Adding members to your community

As a community owner, you can extend your community by adding new members. You can add people to a community as either community members or owners. However, groups can be added as community members only. If you want to give people the option of choosing to become a member, consider inviting them to join your community instead.

About this task

You must be a community owner to add members to a community. Your administrator configures the total number of members and groups that can be added to a community.

Note:

You might need to share information and collaborate with people from outside your organization; contractors or consultants, for example. If your community is a restricted community and allows external access, you can add people from outside your organization (external users External user icon ) to the community. External users can be added as community members only, they cannot be added as community owners, nor should they be added to groups. External users can participate in the community, but there are restrictions on what they can see and do. For more information about what external users can and cannot do in Connections, see What can external users do?.

Before you add external users to a community, review your organization's security policies on data restrictions and information sharing.

If your organization does not allow external users to access Connections, you cannot see the option to add external users.

Procedure

To add new members to a community, complete the following steps.

From the I'm an Owner view, select the community to which you want to add members.
Click Overview > Members in the navigation pane.
Click Add Members.
- To add regular community members, enter the names of the people that you want to add in the Members field. Type-ahead predicts the name that you are typing by comparing it to names in the directory that your administrator specified. If it proposes the name that you want, click to add it. If you do not see the name that you are looking for, click Person or group not listed? Use full search to search the company directory for the person.
- To add community owners, click the Down arrow next to Members and select Owners. Then, enter the names of the people that you want to add in the Owners field.
  Note: Community owners can edit the community.
- To add groups to a community, select Groups in the Members drop-down list, and then enter the names of the groups that you want to add in the Members field. Type-ahead predicts the name that you are typing by comparing it to names in your organization's directory or contact list. If it proposes the name that you want, click to add it. Alternatively, you can search for a particular group by clicking Browse Groups, and then entering a keyword for the group and clicking the Find Groups icon . Click the group that you want and then click Add. If the group contains nested groups, you can either add the parent group or select a nested group. Use the breadcrumb trail to switch between levels of nested groups.
  You cannot add groups as owners to communities.
  Note: The group feature is available upon request. Contact your administrator for information.
  Note: Some groups in your organization's directory might contain external users. If a you add a group of this type to an internal community, external users have access to the content of that community. Also, the community will not indicate that external users have access to it. Contact your administrator to verify that any groups you add do not contain external users.
If the community reaches the maximum number of members and groups that can be added, consider asking your administrator to increase the limit.
Click Save.

Results

The new members receive an email notification that informs them that they are added to the community. Email notifications are not sent to groups.