You will need the Full Read Groups permission to see groups in the Groups listing. The listing shows groups at your campuses plus any listed group. Without the permission, you see listed groups and groups you administer.
Groups allow you to organize people around a common interest. You can use groups to track attendance (manually or with the check-in system), schedule volunteers, communicate with members, share documents, and more. There are four main built-in group types, and you can define your own types as well:
Volunteer - people who volunteer in a ministry.
Small Group - a small number of people who meet regularly to study the Bible.
Class - people going through an educational curriculum, either at the church or in school. Use this type for grade levels, such as preschool, grade 1 and grade 2.
Church - a general grouping that doesn't fit the other types, such as baptism groups or launch team members.
Each group has privacy settings that control who can see it and how new members can be added. You can assign one or more leaders to help manage each group.
A group can be at every campus, at named campuses or at whole organizations. There is no campus rule on group membership, so anyone can join any group, whatever their campus.
Groups a person is a current or past member of appear in the Involvement section of their profile, so you can quickly see how they are involved in the church. You can also define custom fields for each group to capture any data you need for that group.
Next Steps
Now that you have a high-level view of what groups are and how they can be used, try creating a new group and adding members.
To track attendance for a group with the check-in system, add a session and select which group rosters to use when checking a person in. See How do I set up an event to track attendance via the check-in system?