Managing a Group

How to create a group and run it: people, subgroups, admins and settings.

#Creating a Group

Open New group and choose what you are setting up: a house council, an organisation, friends, a club with applications, or an open community. The form then asks for a name and, at most, one more question. "Customise" shows every option:

Name and Description
Visibility: public or private (see What is a Group)
Parent group: none, or a group you administer. With a parent, the new group is a subgroup inside the parent's community
How people join: invitation link, application, Join button, list. The ways combine
Who counts once: nothing is checked, one response per seat on the list, or one response per unit such as a flat. Inside a community this is inherited and cannot be chosen (see Who Counts Once)
Member card: the fields the group asks for, and whether a card is required to join

The box "What members will read" sums up the result before you create.

Creating takes one transaction: the group is made together with how people join and its place in the community, or not at all. You become its owner. The page then lists "What next": the few steps to the first campaign, such as uploading the list or making the invitation link.

Two transactions in one case

A subgroup needs two transactions when its community and its parent were paid for differently at their creation, one by the Logbook sponsor and one by its creator. The form says so before you create.

#Roles

Role	What it can do
Owner	Everything an admin can, and: appoint and remove admins, ask for a parent group, archive and delete the group, release a seat of its list, offer the group to a new owner. One per group
Admin	Create campaigns for the group, make invitation links, approve and reject applications, remove members, open or close joining, set how people join and the list, accept subgroups. Up to 50 per group
Admin from above	An owner or admin of a group above. Manages this group too, without being on its own list of admins
Member	Responds to campaigns, sees the other members and the history

The owner is not counted among the 50 admins. The addresses of the owner and the admins are public on the blockchain.

Running a group does not make you a member of it. A campaign counts member records, so an owner or admin who wants to respond joins the group like anyone else, for example with an invitation link they made.

#The Manage Page

Owners and admins see a Manage button on the page of the group. It has four sections.

#Overview

What needs your attention: applications that wait, a subgroup that asks to join or is paused, members without a card. Below it, the next steps to a first campaign and the rule of who counts once.

#People

Applications. Each waiting application shows the applicant's address, their text and their card. The text and the card are encrypted for the admins: a wallet signs a message once to read them.

Approve or reject, up to a hundred at a time
A rejected person can apply again after 7 days. "Decided: not accepted" lists them, and you can end a wait early there
Rejecting deletes what the person wrote and their card
An application without a card cannot be approved while the group requires one

Invitations. A new invitation link takes a limit (how many may use it) and a last day. A single-use invitation is a link with a limit of 1.

Choose what the link does: let people in, or only let them apply
Copy the link when it is created. The group does not keep it, only your browser does: on another device, or after clearing the browser's data, it is gone. Then revoke it and make a new one
"Revoke" stops a link for everyone who has not used it yet
A group stores at most 100 invitation links at a time

List. Shown when the group lets people in by a list: the seats, who took them, and the personal links to hand out (see Who Counts Once).

Members. The members with the names from their cards, when and how each joined.

"Remove" ends a membership and closes the person's card. They stay counted in campaigns created before, and drop out of campaigns created from then on
A removal lasts: an invitation link, the Join button or a seat on the list does not bring the address back. An admin lifts the removal, or approves an application from that address
Admins of the top group of a community can remove members and reject applications in any group of the community, so that a seat can always be freed

#Structure

Groups shows the tree: the parent of this group and the groups under it.

Create a subgroup: a new group inside this community, linked under this group in the same step
Ask a group to take this one in: only the owner asks. An admin of that group accepts or declines after reading how this group lets people in. One request at a time
Requests from below: for each group that asks to join under yours you see its visibility, how it lets people in and its member card. "Accept" makes its members members of your group and of every group above it

When you accept a subgroup you set two permissions, both off by default:

May accept subgroups: its admins can accept groups under it in turn, and their members count in your group too
May update its list without asking again: a new list keeps the link. Without it, every new list pauses the link until you accept again

A link is paused when the subgroup changes how people join or whether a card is required, or when you pause it yourself. Until an admin of the parent accepts the subgroup as it is now, its members do not count above and no rights come down to it. Running campaigns keep their participants. This rule exists so that a subgroup cannot quietly open the whole organisation to everyone.

"Cut the link" (from above) and "Leave the parent" (from below) end a link. The group itself stays as it is.

Rules of the tree:

A tree has at most 8 levels and no circles
A private group takes no subgroup with a Join button, at any level above it
Inside a community every group can hang under another group of it, except the top one
The top group of a community can hang only under the top group of another community, and only while neither community checks who counts once. To become part of a community that checks, create a subgroup inside it

Admins lists the owner, the admins and the appointments that wait.

Appoint admins: enter addresses, one per line. An appointment gives nothing until the person accepts it, in a transaction of their own, on the page of the group or under "Waiting for you". Nothing notifies them: send them the address of the group
An appointment holds only while whoever made it is still the owner or an admin. After that it can no longer be accepted, only declined or withdrawn
Remove: the person stops being an admin at once. The keys of the group change, so what is encrypted for the admins from then on is closed to them. What they could read before, they may have kept. If the group has a list, seal it again next (the List screen asks)
Take a seat among the admins: for an admin from above. Rights that come from above do not open what is encrypted for the group's own admins: the name of a private group, cards, applications, the list. With a seat you become one of the group's own admins, visibly, in one transaction. The owner can remove a seat like any admin
Ownership: the owner can offer the group to another address. Nothing changes until that person accepts. They are shown the parent, the admins and the rules first, and the acceptance is refused if any of that changed in between. The former owner is then neither owner nor admin. Every appointment that still waits is withdrawn. Invitation links made before keep working, so the new owner should revoke them and make new ones

#Settings

Each section is saved on its own, in one transaction.

Details and visibility: name, description, public or private. Written by the owner or one of the group's own admins
How people join: the ways in, and the switch "Joining is open". Closing it stops every way of joining; people who are in stay in. Opening and closing does not pause the link to a parent. Changing the ways does
Who counts once: for the top group of a community. A group inside a community shows the inherited rule and cannot change it
Member card: the fields and whether a card is required. Changing the fields pauses nothing; changing whether a card is required does. Members who joined before a card was required stay members
Archive and Delete: see below

#Archiving and Deleting

Archive closes a group for good:

Joining closes: invitation links, applications, the list and the Join button stop
No new campaign can be created for it. Running campaigns finish with the participants they were created with
Its rules can no longer be changed. Members can still be removed, and applications and invitation links cleared
The history of decisions and the certificates stay. Nothing reopens an archived group

Only the owner, or an admin of a group above, archives.

Delete is for a group without history. A group with history is not deleted: its decisions are the point. Only the owner deletes, and only when:

nobody ever joined it, and no seat of its list was taken
no campaign was created for it (a campaign nobody answered can be deleted by its creator first)
no group was created inside it, none hangs under it, and none asks to
it stores no applications

If the group hangs under a parent or asks for one, the same transaction takes it out first. Its address is never used again.