Tools Community is available at /community and collects discussions in categories and threads.
All authenticated Tools members can create threads and replies. Visitors who are not signed in can read the community but must sign in or register before posting.
An administrator creates categories from the Community page. Each category can have:
When a vBulletin forum id is set, vBulletin is the preferred destination for new threads in that category as long as the vBulletin integration is configured.
A member selects a category, title and body when creating a new thread. Replies are posted from the thread page.
Tools always stores the local community content first. If the category is connected to vBulletin, Tools then attempts to create the corresponding forum thread or reply.
If forum synchronization fails, the content remains available in Tools and is marked as a failed/pending remote synchronization. Administrators can also see the technical synchronization error on the thread page when one is available.
The initial federation rule is vBulletin-first:
Content sent to vBulletin includes clear attribution using the member name from Tools. The current API client writes through the vBulletin identity bound to the integration client, so the Tools member name is also included in the forum message itself.
The data model has separate external links for community threads and posts. This allows one Tools thread to connect to more than one external community without replacing the local thread.
Additional community adapters can therefore be added later for importing, reading or publishing. When another source can also be published to vBulletin, the intended behavior is to reuse the same vBulletin thread instead of creating parallel discussions.
The first version implements Tools and vBulletin. Automatic bidirectional import from other community platforms is not included yet.