Google Groups is a feature of Google Apps for Education that makes it easy to communicate and collaborate with groups of people, such as project teams, departments, office locations, and special-interest groups. Using just the one email address for the group, you can:
- Send email to group members
- Invite group members to meetings
- Share Google Drive files and folders and Google Sites with many people at once.
What can I do with Groups?
With Google Groups, you can create online and email-based groups, which allows you to do things such as the following:
- Engage in discussions about a specific subject.
- Create a question and answer customer support group for a product, such as a piece of software your company has written.
- Organize meetings, conferences, or social events among members of a group.
- Find people with similar hobbies, interests, or backgrounds.
- Read group posts through email, the online interface, or both.
Create a Google Group
Anyone with a Google Apps for Education account at Wellesley can create a Google Group.
When creating a Group, there are a few settings you should review:
- View Topics - The default setting is "All members of the group" which only allows members to view topics (posts). If you would like everyone at Wellesley to be able to view your Group's posts, choose "All organization members."
- Post - The default setting is "All members of the group, All organization members" which means anyone at Wellesley can post to the Group, even if they can't see the posts. If you want email from outside of Wellesley to send to the Group, choose "Anyone on the web".
- Join the Group - The defaulty setting is "Anyone in the organization" which means anyone can visit the Group's website, click Join, and automatically join the group. If you would ilke to restrict access on who can join, choose either "Only invited users" which requires a Group Owner to invite people, or "Anyone can ask" which allows people to request access but requires an Owner to approve access.
Setting Permissions on Google Groups
Set who can view, post and moderate your Google group.
Some settings you may want to change or review are the View Topics, Post, and Join the Group options, as listed in the Create a Group section above.
Read and respond to group posts
As a Google Groups user, one of the first things you might want to do is read and respond to posts in your favorite groups. Depending on how a group is configured (and your personal settings), you will be able to read and respond to posts either through the web interface or through your email.
Find, join and organize
You might belong to a lot of groups, and have access to even more. Here’s how to find new groups to join, and then how to find and organize the groups you own or belong to.
Post to a group
As you read the topics in a group, either by email or online forum, you may soon want to join the conversation!
Adding non-Wellesley people
If you would like to add people who do not have Wellesley domain accounts to a Wellesley Google Group, follow these directions.