Subgroups

Subgroups help you organize your communications and members so that the right people are engaged in their work together.

For example, an organization may have the following subgroups: - governance board - working team or a project working group - a topic (such as 'strategy' or 'learning')

Subgroups work just like groups do, but are located within your "parent" group. Most of the features and settings available are the same as in the parent group. This also means that someone can be a member of your subgroup, such as your board, but not of your parent group.

Add a subgroup

Note

The ability to add new subgroups is part of the group's permission settings. By default, only admins can start new subgroups.

To add a subgroup, visit your main group page, then click New Subgroup from the sidebar.

Click the New subgroup button, give it a name and select the privacy setting, then click Start subgroup.

When you are ready, invite people to the subgroup.

You can edit the subgroups group settings by clicking the cog icon on the subgroup page.

Subgroup settings

Privacy

Choose who can find the subgroup and read its threads:

The Parent group members can see private threads permission can also give parent group members access to subgroup threads without joining.

When the parent group is private, subgroups can be Visible to parent group or Secret.

Read about group privacy here.

How people join

Choose how people join when creating the subgroup, or in Edit group settings → Privacy.

Permissions

Enable Parent group members can see private threads in Permissions to let parent members read subgroup threads without joining. These readers do not gain voting rights or subgroup membership.

Find subgroups

Open the sidebar menu, and click your group name to see it's subgroups.

Invite to a subgroup

Invite people to a subgroup as you invite them into a group. If they already belong to a parent group or another subgroup in the same organization that you also belong to, you can type their name or select that group as an audience. Select the audience chip to expand it into individual people, then remove anyone you do not want to invite.

Simultaneously invite people to subgroups and parent group

If you use the Invite people button from your parent group's Members tab, you can invite people to multiple subgroups at the same time by ticking the boxes of those you would like them to join immediately.

Administer a subgroup

Subgroups can have their own admins, and admins of a subgroup may not be the same as the admins of the parent group.

A parent group admin can join a non-secret subgroup and make themselves an admin of that subgroup. This does not apply to secret subgroups.

Go to the Subgroup tab, find the subgroup and click Join group.

Now a member of the subgroup, an admin of the parent group can make themselves an admin of the subgroup.

Delete a subgroup

Admins can delete a subgroup in the same way you delete a group. When deleting a subgroup, be careful to not delete the 'parent' group.

Learn how to delete groups.