Google Groups - General Information

Note: Much of this info was copied and pasted from Google's Help files and is presented here only as a quick reference.  See for the full printed on-line training go to:   Google Groups - On-line Training

General Information

Google Groups is the replacement product for our former email list server (IMail Web Administration).

In theory, all groups were moved over from the older server along with the appropriate owners and members.  In practice many of the owners did not transfer over.  User Services will update the lists as requested.

Some lists are not to be edited as these lists are updated nightly by the CX system.  These include:

Roles

Users may have the role of Owner, Manager or Member.  From: Google Group Roles

The Owner role -  The Owner role has the highest level of permissions and contains only the creator of the group when the group is created. Other characteristics of this role are:

• • • Owners have the most permissions of any member.
    • Owners can add other roles and even delete the group itself.
    • Permissions for the Owner role can’t be modified.
    • Owners don’t have all of the permissions. If an owner needs more permissions, add the owner to an additional role with the needed permissions.
    • You can add additional owners or remove owners from the Owner role.
    • This role cannot be removed.

The Manager role - The Manager role contains all elected managers of the Google group. Managers generally have more permissions than members, but fewer permissions than owners. Other characteristics of this role are:

• • • Managers primarily have member and message management responsibilities.
    • Managers can add or remove managers.
    • This role cannot be removed.

The Member role

• • Any permission set on the Member role is automatically set on all other roles.
  • Permissions set in the Member role are selected and grayed out in the other roles.
  • This role cannot be removed.

Group Types

Three Google Group types may be used.  The group type is selected as the Google Group is created.

Email list -  An Email list group is one whereby members only use Email to communicate. This group type is common in organizations where a single email alias is desired to communicate to a certain group of people using email.

Web forum  - An Web forum group is one whereby members only use the Google Groups user interface to communicate with other members. This group type is similar to the online web forums found on many web sites.

Q&A forum - A Question and Answer (Q&A) forum group is one whereby members use the Google Groups user interface to primarily answer the questions of other members. This group type is similar to the online help forum.

Participating in a Group

Go to this Google Groups Page: Participating in a Google Group

Creating Groups

Go to this Google Groups Page:  Creating Google Groups

Managing Groups and and Group Permissions

Go to this Google Groups Page:  Managing Google Groups and Group Permissions

Special Notes about Permissions when creating a new Group

To limit a Group to be viewable only by the members of the list, you must take the following steps:
 

1. When creating the new group, on the Create a Group screen scroll down to the Basic Permission section.
   
   
2. If modifying an existing group:
   
   1. go My Groups 
   2. Click on the appropriate Group
   3. Click Manage
      
      
   4. Click Permissions
   5. Click Basic Permissions
      
      
      
3. Use the drop down menu to match the following settings for the View Topics and Post sections.
    
   
   
4.  Use the Down menu to match the following settings for Join the group.
   
   
   
5. This section of the screen should now appear as follows:
   
   
   
6. Save the new group or managing an existing group.
   
   The steps in the following section will prevent the group from appearing in the browsable list of groups
   
   
7. Open Groups / My Groups by clicking on the Groups item on the Google menu
   
8. Open the group in question.
    
9. Click Manage 
   
   
10. Click on Information
    
    
11. Click on Directory
    
    
12. Uncheck the List this group in the directory box.
     
     
13. Click Save.