How to GET STARTED with Socioly

Download Socioly for your phone

If you've received an invite to join Socioly from a friend simply click the link and follow the prompts to install the app

Then click on the Create Account  button 

Enter your phone number and get an OTP 

Socioly is easy to setup with just your phone number.  Simply select your country and then enter your phone number

OTP - You'll then get an SMS text from Socioly with a OPT code (One Time Password) to setup your secure Socioly account

Enter your OTP (One time Password)

Simply enter the code in the window and then click the Sign Up button to securely setup your Socioly account  

Trouble shooting - If you don't receive an OPT or if there's an error simply click the Resend OTP button and we'll send you a new code so you can  complete the sign-up process

Name - Enter your First & Last Name  

Photo – Add your photo by clicking the camera icon OR Photo library to select a photo

Mobile and Email (email is optional)

Child Details (Optional if required)

One of the great features of Socioly is that you can associate Circles to a child/children or others  to help schedule and keep track of their activities e.g. Your son's Basketball team training and game events and communications

NOTE: For security and privacy reasons children's phones are not connected and they aren't contacted directly through this association

It just allows you to plan and manage their activities and see these in your calendar.   You can also filter by child so you can just see Circles for their activities

To add a child simply enter their name.  You can add a photo by clicking on the camera icon.   You can add more by clicking the Add Child link 

Add Contacts – a key part of Socioly is that it helps you arrange your contacts into Circles

To make this simple we've automated the process to allow you to sync your phone contacts to Socioly

Simply Click the Sync Contacts button

Your Privacy is assured.  Only  you can invite your contacts to Socioly - and we recommend you do - so you can chat and create and manage events with Circles of friends, family and associates with Socioly.  But you are in control.  We will not send invitations to your contacts 

Add the Calendar you'd like to sync with - Socioly syncs with your and friends nominated shared calendars

Not only is this key to ensure that you appointments are up to date in Socioly and your linked external calendar, it also allows you to check your Circles member availably so you can see when they are free when planning your next event 

Rest assured, no one can see the details of your calendar.  They can only see blocks of time when you're free or busy

To set up calendar sharing simply click Add under the Calendar setting and then select the calendars that you'd like to sync with Socioly

Then click OK

Circles are the core to Socioly

Create Circles around activities that involve a “Circle” of contacts so you can easily organise Events, create Chats and Polls to manage all interactions with this Circle of friend, family or colleges from within that Circle

To setup your first circle click Create Circle

Name the Circle - Enter the name or nickname for the Circle e.g. Basketball team 

Description (optional)  - Give a description to help you and others know why you setup the  Circle - e.g. Game and training information for Hunter's basketball team

Whose Circle is this for? - As you are the Circle creator you'll be the owner. You can also associate the Circle with your child e.g. The Basketball team Circle is to help you manage Event and Chats for the Basketball team that is associated with your son.  Simply check the box next to you son to associate the Circle with them

You can also use this association to filter Circles by child, so it's easy to find Circles created for them so you can keep track of your child's team news, events and updates

NOTE: If you have not added any children when your setup your Profile then this will not be visible.  You can always go back and edit your profile to add children at a later time. 

Click Next to continue

Add Members to your Circle - click on the names of contacts to add them to the Circle 

If they are already members of Socioly they will appear at the top of your Socioly contacts

If they are not currently a member you can click on the contact to invite them to join Socioly and the Basketball team Circle

Congratulations, you've setup your first Circle

Circles are the heart of Socioly

Socioly Circles help you connect, organise and manage your interactions with Circles of contacts grouped by friends, family, associations or activities

The average phone user has over 400+ contacts but these static contacts do not give context to your interactions with these contacts.  Socioly Circles give context to your contacts.  They allow your to organise your contacts into logical groupings (Circles) based on Activities, Events and Associations and help you manage your interactions with these groups

Create Circles of contacts around things like:

1. Friends e.g. Uni friends 
2. Family e.g. Family catchups
3. Sporting Teams e.g. Basketball circle
4. Workmate e.g. Hunter work

