Help/FAQs

A: Your username is the email address that you use for TLA membership. The first time you try to login into  TLA Engage, enter your email address, then click the "Can’t access your account?" link and create a password. If you lose or forget your password, you will need to go back to "Can’t access your account?" to reset it. TLA staff does not have access to passwords.

A: Your contact details come from your member profile in the TLA membership database. If you need to update your information, login to TLA Members Only and click the Update TLA Profile link in the center column.

A: Click on the PROFILE link in the upper right corner of the TLA Engage home page; you can add a photo, bio, your social media links, etc. Privacy settings are located under the My Account tab on your profile page

A: All TLA Engage members are listed in the Directory. You can search the directory from the home page. The Directory lets you search for other users based on:

• First and/or last name
• Company/Institution name
• Email address

Switch to the “Advanced Search” tab to refine your search results by:

• City
• State
• Country
• Community
• Education

A: There are several ways to add contacts. When you perform a search in the Directory, you will see an “Add as contact” button to the right of each person in your search results. Just click this button to send a contact request. If you click through and view an individual’s profile, you can click the contact request link to the right of the profile picture.

A: Creating this virtual address book makes it easy to send your contacts direct messages through the community site to stay in touch, ask questions or even build a referral network. Additionally, when you view another member’s profile, you’ll be able to see any contacts you have in common. You can also choose to let your contacts view certain demographics in your profile that others can't.

A: TLA Engage facilitates communication, connections and resource sharing among TLA members. Communities allow you to participate in discussions,  share resources, and forge new relationships while expanding your knowledge.

• The TLA All Member community is open to all TLA members to share and post for all members to see, read and comment on. It is encouraged to utilize this group for general ideas or topics that more than a specific community/unit might be interested in.
  

• TLA Engage communities exist for each division, district, round table, discussion group and committee. These common interest groups are here to develop learning opportunities and encourage members in specialized areas to participate in open, dynamic communications with colleagues tackling similar challenges

• NOTE: The Texas Library Connection (TLC) listserv, which is open to non-TLA members, and the TCAL  listservs are not part of TLA Engage. They will continue to be active on the Lyris listserv platform.

A: Go to “Communities” in the main navigation bar. Select “My Communities” to view the communities you currently belong to. These correspond to the TLA units you are a member of.

A:  Community membership is based on TLA membership. You are automatically a member of the communities of the Units (district, division, round table, discussion group) you joined when you joined TLA. If you want to join additional units, you can do so via TLA Members Only, Update Membership Information/Choices. Note that there is a small fee to join additional units.

You are also a member of the community associated with any TLA Committee you currently serve on.

A: Navigate to your profile and click on the "My Account" tab. Choose "Community Notifications" from the drop-down menu.  On that page, there are subscription options: Real Time, Daily Digest, No Email.  

For each discussion, you have the following delivery options:

• Real time: you will receive an email each time someone posts a discussion, or replies to the discussion post
• Daily digest: you will receive one email every weekday reporting on any activity happening the previous day for that particular community 
• No Email: allows you to be part of the group without having emails sent to you. You can still post and read others’ messages by logging into the community website.
• Daily Consolidated Community Digest: you’ll receive one email each day reporting any activity happening the previous day in all of the communities that you set the preference to ‘daily consolidated community digest.”
• Weekly Consolidated Community Digest: you’ll get one email once a week on Friday reporting any activity happening during the week in all of the communities that you set the preference to ‘daily consolidated community digest.

A: Email Preferences are emails that will be sent from the TLA Engage platform that are not related to the community notification. These can include system emails, community emails, participation & promotion emails. To find out full information on each type view the email preferences section under your profile.

Community notifications are alerts that you will receive via your email from every community/unit that you are a part of. This is similar to the Lyris list serves previous used for unit communication. You are able to select how often you want to receive these community/unit notification. You have the options of receiving emails from communities in the following ways:

• Real time: you will receive an email each time someone posts a discussion, or replies to the discussion post
• Daily digest: you will receive one email every weekday reporting on any activity happening the previous day for that particular community 
• No Email: allows you to be part of the group without having emails sent to you. You can still post and read others’ messages by logging into the community website.
• Daily Consolidated Community Digest: you’ll receive one email each day reporting any activity happening the previous day in all of the communities that you set the preference to ‘daily consolidated community digest.”
• Weekly Consolidated Community Digest: you’ll get one email once a week on Friday reporting any activity happening during the week in all of the communities that you set the preference to ‘daily consolidated community digest.

A: Community membership is tied to membership in TLA units and committees. You are not able to unsubscribe from a community in TLA Engage, but you can set your community notification preferences in your profile so you don’t receive emails from certain communities.

