Groups Overview

Groups form the foundations of your MSL System. Think of a group as a collection of elements combined to work as one unit. These elements can include other groups, such as societies or clubs, which may contain sub-groups like membership groups, committees, or dynamic mailing lists. Groups may also consist of individual users, such as members of a specific membership group. This structure provides flexibility in organising and managing your system.


You can see examples of different group types and how to use them within an organisation here:



And visualise the relationships and hierarchy between groups using your system’s grouping tree:



TABLE OF CONTENTS


You can access this feature from your MSL Admin site. Only Super Admins with Membership Admins or Site Admins permissions can access the Groups submenu.


For further information, see MSL System Overview.


Benefits of Grouping Users


For Members:


  • Members can join or be added to groups that interest them, like:
    • Student groups for shared interests.
    • Representative groups for providing feedback to their representatives.
    • Liberation groups for engaging in forums and discussions with like-minded individuals.
  • Members can manage their contact preferences for each group.
  • Members will see relevant events and updates from their groups and access resources specific to their roles, like academic reps or club admins.


For Organisation Admins:


  • Admins can easily communicate and interact with their groups.
  • Admins can update their section of the website without needing permissions for the entire site, e.g. the advice department updating welfare pages or the swimming club managing their space.
  • Admins can create members-only areas.
  • Admins can share news and updates and use tools to run their groups efficiently


Members can be granted permissions to become organisation admins, enabling them to manage their group. Permissions can be assigned at the group level (e.g. appointing a president) or at the individual level (e.g. granting specific user permissions). By creating and managing these organisations, you contribute to building a vibrant and active community within your MSL website where your members feel connected and represented.


Custom Group Types


Your system includes default group types, but you can also create custom types. For example, you can distinguish between committee members and academic reps, or separate volunteering providers from employers, and sports clubs from campaign groups. This allows you to set specific options for each type, like various categories, permissions, and access levels and makes it easier to generate reports on memberships, such as how many students in a faculty are also in a liberation group.



For further information, see Grouping Types.


Automatic Page Creation


Once you've created your group types, you can enable a setting to automatically create website pages for new organisation-type groups. Different groups can have their own root pages and templates, making it easy for them to have mini sites on your MSL website. For example, societies might have URLs like /activities/society/[Organisation Webname]/, while sports clubs might have URLs like /activities/club/[Organisation Webname]/. These pages are created automatically, and linked to the template, so organisation admins only need to update their details and create content, such as events and news articles, rather than managing the web pages themselves. This ensures a consistent look and feel, while empowering your organisation admins to manage their own groups.



For further information, see Organisation Page Settings.


Groups as Requirements


Groups can also be used as requirements, allowing you to create segmented lists based on demographic or activity data, control access to different areas of your MSL website, and decide who can engage with various types of content. This enables you to:

  • Send relevant messages to specific members.
  • Manage who can do things like nominate, vote, buy tickets, or sign up for activities.
  • Run detailed reports on segmented groups.
  • Automatically fill groups based on requirements, like assigning students to representative groups or populating your current students' groups based on your data file.



For further information, see Group Requirements.

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