • Public Roadmap
    • Group Leader Hub
  • Contribute!
  • Get Support!
  • Creative Commons License
  • About the Autodesk Group Network
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On this page
  • Toolsets specific for Community Groups
  • Group Leader Work
  • Website hosting platforms
  • Social Media
  • Marketing
  • Community Conversation and News
  • Email-based
  • Group chat and collaboration
  • Forums and boards
  • Virtual reality rooms
  • Event Planning & Hosting
  • Virtual events
  • Knowledge, Content, and Code Management
  • Digital whiteboarding, shared notes, etc
  • Publishing Content/ Articles
  • Other resources on the web for choosing tools
  • Engage to improve

Was this helpful?

  1. Best Practice Guides
  2. Tools for Groups

Tools list & links

The goal of this list is to give group leaders a general lay of the land of tools they might consider, based on what other groups are using.

PreviousTips for community toolsNextSurvey Results (2020): Community Tools

Last updated 4 years ago

Was this helpful?

(SURVEY RESULTS 2020 - Top Tools) We launched a group tools survey in October 2020, and you can find a . The results have been added to our list of tools and links as you consider your tech stack.

Toolsets specific for Community Groups

  • Group tools on social media platforms

  • Groups within a Corporate Community

    • If there's demand for this, perhaps Autodesk can provide in the future. We have not heard a demand for this from groups yet.

Inevitably one tool will not meet all of your use cases. You'll likely be using, connecting, and integrating with tools in the categories below.

Group Leader Work

  • Shared documents

  • File storage

  • Scheduling

  • Databases (for members, etc)

  • Polling & Surveys

    • Google forms

  • Task / project management:

Website hosting platforms

If all you do is host events, this could just be an event page (e.g. Meetup, EventBrite)

  • You could use a Meetup.com or other platform to host your group website.

Some examples from the Autodesk Group Network

Social Media

  • etc...

  • Social media management & marketing

    • Sprout, etc...

Marketing

  • Content creation

Community Conversation and News

Help people in the group connect and converse with each other throughout the day and throughout the year.

Email-based

  • Email account for the group (incoming requests, outgoing announcements)

    • Gmail, etc

  • Email listserves

  • Email newsletters

Group chat and collaboration

  • Can give users access to on-demand help or mentorship

  • Can be structured for different discussion topics

  • For some groups, like company practice groups, the ability to ask and answer questions during the workday may be really important.

  • For other groups that aren’t as focused on daily practice, this might be something members check-in on periodically: after work, when they have news or a job to post, or around the time of an event.

    • Pros: easy & intuitive, multiple channels, widely adopted (corporate-friendly), private and public channels + messages

    • Cons: unfriently threaded conversations

    • Pros: multiple channels, private and public channels + messages, recognizes code and can automatically format it

    • Cons: may not be corporate-friendly, does not support threaded conversations, gamer jargon knowledge required.

    • Pros: Microsoft is investing in it and it's starting to be adopted in the workplace by Office 365 users, well integrated with Microsoft Product like Skype, Outlook, OneNote and others.

    • Cons: heavier corporate feel

  • Messaging (single channel)

Forums and boards

Virtual reality rooms

Conversation tools and the Autodesk Group Network

Autodesk does not endorse or provide any particular tool. We support groups using whatever works for them.

In the "All Locations" drop-down, there are filter categories for the following online group conversation tools: Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, VK, WhatsApp

Event Planning & Hosting

  • Ticketing, RSVPs, & event marketing

  • On-site event scheduling + navigation

Virtual events

Digital tools to host and broadcast may include:

  • Virtual Events/ Conferences

  • Virtual meeting are optimized for conversations with a smaller and known audience

  • Webinar platforms are more optimized for presentations with a larger and more anonymous audience

  • Livestream enables an online audience to tap into what’s happening

Knowledge, Content, and Code Management

  • Code repo

  • Wiki or other documentation tools (for more structured or comprehensive bodies of knowledge)

Digital whiteboarding, shared notes, etc

  • Shared files and drives

    • Google Slides + Google Docs

  • Online whiteboards

    Shared notebooks

Publishing Content/ Articles

The group may produce content that you'd like to distribute and make available to help others.

Other resources on the web for choosing tools

  • Websites

  • Blog posts

Engage to improve

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list or detailed comparison. There are many tool comparison resources on YouTube, blogs, and sites like and .

(Khoros is the platform the is on)

Group leaders will probably want a dedicated chat or email channel (see )

(open source)

, , , etc

Decision-making:

(blog) (open source option)

with Github Pages (open source)

(open source)

Some of these include, or are optimized for, blog posts. See also .

Commenting plug-in for websites:

See group .

(Facebook/ Oculus)

You can see all of the online groups within the group finder on the . Groups from throughout the network are using a variety of tools.

Not all tools are digital. For physical events you might want to with things like nametags, sharpies, flip charts, and signage.

- "Airmeet is an all-in-one platform to host immersive events and build real connections, online." Use it for more immersive and interactive formats (workshops, meetups, fairs, summits, conferences, hackathons)

You have a lounge, for example, where people can virtually seat with other people and have a conversation. In the paid Conference, you can setup concurrent sessions, have the lounge and setup some booths for other people or .

Try using the tools during your meetings.

(this Community Dojo website is built on GitBook)

(previously Wikia)

Use content management on your (Drupal is built well for this)

Publish content on a platform or publication that puts your content in a larger body of knowledge (""). Consider...

articles + collections

()

(SessionLab)

(OpenSource.com)

(BlueHost.com)

- for Autodesk Group Network members.

stackshare.io
Capterra
HiveBrite
Ning
LinkedIn Groups
Facebook Groups
Khoros Group Hubs
Autodesk Forums
Bevy
Google docs, sheets, slides, forms
LibreOffice
Google Drive
Dropbox
OneDrive
Doodle
AirTable
SurveyMonkey
Typeform
Asana
Trello
Loomio
Google Sites
Wordpress
SquareSpace
Weebly
Fastpages
Drupal
Disqus
http://www.ukdug.co.uk/
https://www.dfwbiug.com/
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
HootSuite
Buffer
Kapwing
Canva
Google Groups
MailChimp
Slack
Discord
Microsoft Teams
Telegram
WhatsApp
Discourse
StackExchange
AltspaceVR
Horizon
Autodesk Group Network website
Meetup.com
EventBrite
EventZilla
Sched
Airmeet.com
sponsors
Zoom
GoTo Meeting
Google Hangouts
Whereby
GoTo Webinar
Zoom Webinar
Facebook Live
YouTube Live
GitHub
GitBook
DocuWiki
Fandom
Mural
Miro
Microsoft OneNote
Evernote
Notion
platisher
Medium.com
LinkedIn Articles
Autodesk Knowledge Network
AUGI World
submission process
Autodesk University
Capterra
stackshare.io
25 useful free online tools for workshop planning and meeting facilitation
10 top notch community tools
Tools and Resources to Help Build an Online Community
conversation tools
Knowledge, Content, and Code Management
digital whiteboarding and shared notes
website/ blog
summary of the results here
Submit questions, feedback, or suggestions on group/ community tools
Connect with a peer mentor on hosting events
access codes listed here
Become a peer mentor
leaders' advice on social media tools
*Note that the survey was designed to get a quick and rough sense of tool use by group leaders.
create an event hosting toolkit