What is Circle Community AI and How Does It Work? (2024 Guide)

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Communities are the heart and soul of society, bringing people together and fostering connections. But what if there was a way to enhance these communities even further?

Introducing Community AI, a new suite of AI features developed by Circle that aims to build better communities through artificial intelligence.

In this blog post, we’ll explore what Circle Community AI is all about and how it can help you create a thriving community that fosters meaningful connections, encourages collaboration, and drives engagement.

Let’s jump right into the details!

What is Circle Community AI

At Circle, their goal is to help creators and brands create amazing communities that people love and can earn money from. To make this happen faster, they’re using the power of AI (called Community AI). It’s a set of AI features in Circle that make communities feel closer and more connected.

? You can only use the Community AI feature if you have a Business plan or a higher-level plan.

Community AI has three main features:

• Content co-pilot
• Automated transcriptions
• Activity scores

To use or activate these features, just click on the name or logo of your community in the top-left corner. From there, choose Settings » Community AI tab and then you can turn on or off the feature you want.

Now let’s take a closer look at each of their features and learn how they work.

What is Content Co-Pilot

Content co-pilot is like a helpful writing buddy that uses artificial intelligence. It works right inside Circle’s text editor for writing posts and lessons.

When you’re stuck and don’t know what to write, the co-pilot can give you ideas and help you edit your content. It makes your writing process faster and better.

With content co-pilot, you don’t need to use other tools to come up with ideas for your writing. It can give you suggestions for what to write about and even help you write paragraphs and summaries. It’s all in a friendly and conversational way, so it’s easy to use.

Note: To get better responses from Co-Pilot about your community, give a short description of your community (255 characters) in the Community AI settings.

How Does the Content Co-pilot Work

Here’s how the content-co pilot feature works in Circle.so.

First, type the forward-slash (/) command and choose Co-pilot from the options that appear. Then, pick an option from the dropdown or type your own prompt in the field.

The co-pilot will generate content based on your choice. If you want more content, type an additional prompt in the field. To close the co-pilot tab, simply click anywhere on the screen or press the “Esc” key on your keyboard.

If you already have some content in your post or lesson, you can use the content co-pilot to make it even better. Here are some things you can do with the co-pilot:

• Improve or simplify your writing
• Fix spelling and grammar mistakes
• Summarize the content in a few lines
• Make the content shorter or longer
• Translate the content into a different language
• Edit the content based on a custom prompt

To edit your content using the co-pilot, select the text you want to work on and click Co-pilot in the formatting toolbar.

After that, you can select an option from the dropdown or type your own prompt.

The co-pilot will generate new content based on your selection. You can either replace your selected text with the new content or insert it below the selected text.

What is Automated Transcriptions

Automated transcription does something cool! When you put up a video in a post or lesson, it automatically creates a written version of what’s said in the video. This is called transcription, and it also makes closed captions for the video.

Here’re some benefits of using Automated transcription for your community:

• Searchability: When the transcription is ready, people can easily search for words mentioned in your videos. This helps them find relevant posts quickly.
• Accessibility: Transcriptions and closed captions help more people watch your videos. It includes those who are deaf, neurodivergent, or speak a different language.
• Comprehension: Your community members can use the transcript viewer to follow along with the video, search for specific parts, and jump to any moment they want.
• Discoverability: If your community is public, search engines will include your video posts in their results. This means more people can find and join your community.

You can pick the language that matches the one in your video. To do this, go to the Community AI, and click on the Language dropdown menu in the Automated Transcriptions section.

How Do Automated Transcriptions Work

Take a look at all the transcription options that are available to you.

Manage transcript visibility

As an admin, you can choose whether you want automatic transcription for a particular video or not. To do this:

• Move your mouse over the top-right corner of the video.
• Click on the Transcription icon.
• You can turn on or off the “Enable transcription” button.
• Don’t forget to click “Save” after making your choice.

Download the automated transcript

To download a WebVTT file of the transcript, follow these simple steps:

• Move your mouse to the top-right corner of the video.
• Click on the Transcription icon.
• Choose the Automated Transcript option.
• Click Download .vtt.
• The transcript will be saved on your device.

Note: If you want to edit the AI-generated transcript, simply download the WebVTT file and edit it from your computer. After you’re done, you can upload the edited file back to the video using the custom transcript option. Here’s how you can do that:

(If your transcript is in a different file format, make sure to convert it to .vtt format before uploading.)

Steps to upload a custom transcript:

• Click the top-right corner of the video » Transcription.
• Choose the “Upload a custom transcript” option.
• Click on “Upload .vtt file” and select your converted transcript file.
• After uploading the file, remember to click “Save” to finish.

