Restricting visibility and access with user groups

Overview

It's sometimes the case that you want to restrict the visibility of content of certain features in ChurchSuite so that information added is private and only visible to certain 'groups' of users - what we call User Groups - and not visible to other users who are not members of the User Group. It's possible to restrict the visibility of Notes, Tags, Key Dates, Forms, Flows, Leave Setup, Preset emails and SMSs, and Resources in the Bookings module.

For each of the above features, you can set the visibility to All Users (i.e. all module users, not all members), Just me (private to the creator/author user) or to one or more User Groups. In the example below, "Communications & Announcements" is a User Group.

You can also set User Group Visibility. By default a User Group is only visible to the group's members - this means that even the existence of the User Group and any content restricted to that User Group is only visible to the User Group's members. However, it is also possible to set a User Group's existence to be visible, which means that those not in the User Group can restrict the visibility of things to a User Group they don't belong to.

For example, you could have a "Safeguarding" User Group that is visible to all users so that any user can add a restricted Note visible to that user group. While any user can add the restricted note, they are prevented from viewing other restricted notes for that user group, including the note they have just added - only "Safeguarding" user group members can view restricted notes.

Adding a user group

In the Groups section of your Account Settings, click Add group...

On the Add group pop-up, enter a suitable Name, and set whether to Restrict visibility to only users in the group. Optionally assign a shared Email address to the group - when sending emails, user group members will be able to send on behalf of the user group shared email address (as an alternative to their User email address) - for more information, see the related support article Shared email addresses for user groups. Click Save to add the User Group.

From the User Group View, click Add to group to add one or more users to the group. Don't forget to add your own user account if you need to see any content restricted to this user group. You can also assign users to the group from a user profile.

You can return to a User Group View at any time to Add or Remove users to the group.

Restricting visibility of content to a user group

When adding or editing any of the features listed earlier in this article - like a Flow - you can restrict its visibility to a user group. Only user groups that don't have restricted visibility and user groups you belong to are shown in the list.