Enabling external groups

Group owners can make private and secret (also known as private unlisted) groups accessible to outside contributors if this feature is enabled in your community.

Fastpath: Admin Console > System > Settings > Externally Accessible Groups

In an externally accessible group, 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 continues to exist, and external contributors continue to be visible in the community, but they are no longer able to log in.

By default, externally accessible groups are enabled.

Note: For more information about using SSO with external groups enabled, see Mixed-mode authentication.

To give users permission to create an externally accessible group:

  1. In the Admin Console, go to Admin Console > Permissions > Social Group Permissions.
  2. Assign specific users or user groups the permission to create externally accessible groups. For more information, see Permissions for external groups.
The users with the permissions assigned can see the option to Enable external access under the Advanced options when creating or editing a group in the user interface. For step-by-step instructions on creating a group with external access, see Creating externally accessible groups in the User Guide.