You will need the Create Groups permission to add a group. Changing a group's campuses, category, parent, merchant account or options afterwards needs Full Write Groups.
There are two ways to add a new group:
Click the New drop-down at the top of any page and select Group.
Go to Groups in the left-hand menu and click Add New at the top.
Either way, a window opens where you enter the group's details.
Group details
The General tab holds basic information about the group.
Name - the name of the group. It must be unique, so no two groups can have the same name. This field is required and is limited to 200 characters.
Type - the kind of group. Choose the option that best matches its purpose. Others see the type when viewing the group listing.
Category - a label for the group, such as Staff or Campus Volunteers. Choosing a Type opens the Category field.
With Full Write Groups, you can add types and categories from the menu to the right of each drop-down, or by selecting Add New if none exist.
Click More Fields for these:
Description - a description of the group. This field accepts HTML, so it can hold videos, images and text formatting.
Campuses - where the group sits. This field appears when your account uses more than one campus or more than one organization. The next section explains it.
Childcare? - whether childcare is provided for members. This applies mainly to small groups.
Language - the main language spoken in the group. With Full Write Groups, you can manage the list from the menu to the right of the drop-down.
Visibility
Is Public? decides whether the group is shown in the public portal and the My One Church app.
Tip: The fields below only appear when Is Public? is turned on. For a private group, Membership, Allow Sign Ups?, Sign Up Form, Merchant Account and the listing options are hidden because they do not apply. Membership is also hidden from the group's Info tab.
Membership: Auto Enroll - people can join without approval and see all group information, such as events, files and chat.
Membership: Approval Required - people must sign up or be invited by leadership to join.
Allow Sign Ups? - whether people are asked to fill out a form to join.
Sign Up Form - the Generic Group Sign Up form, or a custom form.
Merchant Account - only used if the form takes payment through a donation or item/ticket field.
Options: Listed - whether non-members can see the group. If it is not listed, only its members can see it.
Options: Show leaders publicly - if checked, leaders' names and profile images are shown publicly.
Options: Enable chat - turns on One Church Chat, giving members their own group channel. Chat can only be turned on when Is Public? is on and Membership is Approval Required, which keeps conversations to approved members. What is One Church Chat? explains chat.
Choose the group's campuses
If your account uses more than one campus or more than one organization, the Campuses field decides where the group sits. It has three modes:
All - the group sits at every campus of every organization.
Specific - pick one or more campuses.
Organization - pick one or more whole organizations.
You cannot name organizations and campuses together. Trying to save both shows Choose organizations or campuses, not both. The field starts from your campus selector, so check it before you save.
If you are limited to some campuses, you can only pick campuses inside your access where you hold the permission, and you cannot set a group to All.
Note: All means different things on different records. On a group it means every campus of every organization. On a financial record, such as a designation, it means the whole of one organization.
Campuses do not control who can join
There is no campus rule on group membership. Nothing compares a member's campus with the group's campuses, whether they are added by staff, sign up themselves or are checked in. Anyone can belong to any group. The only check is whether the staff member adding them is allowed to add that person.
Hidden rosters across organizations
If your account has more than one organization, staff limited to one organization see a group that sits wholly in another organization as a visitor would:
The roster is blank and pending sign-ups are hidden.
Leaders are hidden, or shown without contact details if they are shown publicly.
The member count is blank in the groups list and the group tree, although the group page and its quick view still show it.
The group cannot be newly added to a guest list, check-in session, message or promotion step. One already there stays.
Current members of the group are never hidden from it, and nor are administrators of a group above it. A group set to All is never hidden. This rule only applies between organizations, not between campuses of the same organization.
For example, Bea is limited to Riverside Academy. Lakeside Youth sits in the other organization and is published, so Bea can open it from a shared link, but she sees no Members tab, no pending sign-ups, and leaders only if they are shown publicly. If Bea joins the group, none of this applies to her.
Changing a group's campuses later
Changing a group's campuses or organizations needs Full Write Groups. A group administrator without it can still save the group's other fields.
If your account has more than one organization, the change is refused while one of the group's events that has not ended uses a merchant account outside the new campuses. Remove the merchant account from that event, move the group, then pick the new organization's merchant account. A volunteer position's merchant account holds a move in the same way.
How does a record get a campus or an organization? explains how campuses decide who reaches a record.
After you save
To change anything later, open the group, click Actions in the top right corner and choose Edit group.
Meeting details
If the group meets regularly, add an event to its calendar to set the meeting day and time. You do this after creating the group: click the pencil icon in the Meeting Details section and fill in the details.
Once added, the event appears on the group's calendar.
The meeting days, times and address, if set, also appear on the group's Info tab.
Hierarchy
Set up parent groups and subgroups. Group administrators also have admin access to every subgroup below their group. No data is shared between the groups.
Options
The Options tab holds settings that affect how the group is displayed and works.
Active? - if not active, members can no longer reach the group. Leadership still can.
Sign-up form - the form people fill out to sign up. It only applies to public groups (Is Public? on) with Auto Enroll or Approval Required membership. The default is the Generic Group Sign-Up form.
Merchant Account - only used if the form takes payment through a donation or item/ticket field.
Interactive - if set, members can see who else is in the group. Leaders are always visible.
Listed? - whether non-members can see the group. If it is not listed, only its members can see it.
Show leaders publicly? - if set, leaders' names and profile images are shown.
Restrict adding new members to group admins? - if yes, only the group's admins can add people to the roster. If no, people can also be added from a manual check-in within an event.
Track managers? - if set, group member records get a Manager field to help track who reports to whom.