Organic Groups are a feature that allows individuals to have a shared 'space' on the site. Groups can be set up to be one of the following:
- Open - membership requests are accepted immediately
-
Moderated - membership requests must be approved.
- Invite only - membership must be created by an administrator
- Closed - membership is exclusively managed by an administrator.
Groups can also be made Private which means that other users will not see the Group listed in the Group Directory.
Each Group has its own Home Page which will show a summary of the latest content for the Group. Along the top of the page there are also a series of tabs for each of the Groups 'content types'
- Discussions: posts that users can comment on, similar to a forum
- Wiki: pages that all authorised users can edit, so useful for collaborating on documents
- Events: for setting Group meetings etc. Comes with a Calendar feature too.
- Polls: both Binary and Ranking, and can be used by the Group to test opinions on proposals, meeting dates, etc.
- Members: a list of current members of the Group including who is the Manager.
Broadcast
Managers of the group can use the Broadcast feature (last tag on the right) to send a message to all members of the Group.
Notifications
The system is set so that all members of the Group will be automatically notified of new content that is posted within the Group. Users can control their settings, in terms of whether they get every update immediately, or daily.
Users will be able to add their comments back on to the website by replying to the email notification they receive.