5.1 Groups List – u3a Beacon

The operations described on this page are typically available to Group Leaders, Groups Co-ordinators and some Committee members.

a) The Groups List
As a Group Leader your Home Page will look similar to that shown below, depending on the extent of system access given to you by your u3a committee.

Click the Groups link to view the Groups List

The Groups List initially shows all active Groups and Group Leaders. To include non-active Groups, untick the Show active only box.

Your u3a may use the option to categorise similar Groups into Faculties such as ‘Art & Literature’, ‘Food & Drink’, ‘Walking’, etc. To display only the Groups assigned to a particular Faculty, select the Faculty from the drop-down list.

Your Groups
Groups for which you are a Leader or you have viewing or editing rights are highlighted blue:

Navigation
There are several features to help quickly navigate around the Groups List page:

Clicking any letter in the block above the table will jump to Groups starting with that letter
Clicking the down arrow in the top right corner of the page will scroll to the end of the list at the bottom of the page
Clicking the up arrow in the bottom right corner to scroll back to the top of the page
The up and down arrows in the left column perform a similar function

b) Group Records
To view the Group Record for your Group, click the Group name in the Groups List, or elsewhere where Group names are shown.

Each Group Record comprises 4 pages; Details, Schedule, Members and Ledger. You can select between these on the row beneath the Group Record name. The active sub-page has its name in black.

For details of how to view and edit your 4 Group Record pages, refer to:

c) Emailing Group Leaders

To send an email to one or more Group Leaders either tick the appropriate boxes next to the required Group Leaders in the left hand column . . .
. . . or click ‘Select’ at the bottom of the column, followed by one of the choices from the list that is presented:

Select All for all displayed Group Leaders
E-mail only for Group Leaders with an email address
Without E-mail for Group Leaders without an email address

Then select Send E-mail to leaders from the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button:

You will be prompted to confirm that it is your intention to send an email to Group Leaders by pressing Continue (or Cancel if that was not your intention):

Pressing Continue opens a form to compose the email, see 6.1.1 Sending Emails.

d) Downloading Groups

To download an Excel file showing details about Groups, select the required Groups as described in section c) above. Then select Download groups from the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button:

You will be prompted to confirm that it is your intention to download Group details by pressing Continue (or Cancel if that was not your intention):

e) Adding and Removing Groups

Users with roles such as Groups Co-ordinator or Committee Member may be able to add & remove Groups, depending on the extent of system access allocated to them.

Refer to 5.6 Adding & Removing Groups for more information.

f) Address Column
Administrators will see an additional Address column:

"Y" indicates that the Group Leaders will be able to view the addresses of Group members. This is controlled by Administrators who have extra options to Hide addresses and Show addresses for selected Groups:

g) Groups Coordinator is not a Leader

If a Groups Coordinator does not lead a Group they will not receive emails sent to all Group Leaders.

A way around this is to create a dummy Group called (say) zGroup Coordinator where the Groups Coordinator is the only member and they are made the Leader.

Revision History

v2	2021-04-29	Lyn Bossons	Groups Coordinator is not a Leader added
v3	2024-11-07	Graeme Bunting	New confirmation screen when sending email or downloading groups. Sections a) to f) re-arranged.
v4	2024-11-19	Graham Tigg	Into note to Group Leaders that emailing their colleagues or downloading is unusual.
v5	2025-04-14	John Alexander	Update for new "do with Selected button"
v6	2026-02-20	John Alexander	Add comment re new Detail screen items
v7	2026-02-27	Graeme Bunting	Additional Administrator options to show and hide addresses. All images updated.

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