Joining groups

Joining and participating in social groups helps you become involved in your community.

A group is a place for you to connect with people who share an interest. Groups can be about anything from human resources informational groups to after-work sports groups. People join a group to participate in discussions, keep track of the group-related documents, and remain aware of the group's activities.

There are several types of groups. Depending on how your community is set up, your group options may differ. You can browse most of the groups in your community from the Places page and find groups of interest: groups anyone can fully participate in are called open groups. Other groups require you to be a member to participate in certain ways. Depending on how a group is set up, you may have to join it before you can collaborate on content in that group. Some groups require you to be a member to see any activity or content in a group, and others are invisible unless you get an invitation.

For more information about group types, see Types of groups.

To find some groups to participate in:

In the main navigation menu, go to your avatar > Your Places.
Select All in the left pane to see all places which you can see in your community.
Select Groups at the top of the page to see only the groups in your community.

Select a group type under the All group types list to view only groups of a particular type. You see the following options for group type:

Option	Description
Open	You can click through and participate, or follow the group to see updates from the group in the streams. (Public groups don't have members.)
Members Only	You can click through and participate. You can reply or comment and create some kinds of content without joining the group, but for full authorship rights, you need to be approved for membership by a member of the group.
Private	You can see that the group exists. But you need to request membership if you want to see what's in a private group. The group owner must approve your membership.
Secret	You must be invited to this group in order to see it.

Restriction: You won't see any secret groups here unless you are invited to the group.

For more information, see Types of groups.

Use the filtering options to find groups that interest you. For example, type accounting in the Filter by text area to find all accounting-related groups.
Click the group title to open and look at the group.
To join a group that requires membership, go to the group's landing page, then go to Actions > Join group.
To join a private group, you can Ask to join this group and wait for the group administrators to approve or reject your request.