• Organization: ConnectWise
• Audience: IT solution providers in the ConnectWise partner community
• Products: Higher Logic Thrive Community, Strategic Services
• Problems Solved with Higher Logic:
  • Engaged product communities
  • Enhanced peer-learning programs
  • Streamlined webinars
  • Easier resource discovery
  • Channeling partner feedback

A New Product Gives the Community a Clear Purpose

That opportunity came into focus when ConnectWise needed a dedicated community for partners exploring and implementing ConnectWise Agents. A new product would bring questions about its capabilities and how to use them. The Agentic AI Virtual Community could give those questions a home and connect partners with both product experts and one another. 

For Kathryn, launching that space meant moving into unfamiliar territory. She wanted the setup to be right and the community to have useful content from the start. Higher Logic supported her and her team through the administrative settings, appropriate security groups, and banner images for the new space. 

The support also extended to how the community would begin. Higher Logic developed a four-week engagement plan that mapped out initial posts, library development, and contributions from colleagues. Kathryn could see what to do first and when to introduce another voice into the conversation. 

ConnectWise’s launch communication plan connected the new community with familiar touchpoints. It included internal Teams promotion, digital signage, a weekly bulletin, social media, and a Partner Champions challenge. Clear links pointed people toward the community as a destination where learning and discussion could continue beyond the launch communications. 

Once the community was running, Higher Logic helped Kathryn think about sustaining participation. Together, they configured automation rules to send a nudge when someone had joined but had not posted in roughly two weeks. The reminder provided a targeted invitation to contribute without requiring her to track each person and send an individual message. 

Higher Logic also encouraged her to involve colleagues closest to the product. Kathryn could coordinate the experience while specialists brought the knowledge partners needed. That gave the community a broader base of contributors and helped fit its management alongside the team’s education responsibilities. 

The Posts Partners Started Responding To

One recurring format caught Kathryn’s attention: “New Feature Friday.” Product subject matter experts and product managers started the posts, and technical communicators helped continue them. Partners were responding to the updates, giving the team a format worth sustaining. 

Kathryn shared what she was seeing with Higher Logic. The guidance was to keep encouraging the content that drew participation and involve multiple contributors, so its continuity would not depend on one person. She went back to the colleagues behind the posts to thank them and encourage them to continue. 

For a new product with more capabilities on the way, the format gave partners a recurring reason to visit. Updates became an opening for discussion among the people building the product and the people learning to use it. 

The value of that direct connection showed up in an exchange Kathryn remembered. A partner requested a capability in the Agentic AI community, and a product manager responded that it was already coming. The partner received an answer in the same space where the question had been raised. 

Across the product communities, partners also bring highly specific technical questions and compare approaches with peers. Product managers and specialists participate regularly, hearing feedback and responding directly. The discussions give partners access to product knowledge alongside the experience of others working through similar situations. 

Giving Product Education a Place to Continue

As those conversations developed, Kathryn began seeing the community as another part of her education work. While planning a learning initiative for another product, she was already thinking about which community spaces should feature it. 

The team had used community announcements to promote the “5 Sticky Features” webinar series. Alongside those announcements, featured homepage cards and discussion threads gave her team a way to highlight the learning opportunity and direct attendees back to a place for follow-up questions. The live session could connect participants with a conversation that remained available after the presentation. 

For an Agentic AI webinar series running three days a week, Kathryn added the sessions as community events. That put the learning opportunities in a space where partners were already exploring the subject. Featured homepage cards could highlight priority learning, while announcements and discussion threads helped connect the event with an ongoing conversation. 

For the education team, this brought community into the planning process. A webinar, learning plan, or product update could lead partners toward a relevant group where they could ask follow-up questions, hear from specialists, and exchange experiences with peers. 

Keeping Resources Useful as the Product Changes

Those conversations also needed a connection to dependable information. ConnectWise already maintained release notes, product guidance, and knowledge-base content and needed a way to make it more available to partners. 

Kathryn’s team uses the community library to connect partners with existing resources. People could discover useful references in the community and follow it to the maintained documentation. ConnectWise could update the underlying material in its established home without repeatedly uploading replacement PDFs to the community. 

Search provided another connection to ConnectWise’s learning resources. A Coveo connection supported search across community and ConnectWise University content, linking the community with the wider body of product education. 

Helping Partners Find Their Way Into the Community 

Getting partners into that experience was another part of Kathryn’s inherited responsibility. The community connected to Salesforce and single sign-on (SSO), with contact records and access-related information flowing from Salesforce into Higher Logic. 

Populated contact fields, including SSO identifiers and security-group information, supported community account creation. That reduced the need to create and maintain every account manually. Partners entered through SSO and then chose the product or topic communities that mattered to them; most spaces were open to authenticated partners within the partner-only environment. 

When access did not work as expected, Kathryn needed guidance she could act on. Higher Logic helped her understand record-refresh behavior and investigate individual access cases, building her confidence in supporting partners without requiring her to become a technical integration expert. 

Partners Begin to Carry More of the Conversation 

The Agentic AI community had 91 members. Kathryn described active partner posting and fewer colleague posts as partners carried more of the discussions. 

“The partners are just kind of taking it and discussing and going for it, which is really great.” 

Kathryn Rook, Manager, Learning & Development, ConnectWise 

That shift reflected the model ConnectWise wanted to build: partners helping partners, with colleagues contributing expertise and supporting the conversation. The community gave people a destination for their own questions and experiences, alongside recurring product updates and relevant learning. 

Kathryn was also proud of what her team had sustained during the transition in community ownership. They learned the tools, addressed access cases, updated content, and launched new communities while continuing their education responsibilities. Higher Logic’s support helped them move that work forward within the staffing and priorities they had. 

What’s Next for ConnectWise 

ConnectWise’s next priorities include strengthening partner-to-partner interaction, involving more advocates, improving content organization, and making community a more consistent part of onboarding and education. The team also wants to use reporting to understand participation and connect it more clearly with partner success and retention. 

For Kathryn, the experience reinforced what gives a community staying power: a purpose people understand, content they can use, and a realistic approach to sustaining the work. The launch plan established the first steps, automation invited participation, and product experts helped make the conversations valuable. 

Kathryn still had an education department to lead. She also had a place where that education could keep working: partners could find a resource, ask someone who understood the product, and contribute what they had learned for the next person who needed it.