As your organization shifts and grows, your needs change, and your Igloo is designed to adapt to them. You can always add new Channels and Pages, arranging them to suit your needs, but when introducing a new area of the community, whether for a conference you're hosting or a new office you're opening, it's best to make sure every part of that area matches your vision before launching it to the rest of your membership. Igloo has some built in tools to make creating and concealing these areas easy, so your launch happens when you plan, and not before. 

Access

Access is the most powerful tool available to keep your new area under wraps while you're working on it, as well as make sure that new documents and articles in that area aren't appearing in widgets around the site and pushing content people need out of the way. If someone doesn't have access to something in Igloo, it does not exist. Removing all of the access rules from an item will ensure that it's only accessible to Administrators, and won't appear in other members' widgets, navigation, or search. 

The cascading access structure in Igloo lets you set the rules at the top level of your new area, disabling its inheritance as necessary, and the access will pass down into every object beneath it. When access is cut off, you can upload resources and schedule events as you like, and they'll be there waiting for your members when you restore the relevant access rules. You can also provide access to specific Groups, letting them in to work on the area rather than limiting it to Administrators only. 

Subscriptions

Once the area is populated with Channels, Pages, and content, it's best to set up Subscriptions. This will ensure that people in the right Groups get notifications from the places you need them to, whether that's administrators getting updates for new knowledge base articles or everyone receiving notifications from a news blog. It's best to leave this setup until all the content is created, because adding further content will trigger any relevant Subscriptions, which can result in emails going out before you want them to. 

Review

Before launching the area, it's best to review the settings in every area. Are the widgets on each Page showing the right content, and pulling from the correct sources? Are there any Channels that should be moderated, or that need custom email addresses? Do you want to set up any Google Analytics views that monitor this area specifically? Providing access to a smaller group of people can help you find out what works for them and what doesn't, letting you deliver what they need and take care of any adjustments. 

Finally, you're ready to reinstate the Access rules. Thanks to the cascading model, adding rules to the top level of the area will pass those permissions downward, letting you adjust one Access page, rather than needing to make changes to each item. When it's all ready, consider sending a Broadcast from the front page of the new area, letting everyone know to visit it. 

Find out more about how other people launch new areas in their Igloo by asking a question in the Community area.