Getting started with Groups

Hi, where do we receive notifications for new members requesting to join a specific group? We should receive this by email or in Slack by a Zap. 

Hi Anita, 

You don’t receive notifications for this. You have to check that in the groups overview page in Control (Under Applications columns). You can view the different available group notifications here under “Which group notifications are available?”

HI @Yoeri but that gives quite a bad customer experience if customers ask to join a group and they have to wait a working day or even longer before an admin discovers it? It also creates extra burdens of work for admins/community managers having to check this. Would love to see a notification for this. We will consider moving our VIP groups to Groups in the future once Groups has more functionality in place, and this would be a requirement in that case. 

Also to add, because having VIP groups as private groups in the community section is not a very good option (but we have it for now as it all in all is a better option than in Groups currently), as members of a closed group in the community section can not see who else is a member of that group. The UX of Groups is much better in that case. 

Noted, thanks for the additional information. Looping in @Marion Frecaut as I know she’s interested in groups feedback as well :)

Hello @Anitahg thanks a lot for all this detailed feedback. This is definitely something on our radar. I see that you voted on the related idea. Thanks fo that :)

@Marion Frecaut yes it is also very important for us that we can decide which groups shall be visible to the public and which shall be not. For instance, we have a closed group for selected executives, and if the group is visible, someone might request to join and we can have a hard time justifying why someone can get access and others don’t. Happy to jump on a call anytime to discuss more about Groups, we see our selves using Groups a lot for many different groups in the future, but that would require more features within Groups. 

This may be a very basic miss on my part, but @Marion Frecaut or @Yoeri - how can a member find a private group they are a member of if we do not have Groups publicized on the homepage? Is bookmarking their best bet, or is there a place in a menu that they can find the group again? Thanks! 

cc: @valerie.molina 

Heya @cclements !

I think Marion and Yoeri have gone home for the night, but I happen to be around. Just as a heads up, I’m not an inSided staffer myself, but I help out on here in my free time.

If my understanding is correct, https://community.glintinc.com/groups should work for this purpose. Every kind of group that the currently logged in user has access to will show up there if memory serves.

As an example, I’ll use the OVO Forum where I’m a Super User. At any given time, all available groups show up at https://forum.ovoenergy.com/groups . One of them is a public group, the other two are hidden. When you’re logged out, none of them appear in the Mega Menu in the top left.

However, while logged in as myself with access to all three of them, I can see all those groups show up in the list.

But if I log out, they all show up as if I’ve not joined any groups.

The exception is hidden groups, which will only show up for me if I’ve been given access to them. There aren’t any on the OVO Forum though, so I can’t show you how they’d appear.

I also dug up an article for you, in case this helps. :)

• The different group types: Public, Private and Hidden groups

If you still get stuck, feel free to stop by this thread again.

Blastoise pretty much covered it all! We recommend to add a ‘Groups’ link to your main navigation that links to https://community.glintinc.com/groups on this page community members can find all public and private groups. :)

Thank you so much @Blastoise186 @Yoeri for the assist!

Hi @Yoeri, Precisely my Q today on how to add Groups in the main top Nav? Our /groups page is ready to be launched.

One of these days I’ll convince inSided to give me a free testing instance… XD

Anyway, based on what I know from inSpired, I think this guide should be the one you’re after.

• Configure Mega Menu Widget in Destination

Groups might be one of the built in options on the Mega Menu, but if not feel free to add it as a custom link. :)

Blastoise is right once again Groups is a pre-configured menu-item in the ‘Mega-menu’ simply enable it from there (and rename if you like). Make sure the visibility toggle is set to visible :)

Hi there!
This might be a silly question, but how did you edit the Group Overview page here: https://communities.gainsight.com/groups
To show this banner?
 

Thanks!
 

Hi @Milla - not a silly question at all! :) We actually use a bit of custom CSS for that.  Happy to share it with you here:

/* CSS for Groups Header  */
.group-overview-wrapper-title{
background-image: url("https://yourimagelink.png");
  height: 240px;
  background-size: cover;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  display:flex;
  margin-bottom: 32px;
  margin-top: 10px;
  color: white;
}

Fantastic - thank you @Kenneth R! 

Hi @Kenneth R! In the Group itself, I’d like to remove the name of the group on the hero/banner image. One of our designers created a custom image with the name already so it looks silly on top of each other. Will this custom css help me do that?

Hi @ryanne.perry - so if you want to update one or both of your hero images (the one on the Group overview page and/or one for a specific Group) you’ll need to actually swap out the image.  So for the Group overview page, edit the custom CSS to include a link to the new image, or for the Group itself, add a new image in the Group settings in Control.  

Situation:

I am member of the community. I have joined to certain group. I am not logged in at the moment.

1. I come to the community and I choose the Groups link from Mega menu
2. I am forwarded to the Groups home page and I can browse the groups
3. I search the group I am already joined and I press “Join”
4. I am prompted to the login and after login I am forwarded back in the Groups home page and I have to press group (card) again

Question:

Phase 4: After login, why I am not forwarded to the group automatically? I am member of the group already

Also:

• If I am not community member yet, if I search suitable group and I press “Join” → Is it possible that after I have created community account I have requested to join the group at the same time? At the moment it seems that after creating community account I have to press Join again
• Is the planned behaviour that user is a already member AND logged in as well, before user goes to the Groups home page and joins to the new group or move to the existing one?

Group I am talking about is “Private”.

Small things but it seems that groups feature isnt so fluent in every situations.

You’re right in calling this out @revote, we’re planning to address this flow later this year.  

Okay, good to know. Thanks a lot. I am looking forward.

Hello! I’m loving the Groups functionality and have been leveraging it for Product Betas. One item our internal team members who were managing these Product Betas were asking for is to retain the data (i.e. the topics created in the Groups) now that their Betas are over. My understanding is once I delete a Group that would delete all the data within that Group, right?

I see the option to Export the Group Membership list via CSV format but no other export for the posts itself, unless I go to Analytics - Topic Export CSV and filter by the topics created in that Group. Even then I don’t see the contents of that topic that would be helpful for our Product team to retain for purposes of Beta feedback done in that Community Group.

Any suggestions beside screenshotting community pages within that Community Group? Really wouldn’t want a closed Beta community group to be left up on our Community. 🤔

Have you thought option to create hidden category and move topics there? After that delete the group?

Note: Dont answer any more to the topics etc. Users will get notifications 😊

Hi! One of the things we’re considering is the ability to archive groups, so they don’t clutter the UI in both the Groups overview in Destination and in Control (see this idea). This would only make them accessible for Community Managers and Administrators.

Would this also solve your use case?

cc @Dheepak G