Groups: leaders, meetings, attendance and what members see

Groups are your home groups, ministries and courses. Each one has a schedule, a meeting place, leaders, members and a record of who came. A group member doesn't need an account: anyone in the directory can be added. In DEMO CHURCH EN, “Home group — North” meets on Thursdays at 18:30 at the Browns', and Peter Brown leads it.

Who can do what

• Everyone in the church: sees their own groups in Mine → My groups.
• People: View (e.g. Leader): sees all groups in People → Groups.
• People: Edit (e.g. Administrator): creates, edits and archives groups and changes who's in them.
• Group leader: a person marked as leader of that group. No special role is needed. They see members' contact details, take attendance, decide on requests to join and moderate the conversation. Changing the group's details or members still takes People: Edit.

Setting up a group

1. People → Groups → Add group.
2. Fill in Name, Group type (Home group, Ministry, Course or Other), Meeting day, Time and Meeting place.
3. Click Save. The group's page opens.
4. In Add a person from the directory, type a name and click the person. Repeat for everyone else.
5. Click the crown next to a person to Make leader. A group can have several leaders. Clicking again sets them back to Regular member.

Changes to members save straight away. The bin next to a person is Remove from group.

Edit changes the details. Archive takes the group off the lists, while attendance and past announcements stay. To bring it back, tick Show archived on the groups list, open the group and click Restore.

Message the group starts an announcement to its members (needs Announcements: Manage). See Announcements and notifications.

Meetings and attendance

The group leader or someone with People: Edit does this on the group's page, in Meetings:

1. Check the Meeting date (today by default) and click Add meeting.
2. Tick who came. Select everyone and Clear help in a big group.
3. Add a Note if you like, e.g. the topic or Scripture passage.
4. Click Save attendance.

Click a meeting to correct it, or use Delete meeting to remove it. You can tick only current members, so add a visitor to the group first. The list shows the most recent meetings.

Below it, Attendance shows a report for a Period: Last 30 days, Last 3 months, Last year or Custom range. You'll see the number of meetings, the average present, and the breakdown By person and By meeting. People who have left are marked “no longer in the group”.

Attendance is read by the group leader and anyone with People: View. It also feeds the person's Activity tab and the Last attended condition in lists. Regular members don't see it.

Letting new people join

To open a group to newcomers, click Edit and tick On the church's public group list. Add a Description for newcomers and a General area, then save. Don't put a street address there: the leader shares it after accepting someone.

The groups list then shows the address of your church's public list, starting with /g/, with a Copy button. Put it on your website or in a bulletin. Anyone, even without an account, sees the name, schedule, description and general area, and can click I want to join. The address, leaders and members stay hidden.

Church members without directory access find these groups in My groups, under Join a group: Ask to join, an optional message, then Send request. The button changes to Waiting for the leader.

The group leader gets an email. On the group's page, Requests to join shows each request with Accept and Decline. The person hears the decision by email. If they're new, they appear in the directory as a Guest.

Confidential groups

For a group whose membership shouldn't be known, e.g. a support group, use Confidential group. The group leader can turn it on, and so can someone with People: Edit and Pastoral & confidential notes.

A confidential group leaves the public list and requests to join. Only its leader and people with Pastoral & confidential notes see the members. Members see the leaders and themselves. Taking part doesn't show in anyone's Activity for others. People: View alone won't even show that the group exists.

Conversation

Each group has a Conversation tab, for members and leaders of that group only. Someone with directory access who isn't in the group can't read it.

• Write a message and click Send, up to 2000 characters. New messages appear by themselves every few seconds.
• You can fix your own message for 15 minutes and delete it at any time.
• Mute notifications silences this one conversation for you.
• A leader can delete any message and use Mute in conversation on a person, who can then read but not write.
• Notifications are app-only and never show the text. In a confidential group, others see only your first name, and notifications don't show the group's name.
• Messages older than 12 months disappear. An archived group's conversation is read-only.

What a member sees

• The group's name, type, schedule and meeting place.
• The leaders, with their phone and email.
• The names of other members, without their contact details.
• The Conversation tab.

Members don't see attendance or requests to join. If the page says your account isn't linked to a person in the directory, ask your church administrator.

In the phone app

Church tab → Groups. You'll find it in the People section if you have directory access, otherwise in Personal, on iPhone, iPad and Android.

• Everyone sees My groups, the schedule and the members, and can Join a group.
• Leaders use Take attendance on the group's screen and decide on requests with Approve and Discard.
• With People: View you also see Other groups.
• With People: Edit you get New group, and Edit group, Edit members and Archive group under More.

The public list settings, the Confidential group switch and the Attendance report are in the browser. Conversation works in the browser and on Android. The current iPhone and iPad app doesn't have it, so use the browser there.

What's next

• The people directory: people, households, import and notes
• Lists, care workflows and automations