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Zulip help center

Manage user groups

User groups offer a flexible way to manage permissions in your organization. Most permissions in Zulip can be granted to any combination of roles, groups, and individual users.

Groups provide an easy way to refer to multiple users at once. You can:

  • Mention a group of users, notifying everyone in the group as if they were personally mentioned.
  • Compose a direct message to a user group. This automatically puts all the users in the group into the addressee field.
  • Subscribe a user group to a channel. This individually subscribes all the users in the group.

Create a user group

Section titled “Create a user group”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click Create user group on the right, or click the create new user group ( ) icon in the upper right.
  4. Fill out the requested information, and click Continue to add members.
  5. Under Add members, enter groups and users you want to add. You can enter a #channel to add all subscribers to the group. Click Add.
  6. Click Create to create the group.

Change a user group’s name or description

Section titled “Change a user group’s name or description”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the General tab on the right.
  6. Click the change group info ( ) icon to the right of the user group, and enter a new name or description.
  7. Click Save changes.

Configure group permissions

Section titled “Configure group permissions”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the General tab on the right.
  6. Under Group permissions, configure Who can administer this group, Who can mention this group, Who can add members to this group, Who can remove members from this group, Who can join this group, and Who can leave this group.
  7. Click Save changes.

Add users to a group

Section titled “Add users to a group”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the Members tab on the right.
  6. Under Add members, enter users you want to add. You can enter a #channel to add all subscribers to the group.
  7. Click Add. Zulip will notify everyone who is added to the group.

Add user groups to a group

Section titled “Add user groups to a group”

You can add a group to another user group, making it easy to express your organization’s structure in Zulip’s permissions system. A user who belongs to a subgroup of a group is treated as a member of that group. For example:

  • The “engineering” group could be made up of “engineering-managers” and “engineering-staff”.
  • The “managers” group could be made up of “engineering-managers”, “design-managers”, etc.

Updating the members of a group automatically updates the members of all the groups that contain it. In the above example, adding a new team member to “engineering-managers” automatically adds them to “engineering” and “managers” as well. Removing a team member who transferred automatically removes them.

  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the Members tab on the right.
  6. Under Add members, enter groups you want to add.
  7. Click Add.

Remove user or group from a group

Section titled “Remove user or group from a group”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the Members tab on the right.
  6. Under Members, find the user or group you would like to remove.
  7. Click the Remove ( ) icon in that row. Zulip will notify everyone who is removed from the group.

Review and remove permissions assigned to a group

Section titled “Review and remove permissions assigned to a group”

You can review which permissions are assigned to a group, and remove permissions as needed.

  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click All groups in the upper left.
  4. Select a user group.
  5. Select the Permissions tab on the right.
  6. Toggle the checkboxes next to any permissions you’d like to remove.
  7. Click Save changes.

Configure who can create user groups

Section titled “Configure who can create user groups”

You can configure who can create groups in your organization. Guests can never create user groups, even if they belong to a group that has permissions to do so.

  1. Go to Organization permissions.
  2. Under Group permissions, configure Who can create user groups.
  3. Click Save changes.

Configure who can administer all user groups

Section titled “Configure who can administer all user groups”

You can configure who can administer all user groups in your organization. Guests can never administer user groups, even if they belong to a group that has permissions to do so.

In addition, you can give users permission to administer a specific group.

  1. Go to Organization permissions.
  2. Under Group permissions, configure Who can administer all user groups.
  3. Click Save changes.
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