❖ Heads up! This article is intended for site managers. 

Does your organization offer Needs for court-ordered community service? If yes, then you may want to consider creating a user group. This allows you to track sensitive information discreetly while keeping a record of those completed community service hours. You can also set the Needs to private and only share them with the members in that user group. Here we cover the five steps for setting up your court-mandated user group: 

• 1. Setup a court-mandated user group
• 2. Create some user group join questions
• 3. Setup an initiative—if applicable
• 4. Assign Needs
• 5. Add user group members

1. Setup a court-mandated user group

The first step is to create a user group. Before you get started, there are a few things to keep in mind: 

• Be sure to Title your user group something like "Court-Mandated Service Hours" or some other relevant title. 
  • This makes it easier to assign specific Needs to the group later when searching for it. 

• When adding a Public Description, be sure to explain that members must select the user group when submitting hours. 
  • This ensures that those hours are applied to the user group for your tracking and recordkeeping purposes. 
  • We also recommend adding that group membership is private, and that even group members can't see who else is in the group. 

• We also recommend selecting No for the Show Resume to Members option. 
  • The resume isn't applicable for court-mandated groups since they aren't working in a unified effort. 
  • Members of the court-mandated user group still have access to their volunteer resumes. 

Click here to learn more about creating a user group! 

2. Create some user group join questions

Do you need to collect important information from potential new members when they join the user group? You can with join questions! These are a great way to collect important information that you wish to keep discreet while being able to access and monitor group member membership. So, how do the potential members interact with the join questions? 

1. A user group join link is sent to a potential user group member. 

2. When they click the link, they're taken to the join questions. 

3. Once they complete the questions, they're added to the group. 

Click here to learn more about setting up user group join questions!

3. Setup an initiative—if applicable

This step is only optional; however, it can be very beneficial because you can customize the confirmation, reminder, or follow-up notifications for court-mandated Needs with special instructions, by providing them in the initiative setup. 

• If Needs in the initiative are to be privately shared with members in the court-mandated user group, then you must assign them to that user group. 
• Please keep in mind that Needs can't be assigned to more than one initiative at a time. Want to learn more about setting up an initiative? Click here!

4. Assign Needs

Once you assign Needs to a user group, members can start viewing them from User Groups > View Needs in their profile. Private Needs appear with a lock icon. 

Click here to learn more about assigning Needs to a user group—individually or in bulk.  

5. Add user group members

Time to add some members to the group! Members can be added to the group at any time. Be sure to add members to the group via the join link if you have created join questions for them to answer. This ensures they answer those questions before being added to the group. Click here to learn about adding members to a user group.