Socioly also allows you to associate a Circles with your children to help manage and keep track of their activities, like:

1. School sports
2. Afterschool activity e.g. Dance lessons
3. Kid's friend's parents e.g. Playdates

The possibilities are endless and you'll wonder how you ever managed without Socioly Circles

These Circles help you logically organise your contacts, and then from within each of these Circles your can: 

• Send and receive group Chats
• Create Polls and 
• Create and organise Events for members of these Circles

You can easily find messages and events as they are stored in the Circles within which they were created 

Circle Chat is where you can send Chats and reply to Chats from all the member of the Circle

Cut down the clutter - Circle Chat and Circle Event Chats help you send and manage Chat streams within the context of the Circle and dramatically speeds up communication

No more searching through endless disparate disconnected Chat streams to find messages and keep up to date

Organising a Family catchup for lunch

Need to organise a family lunch.  Not longer do you have to send an email or text to a whole list of family members and then go back and forth replying to each individual message. Simply open up the "Family catchup" Circle and in a single step send off a message to all your family and all replies are stored within that circle  

Better still, create a lunch event from within the "Family catchup" Circle.  That Event has a dedicated Event Chat, so you can send out a message directly from that Event and replies are not only stored in that Circle, but also within a Chat specific to that Family catchup Circle "Lunch" Event... making it super easy to keep track of event details, messages and updates

With the context of Circles sending and managing Chats within Socioly saves you time and avoids frustrations

Circle - Creating Events & Event Schedule

One of the most difficult parts of organising an event is finding out when everyone is available 

Socioly Circles solve that for you.  As we sync your Socioly planner with your linked external calendar and Circle member's shared calendars Socioly can show you not only when you are available but also when the other Circle members are free making finding a suitable time for an Event a breeze

(To get more details see the "Creating an Event from a Circle" section)

Circle Events Activity List

Get control of your schedule and see what's coming up through the Circle Events Activity Lists. Not only are all your upcoming Events available in a Global Activity List, but you can also see a dedicated list of scheduled activities specific to each of your Circles under the Events tab in that Circle.  So if you need to check when you're next catching up your family for lunch, simply open up the Events tab in your "Family catchup" Circle and you'll see the upcoming events and who's attending

And because each Circle Event has a dedicated Event Chat, you can easily keep up to date with any updates to event details

Polls are a great  way to get feedback from your Circle without all the too and fro of an open group Chat that can sometimes get out of control. With Socioly you can create 2 types of polls:

1. Text polls - You can survey Circle member for Yes/No answers or more complex questions.  You can have up to 10 variables for answer selections
2. Date polls - You can give member a choice of two or more available dates for Events so you can poll the Circle to find which dates are preferred

You can filter your Socioly Calendar / Planner by Circle, so you can see Events that are coming up specifically for that Circle in a Calendar View 

To access that simply open the Calendar by clicking on the icon in the bottom navigation bar

Then type the name of the Circle you would like to filter by in the Search bar e.g. Family catchups

It will open in the monthly calendar view.  If you want to see the weekly or daily view click on the calendar icon just below the Events tab and select the view you wan to see

In the weekly view (shown above) you can see:

Availability of the members of the "Family catchups" 

• Socioly events for the Circle in Blue 
• Green sections - all free
• Yellow sections - all free except
• Red - not free

You can click on a block to then go to the daily view for that date

Associate Circle with Children

If you'd like to add children to a Circle you can do that at the time that you create the profile

If you are the Circle owner you can add them at a later time by opening the Circle and then selecting the INFO tab and then clicking EDIT and simply ticking the name of the child or children that it is associated with

Click on the Circle icon on the bottom navigation bar (circled here in red)

Select the Circle you want to create an event for e.g. Family catchups

When you enter the Circle it will open on the Chat tab for that Circle.  This is where you can send messages and reply to messages from all the member of the Circle

To create an Event for that Circle and invite all the members click on the EVENTS Tab to the right of the Chat tab

The Event Tab shows the list of upcoming Events that are already scheduled for that Circle

