Community Groups

The community groups feature is the ability for a sub-community to be dynamically created within a community site by authorized users (community members and authors) from the publish and author environments.

This ability is present when the groups function is present in the community site structure.

A community group template provides the design of the community group page when a community group is dynamically created.

One or more group templates are selected for the groups function when the function is added to a community site’s structure or to a community site template. This list of group templates is presented to the member or author who dynamically creates a group from within the community site.

Creating a New Group

The ability to create a community group relies on the existence of a community site which includes the groups function, such as one created from the Reference Site Template.

The examples that follow use the community site created from the Reference Site Template as described in the Getting Started with AEM Communities tutorial.

This is the page that loads on publish when the Groups menu item is selected:

When you select the New Group icon, an edit dialog opens up.

Under the Settings tab, you provide the basic features of the group:

• Group Name

  The title of the group that you want to display on the community site. Avoid using underscore characters (_) and keywords such as resources and configuration in the group name.

• Description

  A description of the group to display on the community site.

• Invite

  A list of members to invite to the group. Type-ahead search provides suggestions of community members to invite.

• Group URL Name

  The name for the group page that becomes part of the URL.

• Open Group

  Selecting Open Group indicates that any anonymous site visitor may view the content, and deselects Member Only Group.

• Member Only Group

  Selecting Member Only Group indicates that only members of the group may view the content, and deselects Open Group.

Under the Template tab, you can select from the list of community group templates. These templates were specified when the groups function was included in the community site’s structure or in a community site template.

Under the Image tab, you can upload an image to display for the group on the community site’s Groups page. The default style sheet sizes the image to 170 x 90 pixels.

By selecting Create Group, the pages for the group are created based on the chosen template, and a user group is created for membership and the Groups page is updated to show the new sub-community.

For example, the Groups page with a new sub-community titled “Focus Group”, for which an image thumbnail was uploaded, appears as follows (still signed in as a community group administrator):

Selecting the Focus Group link opens the Focus Group page in the browser, which has an initial appearance based on the chosen template, and includes a submenu underneath the main community site’s menu:

Community Group Member List Component

The Community Group Member List component is intended for use by developers of group templates.

Additional Information

More information may be found on the Community Group Essentials page for developers.

For other information related to community groups, visit Managing Users and User Groups.

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