Community Groups 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 new group from within the community site.

Creating a New Group creating-a-new-group

The ability to create a new community group relies on the existance of a community site which includes the groups function, such as one created from the [Reference Site Template](sites.md).

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:

Under the Template tab is the ability to select from the list of community group templates that were specified when the groups function was included in the community site’s structure or in a community site template.

Under the Image tab is the ability to upload an image to display for the group on the community site’s Groups page. The default style sheet will size the image to 170 x 90 pixels.

By selecting the Create Group button, the pages for the group are created based on the chosen template, and a user group is created for membership and the Groups page will be 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, will appear as follows (still signed in as a community group administrator):

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

Community Group Member List Component community-group-member-list-component

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

Additional Information 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.