Did you know that you can add and share extra content into your forum and blog posts in EngX? You can include polls, embed YouTube videos, Facebook posts and even files from Google docs too!
Vote in our Poll!
Including a poll in your question or discussion is a fun and easy way of surveying the EngX community’s opinion about a topic.
Select insert from the editing options when writing your post and then poll. A new window will pop up for you to add your question, a short description (which is optional) and then the options you’d like the community to vote on. If you need more options than the three that are visible just select ‘add option’ to add more!
Don’t forget to switch over to the configuration tab in the window to enter an expiration date for your poll and choose the display style options. You can choose between displaying the current results before someone has voted, displaying them after someone has added their own vote or only displaying them once the poll closing date has passed.
Want to include and embed content in your posts from other sources?
As with Polls you’ll find the list of embeddable content in the Insert menu and then under External Content. Please bear in mind though that you can only embed content that is made available to a public audience. You can embed YouTube videos, posts from Facebook and Twitter as well as public documents from Google Docs.
Grab the embed code from your source of choice and add it into the embed code section and voila! Readers can now see your content directly in your post such as this example 'Dear Evil Engineer: Could I live in a lair on the ocean floor?' from the IET's YouTube channel:
Want your long hyperlinks to convert to rich content?
When adding links in your posts to other websites etc you can either add them as a plain and long url hyperlink, link them behind some text as a text link OR convert the link to rich content or a ‘preview’ of the content you’re linking to.
For example here is a long url link
https://engx.theiet.org/b/blogs/posts/life-as-one-of-the-many-stars-at-the-uk-space-agency
This is a text hyperlink: Read the article in the Community Insights blog
and here is the same link but converted to a much better looking ‘preview’ instead:
Which one is more inviting to click on? 
To convert your link to a 'preview' format, add your long url in your post and then select it or click anywhere within it. Then select Edit from the toolbar menu and then Convert to preview you can convert content back to a simple link by taking the same steps.
Latest hot topics in the community:
There's been a lot of news in the media around the recent launch of ChatGPT. Graham Herries, Chair of the IET Innovation and Skills panel, tells us What Engineers and Policymakers need to know about the ChatGPT Revolution Read his post in the Community Insights blog and share your thoughts!
Yun Hang Cho is a rising star in the IET Satellite Network. Get to know more about Yun Hang, how he came to be Chair of the Aerospace Young Professionals Technical Network and his thoughts on Engineering the engineers of the future
Can you help us?
We're currently looking for EngX community members to join a feedback/testing group to help us continue to improve EngX and provide an interesting and welcoming online community for engineers across the globe. If you’d like to be considered for participation in the group, please email the EngX team at community-online@ietengx.org