If you ever want to go back to the automatically generated transcript, just click the Transcription icon again, choose “Automated Transcript,” and click Save.

View Transcript

When you turn on transcription, everyone in your community can see the option to view the video’s transcript. To do this, simply click on “Show transcript” below the video. This will open a window with the transcript where you can scroll through and click on any part to jump to that moment in the video.

If you prefer to see the transcript in a larger view with the video still visible on the side, click on the “Expand” icon. The expanded view also includes a search bar for finding specific terms quickly.

View closed captions

You can have closed captions for your video in two ways. The first way is through automatic transcription, where the captions are created automatically. The second way is by uploading your own custom transcription.

By default, the captions are automatically turned on when the transcript is generated. If you want to control when the captions appear, you can click on the Gear icon and select “Captions.” Any changes you make to the caption settings will only affect the videos you upload to your community account.

Remember, community members can also control caption visibility in the same way for their own accounts.

What is Activity Scores

Activity scores help you understand how engaged your community is and how much impact your content and interactions are having.

They use a special machine-learning program to figure out these scores. Every week, it looks at what each person in the community has been doing for the past 30 days.

It looks at things like how often they visit, how many times they’ve liked or RSVP’d to events, how many posts and comments they’ve made, and how many active private conversations they’ve had.

You can choose which of these things you want to be included in the score. Just go to the Community AI settings and turn them on or off based on what you think is important.

How Do Activity Scores Work

First off, we’ll see how to understand the score generation.

Activity scores are like grades given to members, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the best score. Every Sunday, their machine learning system updates the activity scores for all your community members.

To figure out these scores, Circle’s AI looks at your members’ activity data from the past 30 days, based on four main factors:

• Presence: How often they visit and how many days they’ve visited in the last 30 days
• Contribution: The number of likes and event RSVPs in the last 30 days
• Participation: How many posts and comments they’ve made in the last 30 days
• Connection: The number of active private conversations they’ve had in the last 30 days

They compare each member’s data with data from other communities on Circle to make sure the scores are fair. This way, they adjust the scores for how active other communities are and how the activity changes over time.

By default, all four factors are included in the score. But you can choose to enable or disable individual factors in the Community AI settings. This will change how much each factor affects the overall score, and it’s updated in real-time.

When you check a member’s activity score, you can see how well they did in different areas. They get a score from one to ten for each factor, and the overall activity score is just the average of all these scores.

Oh, and one more thing: New members will get their activity score after being in the community for 30 days. Before that, it will show as “N/A” because they don’t have enough data for them.

View activity scores

Only admins in your community can see activity scores. You can find these scores here:

• Member management
• Member Directory
• Member profiles
• Workflows

Just remember, admins don’t get activity scores for themselves.

Member management

In the member management area, you can see and filter members based on their activity scores. To check the details of a member’s activity score, simply move your mouse over the score next to that member’s name.

If you want to filter members based on their activity scores, follow these steps:

• Click on the community name or logo at the top-left corner of the page.
• From the menu that appears, choose “Members.”
• Click on “Add filter” and select “Activity score.”
• Use the slider to pick the range of scores you want to see.
• Finally, click on “Apply” to apply the filter and see the results.

Member Directory

Just like the member management area, you can use activity scores to filter the member directory.

Member profiles

When you look at someone’s profile in the community, you’ll see their activity score in the “About” section.

How to Add a Custom Transcript to Uploaded Videos

You can add your own transcript to your videos and lessons, no matter which plan you have. But if you want to use the automatic transcription feature, you’ll need to upgrade to the Business plan or a higher one.

We accept transcripts in the WebVTT format. If you have a transcript in a different file format, make sure to convert it to .vtt before uploading.

Here’s how to upload a custom WebVTT file:

• Hover over the top-right corner of the video and click on the Transcription icon
• Choose the “Upload a custom transcript” option
• Click on “Upload .vtt file” and select your file
• Once the file is uploaded, click on Save

That’s it! Now you’ve added your own transcript to your video or lesson.

Manage closed captions

Once your transcription is uploaded successfully, it will automatically show up as closed captions in your video. To control whether the captions are visible or not, click on the Gear ⚙️ icon and choose “Captions.” The captions you uploaded will be marked as “Default.”