A: If replying from the TLA Engage website, click to open the post, then click REPLY to reply to the group. If  you want to reply only to the  author/sender of the post, select REPLY PRIVATELY from the drop down under Reply. If you reply privately, the conversation with the author of the post will not be made publicly available and will become an email within your TLA Engage inbox.

If replying from your email, you can reply to the email using your email’s REPLY button which will send your response to the group and your response will show up in the thread of that discussion in the community. If you want to reply only to the author/sender of the post, select REPLY TO SENDER button which is in the body of the email from the community.

A: From the community page in TLA Engage, go to the Discussion Tab and select POST NEW MESSAGE button to the far right.

A: TLA Engage is not a social media platform; it is a password-secured collaboration site for TLA members. TLA Engage communities are  only open to TLA members. Members are encouraged to  discuss topics of concern to the library community in an effort to support one another with knowledge-sharing. 

A: Yes, please enter a keyword in the search bar located in the main navigation. To refine your search results, please select "Show Advanced Search".

A: Locate the community you are interested in viewing (you must be a member of the community) from the appropriate communities page. Click through the community's landing page, then click on the “Discussions” tab. If you see a post you’re interested in, click the subject line which will take you to the entire thread. “Show Original Message” at the bottom of all of the posts in a thread will display the original message that started that discussion.

A: There may be a few reasons you aren’t receiving the digest emails, including spam filters and junk email settings on your email account. To ensure our emails continue to reach your inbox, add mail@connectedcommunity.org to your Safe Senders List in your email client. If you continue to have issues receiving the emails after checking your spam and junk filters/settings, make sure your company's firewall allows the emails through. For further troubleshooting please email dircom@txla.org.

A: When you are posting a new discussion or replying to a post, you will see the option to "Save as Draft" at the bottom of the dialogue box, select this opinion. Then to find your drafts, go to your profile, click the "Contributions" tab, click "List of Contributions", and look for your contributions that have the "Draft" button assigned to it. You can open up the draft and send it whenever you like. 

A: No, once a discussion is posted you cannot edit it. Therefore, please carefully review any post before finalizing and posting.

A: No, you cannot delete a post once it has been posted. If a post violates the TLA Terms & Conditions, please notify Michele Santos at TLA (micheles@txla.org).  Staff will review the post and if it is in violation it will be removed. If it is not in violation of any guidelines the post will remain intact .

A: You are able to update the text of your discussion signature within your profile. You are not able to add an image to the discussion signature.

To update from your profile page, re select My Account and click on the Discussion Signature box. A standard signature is created for all members to use, but it can be manually edited to include any text you want. You can also use a combination of the auto-populated fields and manual text.

A: If you know which library the resource might be located in, find the affiliated community via the All Communities page. Click through the community's landing page, then click on the “Library” tab . If you do not know where the resource might be, enter search terms in the main search box the same way you might enter search terms into Google or another search engine.

NOTE: You will only be able to access libraries in communities you are a member of.

A: Yes. Enter your desired keyword in the main search box. From the search results page, click "Show Advanced Search."  Then click on “Search for Specific File Types.” This gives you the option to specify file type: Document, Image, Spreadsheet, etc.

A: The libraries are populated in two ways:

     1. When you include an attachment in a discussion post, the system automatically places it in the  library affiliated with that community.

     2. You can also upload documents directly to a library by using the “Share a File” link found under “Participate” in the main navigation or "Create New Library Entry" button on the community's library page. Library resources are not required to be associated with a discussion thread.

A: Select the “Share a File” link found under “Participate” in the main navigation or "Create New Library Entry" on any community landing page. Please note that uploading a document is accomplished by completing a few steps, and each step must be completed before you can move on to the next:

• Choose a title for your document, and include a description (optional). Select the library to which you’d like to upload it, and select a folder to which you’d like to upload it (optional).  Then, choose an Entry Type (most will be Standard Files, but be cognizant of any copyright licensed material). Once you have completed these steps, please click “Next.”
• Upload your file.
• Select “Next” if you want to further describe your files and/or add tags to your file.  Otherwise, please click “Finish” to post your library entry

A: The system supports dozens of file types including hyperlinks, standard files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), webinars, images and YouTube videos.

A: TLA Engage is open to all members whereas, the Unit/Committee Google Shared Drives are  for TLA officers to use when conducting business. Unit/Committee officers  may post minutes and documents from their meetings to the online community within TLA Engage library in addition to the Google Share Drives if they choose to do so.

A: Tags are great way to organize and categorize content on your site. Tags can be applied to blogs, library entries, events, and glossary terms.  Tagged items are prioritized in the search results.