To create a new Event for the Family catchups Circle Click the + button (Top Right)

Select Slot - Select the time of day – Morning, Afternoon, Evening or All Day

Set the Duration – in hours

This will then show you the availability during the month of Circle members 

Green – All members available

Yellow – Members are partially available

Red – Members not available

Click on a Date then click Next

Enter the Event Name and Location (compulsory)

Repeat (optional) – if the event is to repeat (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) - NOTE: If used you'll be prompted to select an End Date for the series to expire (not shown above)

Description (if required) - it's not compulsory but providing a description will help your Circle know what the event is about 

Date – Socioly automatically defaults to the date selected in prior step - but if you need to change the date you can do it here

Pick From time – use the scroll to set Start time.  The End time will be start time + Duration (selected in the prior screen)

Click Create Event to send an invitation to the Circle members

The new event will be added to your Socioly Planner and be synced to your linked external calendar.  It's also filed in a dedicated Events activity list in the "Family catchup" Circle, making it simple to keep track of all the Events for that Circle

An Event invitation is sent to members of the Circle. They can then RSVP as either

Yes, No, Maybe and you can see a list of all those that have confirmed they will be going

Event Chat - Each Event has a dedicated Chat so you can easily send out and receive messages specific to that Event and access them directly from that Event Chat  

To create an message or open the Chat simply click on the blue Event Chat icon (highlighted above in the red box)

You can also access Event Chats from the general Chat list screen accessible by clicking the Chat icon from the bottom navigation bar

Chat types are called out by halo colour:

• Event chats (such as the one highlighted by the red box above) feature a blue halo

• Circle chats feature a green halo

• Individual chats do not have a halo

• Group chats feature a group icon

Calendar Availability - Month View (Default)

The monthly view shows 3 time slots for each day 

• Top - Morning
• Middle - Afternoon
• Bottom – Evening

Dots – indicates a Socioly event is scheduled on that day

• Blue dot indicate Socioly Events 
• Purple dots indicate Events synced from your linked external calendar

Colours indicates availability

• Green - you are Free in that timeslot
• Yellow - Partially available
• Red - Not available

Calendar Availability - Week View 

Click 📷icon (right of Today - see red box above) and you'll see a dropdown where you can change the view to Month, Week or Day

This shows available times in a weekly view

As with the Monthly view green, yellow and red block indicate your availability status for the week

• Blue slots show booking times for events you've created in Socioly
• Purple slots indicate Events synced from your linked external calendar

Calendar Availability – Day View

The daily view gives more detail in an expanded view

NOTE: Only you can see descriptions of Events in the purple slots showing events brought in from your external calendar.  Other users will only see this as a block of time when you are unavailable with no description

Polls -  Text and  Date Polls

Polls are a great  way to get feedback from your Circle without all the too and fro of an open group Chat exchange that can sometimes get out of control and randomized.  With Sociol'y you can create 2 types of polls:

1. Text polls - So you can survey the Circle member for Yes/No answers or more complex questions.  You can have up to 10 variables for answer selections
2. Date polls - You can give member a choice of two or more available dates for Events so you can poll the Circle to find which dates work best for the group

Poll - How to create a Text poll

Simply open the Circle, select the Polls tab then click the + in the top right corner (see prior screen) and then select Text Poll

Then enter your poll question and your answer options

This could be a simple as a Yes/No poll or you can create polls with a wider selection of answers to choose from.  Like say surveying a group of friends with a list of restaurants for a night out. Socioly allows you up to 10 options so you'll be able to give your friends plenty of options to choose from

Poll - How to create an Event (date) poll

When you need to check out the dates for a catch up choose an Event poll.  Simply open the Circle, select the Polls tab and then click the + in the top right corner and select the New Event Poll

Then select the time slot (Morning, Afternoon, Evening or All day and duration. Then select a number of dates from the calendar to give the Circle a selection of dates to choose from

Fill out the Event Name, Location and Description.  Socioly will then send out the poll to Circle members so they can choose their preferred date.  Once you have the poll results you can turn that into an Event