Enabling External Groups

Group owners can make private and secret groups accessible to outside contributors if this feature is enabled in your community (by your community administrator).

Fastpath: Admin Console > System > Settings > Externally Accessible Groups > Enable externally accessible groups

When enabled, private and secret groups can become externally accessible. When a group becomes externally accessible, group members, both external contributors and standard community users, can invite external contributors to these groups.

When disabled after being enabled for a period, all content created by external contributors will continue to exist, and external contributors will continue to be visible in the community, but they will no longer be able to log in.

By default, externally accessible groups are enabled in internal communities (typically those that serve employees) and disabled in external communities (typically those that serve customers, vendors, and partners).

Note: To use Single Sign-On with External groups, see Setting Up an Entry Page for External Users.

Assign specific users or user groups the permission to create externally accessible groups (Admin Console > Permissions > Social Group Permissions). For detailed instructions, see Permissions for Externally Accessible Groups. Those users will see the option to Enable external accessunder the Advanced options when creating or editing a group in the end user interface.
For step-by-step instructions on creating a group with external access, see Creating Externally Accessible Groups.