How Can I Get Help for My Community

When you need help for your community, there are different ways to get it:

• Use the Circle Help Widget
• Check the Knowledge Base for information
• Ask for assistance in the Circle community
• Send an email to get support

Use the Circle Help Widget

As an admin, you can get help and support in your community using the help widget. It’s powered by Circle’s Community AI. To find it, just click the Message icon in the lower-right corner of your screen. With the help widget, you can:

• Ask Circle Bot for assistance
• Get help and information
• Check your messages
• See the latest news
• Check upcoming events

Ask Circle Bot for assistance/help

The Ask Circle Bot is like a smart helper that knows a lot about Circle from their knowledge base articles. If you have any questions, you can type them in the “Ask a Question” box in the widget, and the bot will try to give you a helpful answer.

Just so you know, the Ask Circle Bot is still pretty new and is being tested. Sometimes, it might not give you all the information you need, but don’t worry! It’s learning and getting better.

If the answer from the Circle Bot isn’t useful, you can select “No.” Then, you’ll have the option to send a message to the support team by clicking “Send us a message.”

Help

The Help tab is like a library inside the widget. You can look up information by searching for articles or browsing through different sections. When you find an article you want to read, you can do so right there in the widget.

Messages

You can talk to the support team using the help widget or email in the Messages tab. If you manage multiple communities, you can see all your support conversations in the help widget.

When the support team replies to your message, you’ll see a red notification badge in the Messages tab.

If you need more help, you can contact the support team through Ask Circle Bot or the Help tab. The first time you send a message, the Messages tab will appear in your help widget.

To send a message, click “Send us a message,” and fill in this information in the dialog box:

• Select the type of message
• Choose a product area
• Enter the subject of your message
• Type your message and add screenshots or screen recordings if needed
• Send your message. That’s all!

When you click the send button, a support ticket will be made. You can see it in the Messages tab. You’ll also get updates and responses from the team through email notifications.

News

To know the latest product news, go to the help widget and click on the News tab. There, you’ll see all the news posts. If you want to read the whole post, just click on it. If you want to see the original post in the Circle community or make the widget bigger, click the icons in the top-right corner.

Events

To see what events are happening in the Circle community, go to the Events tab. If you want more details about an event and want to confirm your attendance, just click on the event title.

Knowledge Base

Circle has created lots of articles, tutorials, and guides in its knowledge base. To find what you need, you can explore the different sections in the left sidebar. If you already know what you’re looking for, you can use the search option to quickly find that specific information.

Ask for assistance in the Circle community

When you become part of the Circle community, you also get to join their private customer community.

The Circle community is a great place where you can find lots of useful stuff to help you build and grow your own community.

Once you have the community plan, all you need to do is accept the invitation and make your profile. Then, you’ll have access to amazing benefits, such as:

• Connect with thousands of other community builders and people like you
• A collection of past event recordings, so you can catch up on anything you missed
• There’s a special place to ask questions and get help from other community builders
• Join live workshops with experts and successful creators who know how to build communities

Send an email

You can easily get in touch with the Circle support team by sending an email to support@circle.so.

How Much Does Circle.so Cost

Note: To access the Community AI features, you need to be on a Business plan or an Enterprise plan.

Circle offers four different plans for you to choose from. Here are the plans and their prices per month:

• Basic Plan: $39/month
• Professional Plan: $99/month
• Business Plan: $249/month
• Enterprise Plan: $399/month

In addition to the monthly cost, there is also a transaction fee for each plan. The Basic plan has a transaction fee of 4%, the Professional plan has a fee of 2%, the Business plan has a fee of 1%, and the Enterprise plan has a fee of 0.5%.

The Basic Plan has some limits. It only allows 100 members, 10 spaces, and a total storage of 10 GB. This might not be enough for some people.

To get more resources, you can upgrade to the Professional Plan. This plan lets you have unlimited members, 20 spaces, and 100 GB of storage. It also has helpful features like live streaming, online courses, and white labeling.

But if you need even more space or advanced features like automation workflows and APIs, you should switch to the Business or Enterprise plans.

Circle.so also has a really great 14-day free trial. You don’t need to give your credit card information to try it out. That way, you can see if you like their platform before you start paying. Just click the button below to sign up and get started!

By the way, if you choose to pay for a whole year at once, you can get a discount. If you’re serious about using Circle, we recommend the Professional plan so you can enjoy all the important features and higher limits.

Remember, this information isn’t a complete list of differences between the plans. To know exactly what each plan includes, you should visit Circle’s pricing page before you decide to sign up.

Conclusion: Circle.so Community AI

And that’s all for today.

Circle’s Community AI is a cool new way to make communities stronger and bring people together. It has lots of great features to help everyone get involved easily and make things work better.

If you’re really interested in trying out the Circle community AI feature, simply click the button below and sign up for a 14-day trial (no credit card required). Just a friendly reminder, the community AI feature is only available on the Business plan or higher, so you should select one of those plans.

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