Creating a Group and Inviting People

Groups are how conversation and communication happen in Jovo. This article walks through creating a group, choosing the right settings for it, and getting people inside. It's for anyone with admin permissions who is setting up a new group for a ministry, team or event.

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Before you start

Groups live inside areas, the sections you use to organise your church's groups and share out the admin work. It's worth deciding which area your group belongs to before you create it, though you can always change this later.

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Create the group

1. Go to the Groups screen in the Jovo Admin Console.
2. Start a new group and give it a name.
3. Choose the access type. Open groups can be joined by anyone in your organisation. Invite-only groups can only be joined by people you invite.
4. Choose the group type. A chat group gives members full conversation features. A news group is one-directional, for announcements only.
5. Select an area for the group to live in.

Your group is created straight away and is ready to configure.

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Set up the group details

Once the group exists, you can add a subtitle and description to make its purpose clear to anyone joining.

You can also adjust how the group behaves:

• Group type: switch between chat and news at any time if you change your mind.
• Reactions and comments: turn either on or off.
• Join and leave messages: show or hide these in the group feed.
• Member posting: allow members to post, or keep posting to admins only.
• Post history: decide what new members see when they join. Choose none to hide all previous messages, starred to show only the messages you've marked as important, or all history to show everything.
• Expiry date: set a date for the group to close. This is useful for one-off events, and it stops unused groups building up in your account over time.

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Invite people

Open the Invitations tab in your group. There are four ways to bring people in:

By email

Add email addresses in bulk, up to 100 at a time, and set the permission level you want them to have. Permissions can be changed later.

By invite link

Copy the group's invite link and share it wherever your people already are: an email newsletter, another messaging app or your website. Once everyone has joined, regenerate the link so it can't be reused.

By QR code

Copy the group's QR code and print it for people to scan and join. As with the link, you can regenerate it whenever you want to stop it being used.

From another group

Choose an existing group and select the members you want to invite across. This is the quickest way to set up a group that overlaps with a team you've already built.

All invitations appear in your pending list, where you can review them and delete any that are no longer needed.

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Check on your group

The Areas tab shows where your group sits within your church, along with insights into its activity over the following weeks and months. Use these to see whether a group is being used as you'd hoped, or whether it needs a nudge.

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Outcome

You can now create a group, set up how it works for your members, invite people using whichever method suits them best and keep an eye on how the group is being used. Your groups are organised into areas, so it stays clear where everything lives, and expiry dates mean you can set up short-term groups without cluttering your account.

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