Add a Stories Tool

How to add the Stories tool to your project

Vishwas Prasad avatar
Written by Vishwas Prasad
Updated over a week ago

The Stories tool lets your community read, comment on, and submit long-form personal experiences. This tool is suitable for encouraging and collecting individual stories in a safe and moderated space.

Create a Stories Tool

You can only have one Stories tool per project. To add Stories to your project:

  1. Go to your project page and select Add a tool.

  2. From the Tools list, select Stories; you'll find it under the All or Mixed environment tabs.

  3. Add a title for your tool, automatically creating a Permalink, and then select Create.

  4. Use the text editor in the Details tab to introduce your Stories tool and include any rich media, such as videos, links, or images.

  5. Switch to the Settings tab to change the tool’s settings.

  6. Save when you're finished.

  7. You can change the tool name by selecting the pen icon next to the tool in the tool tab. You can also Edit the Details and Settings or Preview your Stories tool.

  8. Your tool will be in Draft until you use the dropdown to Publish them. After publishing, you will have the option to Unpublish or Archive it.

Once your tool and project are published, your participants can submit stories. If your team moderates your submissions, you can do so in the Manage stories tab.

Stories Settings

The Stories Settings are:

  • Allow unverified participation: Enable this setting to allow unregistered participants to engage with an email and screen name.

  • Allow comments: Enable this to allow participants to comment on their own and others' Stories. Even after you enable this, contributors can still choose to disallow comments if they want to.

  • Bang the Table Moderated: Enable this to have our moderation team accept or reject stories before publishing. If you enable this, the Manage stories tab will be unavailable; if you choose to moderate submissions yourself, you can do so in the Manage stories tab.

  • Thank you message: Use this field to configure a thank you message to display after stories are submitted.

  • Email Notifications and Acknowledgements: you cannot turn off these notifications, but you can configure the Email subject and Email text of these:
    a. Acknowledgement sent to user when they add a new story
    b. Notification sent to admin when a new story is added – you can also use the Recipients fields to add other administrators.
    C. Notification sent to user when their story has been accepted
    d. Notification sent to user when their story has been rejected

Manage your story submissions

The Manage stories tab is available if you’re self-moderating the tool. In this tab, you can see all submitted stories, and administrators can accept submissions to publish or reject them. The Manage stories tab will show how many stories are New, Accepted, or Rejected.

  1. In the Manage stories tab, you can see all New submissions and select Review to view the full content.

  2. Once you’ve reviewed the story, you can Accept it to publish it or Reject it.

  3. When you Accept or Reject the submission, it will move to the relevant tab. If you made a mistake, go to the Accepted or Rejected tabs, find and Review the story, and change your decision.

  4. Whenever you Accept or Reject a story, the user will be notified.

If you are self-moderating, we recommend reviewing the moderation policy to remind you what you’re looking for.

What else?

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