Community Directory Overview

The new Community Directory merges the Mentor and People directories into a single directory. 

One directory to rule them all, one directory to find them, one directory to see them all, and with the filters refine them.

Users can either access the Community Directory using this link: https://accelerate.masschallenge.org/community,

or by navigating there from their Program Dashboard.

If you have specific feedback, please include the version number located at the bottom of the left-hand navigation.

Who will be visible in the Community directory?

All active users, including MC Staff users, who satisfy at least one of the following criteria will be visible in and can access the Community directory:

  • has a finalist role grant in an active, upcoming, or ended program (this includes the global alumni program)
  • has a confirmed mentor role grant in an active or upcoming program
  • has a confirmed mentor role grant in an ended program where the ended date is less than 12 months from today
  • has any staff clearance in any active program

Note: Active users can always see their own profile page even if they do not satisfy the above criteria

Using the filters

Auto-filtering is a preference that each Program can configure on their own during their dashboard setup. If a Program doesn't want pre-filtered results they can simply use the link accelerate.masschallenge.org/community instead of the link that includes the program-based filter.

  • Select a filter by clicking it, and/or selecting them from the dropdown menus
  • To clear an individual filter, simply click it again
  • To clear all filters, click, "Clear _#_ filters", to the right of the Program dropdown menu

Some things to remember while using the filters:

  • Filters are inclusive of all options within the filter and exclusive when combining multiple filters
  • Inclusive means more results will be shown when more than one option within the same filter is selected, for example selecting only 'Finalists' will display fewer results than displaying 'Finalists' and 'Alumni' and 'Staff'. This is useful when broadening a search.
  • Exclusive means fewer results will be shown when options from different filters are selected, for example selecting 'Finalists' from the Role filter and 'High Tech' from the Industry filter. This is useful when narrowing a search.

Displaying Results with Open Office Hours

The Open Office Hours filter displays results that match the following criteria:

  • Users who have a common program with the user who is viewing the results, and 
  • Users who have available office hours in the future

For example, a finalist in Boston 2021 selects the Open Office Hours filtered view and sees several results. All of these results are users who have available upcoming office hours and are confirmed mentors in Boston 2021. There may be mentors confirmed in other programs with available upcoming office hours, but they will not appear because they do not share a common program with the user who is viewing the results.

Staff and Community See the Same Data
  • The Community directory will not display any data to staff that is not visible to the community. A banner only visible to staff will provide a direct link to the user's record in the People Manager so staff can access more detailed information about the user. The People Manager can also be used to view users who are not visible in the Community directory, e.g. inactive, not confirmed, non-finalist users, etc.
  • Staff masquerading as another user will see exactly what the user they are masquerading as would see. In this case staff will not see the People Manager banner.

What happens if someone shares a link to a profile externally?

The directory is behind login. Unauthenticated users will be redirected to login. Authenticated users without access (i.e. a new signup) do not have access to the directories and will see a 403.

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