Automatically add categories to users sidebar when added to group

We have some groups that are (intentionally) not visible or accessible to everyone. For example, we are a condo association and have some small committees formed. (I.e. Landscape Committee). I created a group, called, “Landscape Committee Group”. When I add new members to that group, the Landscape Committee Category does not appear for them automatically. The Security settings for that group are set to, “see, reply, create”.
It seems I’m missing some global setting that would cause the category to appear for that new group member.

How do I resolve this?

As a workaround, they can select the Categories pencil icon to customize the list of categories shown in the left menu and then add the Landscape Category to their list. But the newly added group user does not know to do this by default. I have to either impersonate them, or walk them through it over the phone.

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If I understand correctly, you’re talking about the list of categories shown in the user’s sidebar?

There is a site setting for default sidebar categories:

If you add the private category there, it should show up in people’s sidebars once they join the group and disappear when they leave the group. There may be some edge cases where it needs to get added manually if they have edited their own sidebar previously.

As users are able to add/remove things themselves, it may also be worth having a topic on your site to refer to in case people need help doing that.

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Thank you for the sound advice. I’ll add them all to the defaults. I’ll also add a topic covering self-addition as you just mentioned.

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