Avid rolls out new Pro Audio Community & customer moderator program

[Bruce Paine]

Wednesday, March 20, 2013, Avid will be launching a new forum structure on the Pro Audio Community forums as well as a new customer moderator program.

We will be streamlining the forums that will bring a new design which aligns with the Avid Pro Audio product line and provides a better opportunity for community members to collaborate and communicate. Approx. 20 customer moderators will be monitoring the new forums and assisting Avid with forum traffic and ensuring the customer issues get to our attention in a timely manner. There will also be many Avid internal Subject Matter Experts (SME) assisting along the way….

Date: Wednesday, March 20th, 2013
Time: 9:00 pm to 12:00 am PDT (GMT -7:00)*
Site: duc.avid.com
*This would be Thursday March 21 from 4:00 am to 7:00 am GMT. Click to see the time in your time zone: greenwichmeantime.com

Maintenance Message:
We will upload a maintenance message to the Pro Audio Community forums between 9:00 pm and 12:00 am (PDT) March 20th, 2013 indicating the forum will be down for updates. The message will instruct customers to search the Knowledge Base for help while we are working on the site.

New Features:
In addition to a new forum structure, we will implement several new features to the forums:

• Chat / Private Messaging – The initial setting for all members is "off" and must be enabled by each member. Community members will be able to turn this feature on to receive Private Messages (PM) from other Community members or off as it is today.
• Image Hosting – Members will be able to include images in their posts as attachments without linking to an external website. Note that there is a 3 post threshold where images are automatically held for moderation if the Community member has 3 or less posts in their history.
• Avatars – Community members will be able to upload their own custom avatar. This feature will be turned on, restricted to 80x80 pixels. Note that animated gifs are not allowed.

Customer Moderators:
We will also be introducing new customer moderators who will monitor specific forums as expert contributors. Customer moderators will answer questions, provide their knowledge, experiences, and advice, escalate issues and guide Avid to threads which need the company's attention. The customer moderators will be identified by specific blue Moderator banner images next to their community name.

Note that these dedicated customer moderators volunteer their personal time and share their considerable knowledge and experience with the community. They are not working for Avid but are donating their time to make the Community more successful.

Avid Employees:
There will also be a host of Avid technical subject matter experts assisting on the forums and a Community Team with representation from Customer Success, Marketing, and Product Management.

Avid personnel including Avid Customer Success and the Community team will be identified with specific Avid white banner.

The Community Administrator and Community Manager/Customer Advocate will have specific Avid white banners (like the one at the top of this post) next to their Community name so you know who is assisting with the site.

We are very excited that we are moving forward with this project and once we have more changes, we will post a general note to the Pro Audio Community letting the members know what has been done to improve the experience further.


Jeffro, Bruce, Adam, Marianna, Chris, Renato, Donny and Bill
The Avid Community Team