Hi there, Tendenci user! Let's begin with a brief explanation of what "groups" or "user groups" are. A user group is a compilation of contact information from people who use your site. These people are broken up into groups that the site administrator has set in place. Examples include groups for newsletters and mailing lists, groups for attending a specific event, groups for a certain membership rate and organizational subunits, groups that are able to edit or view certain pages of the site, etc.

To learn more about entities, pointers, and groups please visit this Tendenci help file. 

What is the "Groups" field I see when adding Tendenci Events, Photos, etc.?

When you're adding new content on your Tendenci site, many of the modules like pages, news, articles, and events require you to choose a Group for that piece of content.

For instance, when adding a new Event, you'll see this field: 

The "Groups" field dropdown menu will display all of your created groups. So in this example, these are the groups we have created for training purposes.

What Do Tendenci Groups Do?

The Groups field allows you to associate your content with a group of users within your organization. This allows you to create a feed just for the content associated with that group.

Below are some examples of Tendenci Groups functionality in action.

Example 1: Group Landing Page

Some organizations (particularly Associations), may have groups or committees with their own landing page that feeds in content like Events and Photos that apply just to that group.

For instance, The SPE-GCS Young Professionals Group Landing Page feeds in content related to that group:

Example 2: Client Dashboard that feeds in just Files Associated with that Group

Create a group for a client and then associate the Files you want them to see with their Group.

You can then filter the Files module search to just Files assigned to that Group, and create a client Dashboard with a link to those Files.

What If I Don't Use the Groups Feature? Set Up a General Group

The Groups feature can be extremely powerful, but not all sites will need to utilize this feature. If you don't use this feature, we recommend creating one general group and assigning all of your content to this group.

To do this from the front-end you can add the slug "groups" i.e www.yourwebsite.com/groups or you can navigate to the admin backend by clicking on "Apps" in your admin navigation bar menu and under "Admin" click on "Admin Backend". In the admin backend, scroll all the way to the bottom and under "User Groups" click on "Groups".

"Add Group" CTA (call to action) is at the top left. Go ahead and click on that. 

Give your general group a Name - we recommend giving it the same name as your website to keep things simple. 

For an explanation of all of the fields and options you have when creating Groups, view this help file.

If your group is simply a generic group that no users need to see or add themselves to, you can set your settings like the screenshot below:

Group Name - Name of your site Group Label - Leave this blank and the system will assign the Label to be the same as the Group Name Entity - Leave this at the default (you should only have one option in your dropdown) Leave Recipient Email and Priority Blank To make sure your users don't accidentally add themselves to this group, uncheck Show Option, Sync for newsletters, and Allow Self Add/Remove

Next - You'll want to set this group as your Default Group. Go to your Site settings and scroll down (the settings are listed in alphabetical order) to the setting called "Default Group." Select your group and hit Save.

Now when you add new content, your generic group will be autoselected under the "Group" dropdown and you can skip that field.

For more on User Groups help files please visit https://www.tendenci.com/help-files/topic/46/

Did this answer your question? If not, please contact our support team for more information.