Private Group vs Restricted Category: your recommendations please

Tmetcalf · 2025-04-25T13:17:05+00:00

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Good day Community,

Has anyone utilized a Category for focused, and private conversations instead of a Group? Are there functionalities (or other benefits) of a Category that would make it superior to a Group other than page design?

My concern with a Category over a Group is the management of membership: a private Group offers initial control and the ease of granting access to those who request it. I do not believe this will be as easy to manage with a Category; is this correct? My community utilizes SSO and registration to manage access to Categories.

Have you utilized a Category instead of a Group, and what membership management hurdles have you encountered? Why did you choose a Category over a private Group?

Cheers,
Toby

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Heather Wendt

Great question Toby! This is definitely one of those grey-er areas, and to me, boils down to 1. what makes it easiest, and 2. what gives the best experience for the members.

I have both options in place in my community. I have a Category for leaders that is private, and vetted. I created a leadership role, have a quick form application process, and manually add members to the role as they are approved. I did this mainly because there are a lot of content pieces being shared which I am gathering into a Knowledge Base…and I can add a widget to the discussion page to surface that information easily. At the time I created it, I also wanted the ability to set up auto-follow/digest inclusion, which was not possible with Groups at the time. The biggest reason is that no one in the group was going to step into a lead position in the space, and I wanted to be able to immediately put them into the category when they were approved and not have an invite process.

For my Group, this was more of a local chapter. I wanted it to be available to people who might be interested, and there was a member leader who oversaw the process. This was more of a space to connect to local peers and share events or meetups happening in the area, rather than a full exchange of ideas. For me, using a group to manage members applications made sense because I wasn't inviting everyone. The only issue I have with this is that members have to accept the invite and not everyone does (I am sure there is an API to actually add, rather than invite, people, but it didn't make sense to use it for this instance).

TL:DR is that it boils down to the experience you want. In my opinion, both options are valid and choosing one will depend on your goals/needs 😊

Tmetcalf

Much appreciated @Heather Wendt - I will need to balance the features of a Category with the ease of management of a Group. Back to the drawing board.
Cheers!
Toby

BrendanP

Groups are better for member management for sure where as today categories provide more flexibility in terms of content options, design, layouts. However, we do have layout editor pages for groups slated for this year which will make it so you get many of the benefits of category with also the benefits of groups.

Kirstie Macfarlane

Yes, it is possible to use a Category for focused and private conversations instead of a Group, but there are some key differences and considerations to be aware of:

1. Functionalities and Benefits of Categories:

Categories can be organized hierarchically and can help in structuring content more comprehensively within the community.
They allow more significant control over the visibility and organization of topics.
Categories do not inherently offer the same membership granularity as Groups when it comes to permission management. However, they can be customized with different permissions using Roles and Permissions to control who can see and participate in discussions.
As Brendan mentioned, categories over way more opportunity for theming customization, while Groups are very limited.

2. Membership Management:

Private Groups are easier to manage in terms of membership because they come with built-in features to invite members, approve membership requests, and limit access to invited members only. You can also give this power to another member, so they're responsible for approving Group applicants (saving you time as a community manager) instead.
Managing membership in a Category can be more complex as it relies on setting permissions for different roles, and there isn’t a straightforward way to handle membership requests directly within the category structure.
If your community uses Single Sign-On (SSO) to manage access, roles can be used to control access to specific categories, but this may require more manual setup (by your technical team) and management. Remember that if you pass roles by SSO, you can't manually add a role to these users (because it will just be overwritten the next time they log in).

3. Specific Use Cases:

Categories are suitable for broader topics that benefit from structured discussions and where it is beneficial for content to be easily discoverable and indexed.
Groups are more suitable for smaller subsets of users needing a private and controlled space, especially for specific projects, specialized interests, or confidential topics.

If you go with a Category instead of a Group, just keep in mind it can be a bit trickier to manage. You'll need to put in some extra effort to handle membership and set up strong permissions to get that same private, group-like feel. For a lot of folks, that added complexity makes Groups the easier option for private, focused chats.