How Do I Create a Group?

Creating a group enables you to set up an area where like-minded people can put their heads together and share information on the group subject. You must have special permissions to create a group, which are set by your community administrator.

Before you create a group, you may want to consider the purpose of the group, what kind of information needs to be included, who will participate, and how people who need to know about it will find it. The way you name the group and the tags you assign it are different ways you can make it available to people who might be interested. See the Group Creation Options topic for ideas about the important choices you need to make when deciding on a group setup.

Creating a Group

Group options are described in more detail below.

Click > Group.
Give your group an identifying name. You won't be able to create a group with the same name as an existing one: a green checkmark next to the field indicates the name is unique.
Enter a brief description to appear in the user interface. For example, your RFP Collaboration group could say "Look for the latest RFP templates and materials here."
Choose a group type. Group types limit who can see your group and/or its content without an invitation. For more details, see Types of Groups.
Select tags that can be used to find this group. For example, a Sales group might use the following tags: RFPs, sales_videos, wins, and so on.
If your community administrator has set up categories to identify places while browsing, you can select some categories to associate with the place.
Decide whether this group should allow its users to share and collaborate on individual pieces of group content, without granting them group access. Note that this option only works for Private groups.
Decide whether this group should extend activity to "external users"--users from outside your community you'd like to collaborate with. This option is typically applied to Private groups.
Click Advanced options to expose more options. (Advanced options are described in detail below).
If you click through without selecting Advanced Options, your place will use an Activity page as its main page, with the option to add more custom pages. We recommend using an Activity page because it can be displayed on mobile devices, and because it's more friendly to streaming content. However, you may want to include an Overview page with widgets. You do this by clicking Advanced Options and choosing one of the two options that include an Overview page. If you select Activity + Overview Page, you'll need to specify which page will be the landing page for the place.
If you want to apply a customized place template to this place, click Preview and browse templates. If you don't choose a template, just click Preview: the place will use the default template, Team Collaboration. Place templates determine which tiles and streams will be included in your group's Activity page (which you can further customize). Choose the one that's right for the kind of collaboration that will happen in the place you're creating. You might want to read more about Using Place Templates.
Optionally, click Place Image and Banner Design to configure the visual presentation of your place.
Click Create Group.

Create Group Page

Template: Determines what data tiles and streams make up your group's Activity page. By default, your group will use the General Collaboration Place Template. However, there is a wide range of templates available for specific collaboration tasks. See Using Place Templates and the associated reference topics for more information. If you don't like the template you've chosen, you can always change it later.
Name: The name you want to show up at the top of the group page. This will be used at the end of a URL that links to the group. (You can change the URL by clicking the Edit link.)
Description: The information about the group shown on the group's main page. Capture what the group's about in a way that will attract other people who might be interested.
Type: Choose a group type that will determine whether your group can be seen by others and whether they can participate. For more information, see Types of Groups.
Tags: Tags are words or short phrases that will help other people find your group. Use tags that describe your group's focus. To enter multiple tags, press Enter after each word or phrase.
Categories: If your community manager has set up categories that help to classify places so they're easier to find when browsing, you can select some categories to apply.
Extend Visibility: You may be able to create a group that's open for collaboration with external contributors. This option is only available to secret and private groups, and external contributors must be invited by a standard user who belongs to this group. You can also enable members in a private group to share individual content items (without granting access to the group itself) using non-member content editing.

Advanced Options

Place Navigation: Use this setting to determine whether you want to use a tile-based Activity page, a widget-based Overview page, or both. For guidance, see Tile Pages Versus Widget Pages.

Content and Activity

External Storage: If your administrator has enabled a connection with an external storage provider such as Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, or Google Drive, you can set your group to synchronize document storage to that provider. Files that are uploaded to the group will be stored in external storage, rather than in Jive, and files can be added, deleted, or modified from either side.
Note: For Box users: although you can connect an Open group to a Box folder, only community members who have joined the group will be able to see Box documents and have their comments reflected on the Box side. Because of this limitation, it's recommended to use the Box external storage only with Members Only, Private, or Secret Groups.
Group Features and Activity: Select which types of content will be available to group members, such as blog posts, documents, and so on. This list also controls what shows in the Content tab of the group, as well as what content types you can use to filter the Content tab.