Let’s Get Started – Recruit Beta Testers:
- Invite a small group of staff and members to complete basic community tasks
- Create a dedicated Beta Testing/Early Adopter Community for members to provide their feedback
- Send a task every other day over a 3-5 business day time frame
- Reward your testers with a ‘Beta Tester’ or ‘Early Adopter’ badge to show appreciation
Sample Beta Tester Invite Email (sent outside of community site):
Hi There,
We are getting close to launching our community site and would like you to be involved in Beta Testing, if time allows!
The commitment will be no more than 15 minutes a day, over (3-5) days of our Beta Testing period. Tasks will be sent to Beta Testers via email, in the form of a digest from the community site.
We look forward to getting you introduced to the site, participating in a few tasks together, and receiving your feedback.
Let us know if this is something you are up for and we will be sure to add you in!
Once you have a group of users ready to help test, you’ll add your users to a Beta Testing Security Group, populate and subscribe the Beta Testing community, and begin sending tasks. Reach out to your Advisor with your list of Beta Testers, if you need assistance here!
Example task messages to be posted as Discussion Posts in the Beta Testing community and sent out by way of the community digest are below. Feel free to tweak these as you’d like or use as-is. These tasks cover basic community functionality all community members will use!
Task #1
Subject Link: Welcome to Beta Testing – your first task!
Hello Beta Testers,
Thank you for participating this week to assist in our Beta Testing efforts. Your help and feedback are greatly appreciated!
Your first assignment is to login and get acquainted with your profile.
Log in here [include link] with your member login information
1. Navigate to your profile
2. Upload your profile picture – we’d love to put a face to the name!
3. Review your Profile and Privacy Settings – make any desired changes!
Thanks for completing these first tasks, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or feedback.
Task #2
Subject Line: Beta Testing Continues – Task 2
Welcome Back, Beta Testers!
Task #2
1. If you haven’t already, reply to the [Welcome Message] to let us know you’re here!
2. Start a new discussion thread in our community. Post about anything you’d like, don’t be shy. “What color is the sky?” “The weather is cold in my town.”
3. Recommend a discussion post created by another beta tester.
If you have questions in a particular area, please let us know. We welcome your feedback as we move towards launch of the full site.
Task #3
Subject Line: Final Beta Testing Task!
Thank you all so much for completing Tasks 1 and 2.
For Task 3, please add a document to the community library using one of the following options:
1. Attach a file to a discussion post or reply
2. Add a library entry to the community’s library
These entries can be nonsense documents or something you already have. I will delete them all before we launch.
Post as an Attachment
Navigate to the Beta Testing Community to write a message and add an attachment (photo, word document, pdf file, PowerPoint presentation, etc.) there.
2. Go to the community’s Library to view your document.
Post as a Resource Document
You can add resources that are not associated with a discussion post.
1. Navigate to the Library tab of our community
2. Create a new Library Entry
Thanks for completing these tasks, we appreciate your time and support of the upcoming community launch. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or feedback –
Start a new discussion post in our community to do so!
Close Out Beta Testing
Subject Line: Thank you Beta Testers!
Thanks so much for your participation in the Beta Testing Community. Your completion of the tasks and feedback has helped us move forward towards a full site launch for all members!
We will be adding a badge to your profile to identify you in the community as the group of first contributors to our Community!
We will archive our Beta Testing community this week and we look forward to your participation in the [upcoming community name] launch on [Enter Date].