Skip to main content
All CollectionsMarketplace Feature Tutorials
User Directory Feature Tutorial
User Directory Feature Tutorial

Leverage the User Directory to customize your user experience and gamify your app with badges.

A
Written by Amr Alshareef
Updated over 2 years ago

The User Directory feature provides an easy way to search and chat with users. This topic explains how to add the user directory feature, which gives you the ability to:

  • Search for user profiles

  • Hold user contact information

  • Initiate chats with users

  • Provide a leader-board with badges

  • Add a sense of gamification to your app

Add the User Directory feature

Adding the User Directory feature involves locating and adding the plug-in, and then configuring the plug-in.

Follow these steps:

  1. In the main menu, click App Components > My Features, then click the Add a new feature button.
    ​

2. The Marketplace page will appear. On the plug-ins page, enter “user directory” in the search field at the top. Learn more about adding features in How to Create and Enable Features in Your Marketplace App.
​

3. Click the + button in the User Directory box.

4. The User Directory configuration page will appear.

Configuring the User Directory feature

The User Directory feature contains a number of tabs that you can configure, including:

  • Content

  • Design

  • Security

  • Tagging

  • Purchase

  • Analytics

  • Language

  • Abuse

Content tab

To automatically provide users with access to this feature, click the Auto enlist all users toggle at the very top of the page.

If you’d rather restrict usage of this feature to users with specific tags, enter those tags in the Only allow users with the following tags field.

User Action

Add user actions here. For more information, see the article How to Create Action Items with the Action Builder.
​

NOTE: You can allow your users to message directly with those listed in the User Directory by adding an action item that links to the Premium Social Wall Inbox.

Design

Under design you will get to choose different layouts you would like your User Directory to display.

Lay Out # 1 - List View

Lay Out # 2 - Horizontal View

Settings

User Settings

Under settings you have the ability to do the following:

  • Auto enlist all users

  • Allow users to view other users' profiles

  • New Badge Push Notifications

    • Send a push notification to directory members when someone receives a new badge

  • User Subtitle Appearance

    • Hide

    • Show Email

    • Show Phone Number

  • Sort users by

    • A-Z

    • Z-A

    • Badge Count

    • Join Date

    • Tag Count

Maps & Filtering

Note: Users who did not fill out their location and age during registration or in their profiles, won't show on the map or in the filter results, additionally both these fields need to be set to public by the app owner.

Under this section, you have the ability to enable Maps & location filtering for your users based on categories created under content.

  • Show Map

  • Enable Filtering

Badges

You can configure the user directory to display badges that correspond to tags that you add to this section.

NOTE: To ensure that your badges appear properly in your app, submit 80 x 80 pixel images. The badges render at a minimum of 18 x 18 pixels.

Add a badge to the user directory by doing the following:

  1. Enter a Badge Name.

  2. Enter a Tag.

  3. Enter a Tag Count. Sorting by the tag count will sort the user directory on users according to the number of total tags (not the number of unique tags). It’s important to understand the difference, since a user can earn the same tag multiple times

  4. Click the + Add button to add the badge.

New Badge Push Notifications

Click the toggle to send a push notification to directory members when someone receives a new badge.

User Sorting

From the drop-down, choose the option that matches your preferences for the sorting of the user directory.

Security

You can require that a user must login to use this feature. By requiring a login, a user must first create an account to access this feature. Optionally, you can restrict access only to users that have specific. See User Management and Tagging article for more information.

Follow these steps to restrict the use of this feature to a user that is logged in to your app:

  1. To require a user login, check the Require Login box.

  2. Check the Require Tags box. This will require that a user is logged in and has at least one tag that corresponds to the tags you enter in the Required Tags section.

  3. In the Give Access When drop-down, choose whether you want to enforce that Users Match Any Tag or Users Match All Tags.

  4. Specify the tags you want to enforce in the Required Tags section.
    ​
    ​


​

Tagging

With tagging, a tag is applied to any user that opens this feature in your app. In the User Management page, you can see a list of each time a tag has been applied to each user. Tagging can be useful in hiding and showing content—or sending custom push notifications to various user segments. See the User Management article for more information.

To add a tag, enter the tag in the Tag Title field and click the Add Tag button.

Purchase

NOTE: Before setting up your in app purchases, go to the Commerce page and setup your products and/or subscriptions. See the User Management article for more information, see the How To Apply An In-App Purchases & Subscriptions the article.

Follow these steps if you want to provide this feature only to users who make a purchase:

  1. Check the Require Purchase box.

  2. Choose either Single purchase or Subscriptions as the minimum requirement (that will apply to all users).

  3. You can add an image to the carousel, which will show preview of the functionality for this feature (a visual aid that indicates how to use this feature). To add an image, click the Add Image button to display the Add Media popup window. You can search for an image in the My Images library, or click on an image in the panel. To upload a new image, click the Browse Images to Add button and choose an image from your computer. Click the Insert Images button to commit your changes.

4. If necessary, edit the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Text field. You may want to change the text from the default “Terms of Use and Privacy Policy”.

5. In the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy URL field, you’ll see the default web for generic terms of use and privacy. Optionally, you can provide another link here. Learn more in the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy article.
​

6. Enter the Promotional Text that invites the users to make a purchase.

7. Choose a Product Name. Products in this list are taken from the entries that have been made in the Commerce > Purchase page.

8. Enter the Success Message that will appear after the user makes a purchase.

9. Enter the Error Message that will appear if there is a problem during a purchase.

10. Other Actions: The Action Builder enables you to link to a variety of different actions such as linking to app content, websites, phone numbers, and more. Learn more in the article, How to Create Action Items with the Action Builder.

Analytics

You’ll find analytics information on this tab. With Analytics, you can:

  • See which plugins have the highest amount of visits

  • See how much through traffic a plugin has had for the last 30 days

  • See how much through traffic a plugin has had for the last 60 and 90 days

  • See which users have used that plugin the most. NOTE: Use this knowledge to incentivize those users to bring more users to your app through rewards.

  • See what time and date a user has accessed the plugin as well as if they’re using an Android phone or an iPhone

For more information, see Plug-in Analytics article.

Language

In the Language tab, you can edit some of the phrases that have been hard-coded into the app. We do not automatically translate these phrases. If you are building your app in a language other than English, feel free to use this feature to manually translate these phrases. Learn more in the article, What is the Language Settings Tab?

This tab is a bit different for this plugin. These are the dialog categories that appear in this tab for the User Directory plugin:

  • Join - Title, Message, Cancel Button, and Confirm Button

  • Leave Dialog - Title, Message, Cancel Button, Confirm, and Button

  • Information Messages - Added to favorites, and Removed from favorites

  • Other - Message User, Open My Profile, Add to Favorites, Remove from favorites, Report User*, Leave User Directory, Search, and Favorites

NOTE: To enable the Abuse feature (next section), you must enter a value in the Report User field of the Other section.

Abuse

A user can report abuse that s/he observes. As an administrator, you can view these reports to see who reported the user, which user was reported, the reported date along with the reason. Administrators can also Mark as Resolved to remove the abuse report.

If Report User is turned on in language settings. Users have the ability to report other users based on these items:

  • Inappropriate Profile Image

  • Harassment

  • Spamming

  • Fraud
    ​

What are some related articles?

In addition to this article, we recommend checking out the following related articles so that you have a better insight into how to use the system to its fullest advantage:

Still have questions? No problem! Reach out to us and we’d be happy to help :)

Did this answer your question?