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Group Participation

In the Participation tab of a Group's Settings, you have many options to assist with the experience of your group members.

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Client Member Settings

Set whether clients should view and participate in this group. 

If this is truly a group experience, clients should be able to view and participate in this group. On the other hand, if you are using this group solely for your own use, to organize clients or assign items in bulk, choose to not allow their participation by unticking this box.

Allowed Behaviors

If you enable clients to view and participate in this group, you can determine at a granular level what clients are allowed to do when interacting within the Group. 

Comment on group happenings - If checked, this lets client members post comments on items in the Group Stream.

Post messages to the group - This lets client members message the group.

Send private messages to other group members - Enabling this allows client members to message other group members directly. Note that these messages are not recorded anywhere within CoachAccountable for later reference; they truly are private messages.

Share items from their Stream with the group - Checking this option will allow client members to share any items that they'd completed on their own, outside the group (journal entriesworksheets, and more). To do so, they can click the Share button found on any item in their individual Stream.

Create Group Actions, Metrics, Worksheets, Whiteboards - This lets client members create and assign Actions, Metrics, Worksheets, and Whiteboards for the rest of the group. These settings do not affect what clients can do in their own Streams, but rather what they can do in the Group Stream.

Display Options

To adjust the degree of anonymity amongst group members, you have several options regarding how names are displayed. Many coaches opt for some level of anonymity to keep clients focused on the group interaction.

Default Client Settings

Each client has the ability to choose their own notification settings about the group. This item allows you to set what the default should be (which the clients can then change if desired).

Subscribing to Messages posted to the group means that the client will receive all messages from other group members via email immediately.

Subscribing to Comments posted to the group means that the client will receive all comments from other group members via email immediately.

Clients can update these for themselves within the Group >> Preferences.
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Group Activity Digests

If you're concerned about group members being annoyed by too much chatter, enable Group Activity Digests for your group.
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Group managers can also set a template for the digest emails: a suitable subject and a preamble message that will precede whatever summary content will be sent.
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Here you can see what we’ve got for our own community group.
Beyond mere enabling, you can set a “Suggested Activity Digest”, which serves as the default schedule for members to receive digests:
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Weekly on Fridays at 10am, sounds reasonable! Like elsewhere, these times will be relative to the recipient’s time zone, i.e. in this example, everyone will get it at 10am in THEIR time zone.

When a suggested schedule is set in this manner, group members can individually opt out OR customize the schedule further to their own tastes.  When one is set, group members can still opt for some alternate schedule they set for themselves.
Group members can themselves see and set their group membership preferences by clicking the “Membership Preferences…” button found at the bottom of the left column menu of the Group Page.  Coaches can themselves see and update the membership preferences of client members (from the Membership >> Client Members tab, clicking the gear icon reveals the option to do so).

Here’s what it looks like for coach to set the preferences of one of their client group members:
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If one of your clients can’t be bothered to set this for themselves, no worries: you’ve got the power.

And that’s all there is to setting it up!  Once set in motion, group members who have opted for it (either by being set to follow the group suggestion, when applicable, or by their own schedule) will receive digest emails of group activity at the appointed times.
Group digest emails will consist of comments and messages posted to the group since the last time the recipient got a digest.  Note that they WON’T contain other activity like Worksheets or Actions, because those generally go out to group members with their own timely notifications.

Here’s an example of what one looks like:
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Same one-click access to view and respond as individual item notifications!
Faded comments are ones that AREN’T new since the date range covered by the digest, they’re just there for context.  (At most only 2 or 3 earlier comments are included; for longer threads the number of earlier comments is indicated by that grey button, which is clickable to visit the whole thread in-app.)

Just like notification emails of individual comments and messages, the digest emails make it very easy to either to view an item in-app, or post a comment on a given thread right from the comfort of your own email inbox.