There are two ways to add users to a group:

1. Manually adding users and assigning privileges (if appropriate)
2. Providing a link to the group, allowing users to click it and add themselves.

WHO CAN DO THIS? Only group Owners (and Admins) can control group membership (adding, removing, changing member rights). This means that only group Owners (or Admins) can access the public link for users to add themselves as members. If users add themselves via a link, they are granted View Only group privileges by default (they can view the content in the group). You can change individual user privileges later for selected users if necessary.

Using a Link To Add Group Members

Each group comes with the ability to activate and send out a public link for the group. Any existing Echo360 user who clicks the link is automatically added to the group as a member. Furthermore, all members added via the link have View Only privileges to the group. This means they can view the content added to the group, but cannot add or remove content to the group. You (or any owner) can change these privileges for individual members as needed.

Users MUST already be registered Echo360 users in order to add themselves to a group via the group link. Group links do not allow for user registration into the system.

IMPORTANT: LMS users typically do not have direct logins to Echo360; in order to view an authenticated link, users must already be authenticated into Echo360 or they will be faced with a Login window. In order to authenticate, users should pass into a linked Echo360 Section first, then click the link to the group. Alternately if your institution uses SSO or Single-Sign-On (users log in through an institution portal) they may need to authenticate there first, prior to clicking the Group link.

Finally, as a Group owner, you (or an Admin) can enable or disable the link at any time (it is disabled by default). When the link is disabled, the link URL will not work, even for users who are already members of the group. Any user who clicks the link will receive a page indicating that they do not have permission to access the page. If you want to post a URL for the group for existing members to access it, enter the group and copy and post the group URL from the browser address bar. 

To activate and use the group link to add members

1. Open the group, then click the Sharing & Members tab.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the member list.

   Below the current list of group members is a Link section. Notice that the link already exists for the group but is inactive.

   
3. Enable the Share Link slider, shown in the above figure. This activates the Copy button to the right of the URL box.
4. Click Copy.
5. Paste the copied link (Ctrl+V or Command+V, or right-click + Paste) into the location where you want to post it.

Users who click the link will need to log into Echo360 or need to already be authenticated through the LMS or SSO system, in order to follow it and become a group member.