Configure a Group's Settings
Every content group has a settings screen that decides who can put content into it, whether submissions need approval before they go live, whether the group's content can be shared to social networks, and who can see the group at all. This article covers each of those settings and when to use them.
Group settings can be changed by an Admin, or by a Moderator of that group. See User Roles, States, and Posting Permissions for how those permissions work.
Open a group's settings
- Go to Groups.
- Open the group you want to change.
- Click Edit in the group header.
- Scroll to the Settings section.
Changes save when you click Done at the bottom of the screen.
Moderation Type
This is the most consequential setting on the screen. It has two values.
- No Moderation. Anything a member submits publishes to the group immediately.
- Moderation. Member submitted posts require approval. Submissions land in the group's For Approval tab, where an Admin or a Moderator reviews them before anyone else sees them.
Posts created by an Admin or by a Moderator of the group publish straight away in either mode, because those are the people authorized to publish without review.
Keep Moderation on for any group whose content reaches a wide internal audience or goes out to customers. The approval queue is the control point, and it is far easier to review a post before it publishes than to remove one afterwards.
Once content is waiting in the queue, Content Moderation Guide: Contributing, Reviewing, and Managing Content covers approving, requesting changes, and removing it.
Allow member to post
Controls whether any member can add or submit content to the group. Turn it off and only Admins and the group's Moderators can put content in, which makes the group a broadcast channel rather than a shared workspace.
Leave it on for groups where you want the team surfacing material they find. Turn it off for groups that carry official company content, such as a group feeding executive communications or a regulated announcement stream.
Read-Only
When Read-Only is on, the group's content is not shareable to social networks. Members can read the posts, but the content is not there to be pushed outward.
This is the right setting for groups that exist to inform the team rather than to fuel external sharing, such as internal announcements, policy updates, or program news.
Private Group
A private group is by invite only and is not visible to people outside it. It does not appear in Discover Groups, and it carries a lock icon for the people who are in it.
Use private groups for audiences rather than for secrecy: a regional team, an executive cohort, a pilot group. See Create a Private Group and Add Members for adding people.
Moderator Email Notifications
Emails the group's Moderators when content is waiting for approval.
Turn this on for any group with a steady flow of submissions or an RSS source attached. Without it, the approval queue depends on someone remembering to check it, and submitted content ages badly. Turn it off for very high volume groups where the email becomes noise, and agree a review rhythm with your Moderators instead.
Sources
Below Settings, the Sources block is where RSS feeds and keyword sources are attached to the group. Each active source has an enable toggle, a remove control, and a status label.
Three things worth knowing before you add one:
- Do not set a source to Auto-Approved. The setting exists, but auto-approving removes the human read on content nobody at your company wrote. The approval queue is the control point.
- Keep three to five active feeds per group. More than that floods the queue and buries the material worth sharing.
- Watch your reporting and act on silence. If posts from a feed are not being shared, the feed is not resonating. Stop leaning on it and hand-create posts from that source instead.
RSS Feeds and EveryoneSocial covers adding and managing sources in full.
Moderators
The Moderators block on the same screen is where an Admin grants moderation of this group. See Assign Moderators to a Group.
FAQ
Does turning on Moderation affect posts that are already live?
No. It applies to content submitted after the change. Content already published in the group stays published.
Can a Moderator change these settings?
Yes, for the group they moderate. Moderation is scoped to a single group, so a Moderator cannot change settings on groups they do not moderate.
What is the difference between Read-Only and turning off Allow member to post?
They control opposite ends of the group. Read-Only stops content leaving the group to social networks. Allow member to post controls who can put content into the group in the first place. A group can use either, both, or neither.
Where do I delete a group?
Delete Group sits at the bottom of this same edit screen. See Delete a Group.