A group is like a neighborhood in the community. It contains members (or residents), applications (or houses) and data (whatever the residents add, create, or remove in the applications). As a "neighborhood," a group is frequently organized around some common characteristic or point of interest.
There are different types of groups, which makes it possible to control visibility of the membership and access. They also support different levels of activity visibility. Please see the next section to learn about these types.
What group types are there?
As mentioned above, most There are five group types which govern the way the group behaves regarding membership and data in the system. You can look at them from the point of view of joining. The types include:
- Private Unlisted - This group's name doesn't appear in the group list. The only way to join it is to receive an email invitation from an owner.
- Private Listed - While you can see the group's name in the group list, its content is not visible to nongroup members. Click Join Group to trigger a Request membership dialog box. Here, you type a message to the group owner(s) for your request and then click Request membership.
- Public Closed - With this kind of group, clicking Join Group triggers a Request membership dialog box. Here, you type a message to the group owner(s) for your request. You then click Request membership.
- Public Open -You can join this group by clicking the group home page's Join Group link and immediately become a member.
- Joinless - Membership isn't tracked (that is, there are no members). Site-level roles control the group's permissions. Joinless groups are managed by system administrators unless an administrator creates a special role for managing this type of group.
Groups may also be nested inside each other.
Are there membership types, as well?
Within a group, there are three levels of membership:
- Group members (can create and view group content, view group members except in joinless groups, and invite prospective members).
- Group managers (have the same permission as group members, but additionally can manage the group).
- Group owners (have the same permissions aa a manager, but also can control group settings, add new members, modify the group theme, create new applications, create new roles, and and modify role permissions.
How do I know when to create a group?
Group Creation and Management
Group creation is contextual - meaning that you use the pencil tool to create a group in the context where it will reside. For example, if you want to create a site-level group, you click the pencil at the site level and access the Manage site-level contextual panel. By navigating to Manage Group, you see the Subgroups tab and can create a subgroup here.