Help

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

 

Privacy

I heard that Grouply is a spammer, a phisher, an identity thief, and other bad things.
Is Grouply in violation of copyright laws or Yahoo’s Terms of Service?
Does Grouply claim copyright ownership of the messages that appear on Grouply?
How does Grouply protect the confidentiality of my group messages?
How does Grouply protect my privacy?
How does Grouply protect my Yahoo password?
Will Grouply post messages to my groups on my behalf without my permission?
I received an invitation to join Grouply. Where did that come from?

 

Reading and Posting Messages

How do I find messages I’m interested in?
What is the Smart Digest and how do I use it?
How can I browse for interesting messages?
How do I search for messages in Grouply?
What is a Saved Search?
What is a Grouply Alert?
What is a bookmark?
What is a tag?
What are message types and why are they useful?
Why are message types in Grouply sometimes wrong? How do I fix an incorrect message type?
How do I post a new message to my group?
How do I reply to a message posted by someone else?
Why does it take a few minutes for my message to appear in Grouply?

 

Connecting with Others

How do I search for a Grouply user?
What is my Grouply profile and how do I update it?
Who can access my profile and what do they see?
What are “friends” in Grouply and how do I get some?
Why should I tell my groups and others I know about Grouply?

 

Setting Up My Grouply Account

How do I change my account settings?
I forgot my password. How do I reset it?
How do I change my Grouply password?
Can I change my Grouply username?
How do I change the email address where my Grouply emails are sent?
How are my groups connected to Grouply? What are Email Connect and Web Connect?
Does Grouply support Google Groups now? How about other group systems?
What is my grouply.com address?
What does it mean to access a group through Grouply?
What does it mean when conditions are “out of sync”?
How do I join a new group?
A group I belong to is missing from Grouply. How do I connect it to Grouply?
How do I discontinue using Grouply or disconnect one or more of my groups from Grouply?

 

Just for Group Owners

Does Grouply offer any special features for group owners?
What is the Grouply Newsletter and how do I create one?
I am the owner of a group. I like Grouply, but I would like to prevent members from posting invitations to Grouply.
I do not want my group members to use Grouply to access a group that I own. What do I do?

 

Reading and Posting Messages

How do I find messages I’m interested in?

Grouply offers you a variety of ways to read and interact with messages posted to your groups. Are you interested in receiving messages via email? You can receive each message as an individual email, or you can subscribe to the Grouply Smart Digest™, an intelligent, personalized summary of all your group messages from the last day. Make your selections on the Manage Email Subscriptions page.

Of course, you can always login to the Grouply website to read messages there. The Grouply website provides you a number of fun ways to find messages of interest. Click See Recent Msgs at any time to see a list of the most recent messages across all your groups. In addition, you can browse for messages by type (e.g., event, for sale ad), by popularity (e.g., most viewed, most comments, most bookmarked, highest rated), by topic (tag), or by date. You can browse within a group or across all groups. Check out a fellow group member’s profile page and see what they have posted or found interesting. Or search for a specific message by keyword or other criteria.

Each message is displayed with all of the associated comments in a familiar blog-like layout, and the entire conversation is presented on its own easy-to-read web page. There you can review the view history, bookmark history, average rating, and tags to see who else found the conversation interesting. And you can rate, tag, or bookmark the conversation yourself or post your own comment.

 

What is the Smart Digest and how do I use it?

The Smart Digest is a personalized summary of all your group messages from the last day. The Smart Digest is available to you on the Grouply website under the Messages tab. In addition, you can have the Smart Digest delivered to you once a day in email. You can update your Smart Digest subscription settings on Settings > Manage Email Subscriptions.

 

How can I browse for interesting messages?

Grouply assembles just for you a variety of personalized lists of messages that you may be interested in. My Recent Highlights are conversations that you have expressed an interest in before that have received new postings. What’s Hot are conversations that other groups members have found interesting. You can also browse for messages by topic (tag) or by message type such as Events or For Sale ads. Click the Messages tab to browse messages across all your groups or visit a group home page to browse messages within a group. Click the See Recent Msgs at the top of any Grouply page to jump to a list of the latest messages across all your groups.

 

On any page in Grouply, enter your keyword(s) into the “Search for messages” box in the upper right corner. When you press the arrow button, you will be taken to the Message Search Results page. Use the Add Filters bar to reduce the list by various criteria such as message type or group. Any filter you add will appear by the label “Filters:”. Remove a filter by clicking the [x] beside it. Update the Sort By selection to bring certain conversations to the top such as those that have been viewed the most or bookmarked the most.

 

A Saved Search is a name given to a set of message search criteria that you want to be able to quickly run again and again. For example, you might be interested in repeatedly searching for upcoming events related to volleyball.

Search for a message then click “Save this search” and give your search a name. You can now run your saved search by clicking its title in any My Saved Searches box in Grouply. My Saved Searches boxes appear on the Home page, the Message Search Results page, and the Messages page.

To delete your Saved Search, click “manage” in the lower right corner of the My Saved Searches box or go to Settings > Manage Alerts & Saved Searches.

 

What is a Grouply Alert?

A Grouply Alert is essentially a Saved Search that notifies you via email when a new message arrives that matches your search criteria. Grouply Alerts can be very useful in a variety of circumstances, such as when you are on the lookout for a particular item in a buy/sell or freecyling group or if you are looking for a certain type of job in a job posting group.

To create a Grouply Alert, first search for existing messages that match your criteria. Add filters as appropriate to refine your results. When you are satisfied with your search criteria, press the Create Alert button in the upper right corner. In the popin, enter a name for the alert and choose the email address you would like the alert sent to. Then look for email alerts at that email address!

To modify your Alerts, click “manage” in the lower right corner of the My Saved Searches box or go to Settings > Manage Alerts & Saved Searches. From there you can delete an Alert or convert a Saved Search into an Alert.

 

What is a bookmark?

Ever read a message and know immediately you will want to follow the conversation or quickly reference the message again? Grouply lets you bookmark your favorite conversations across all your groups so you can find them again with just one click. When a new comment appears on a bookmarked conversation, it is also highlighted in your Smart Digest and on your Home page.

When you click the message subject in any list, you are taken to the detail page for that message. From there, click on the Bookmark button to bookmark that conversation.

You can retrieve your list of bookmarks by clicking “Bookmarks” or “My Bookmarks” anyplace you see the link in Grouply. For example, click the Messages tab and then the “My Bookmarks” link under Lists About Me.

 

What is a tag?

A tag is a word or phrase that categorizes a message by topic (e.g., preschool, palo alto, golfing). A message may have one or more tags applied by the original author or anybody that views or bookmarks a message. Tags enable users to browse messages by topics, organize their bookmarks, and better refine keyword searches.

When you create a message in Grouply, you should tag it! As the message author, you are best qualified to categorize your message with tags. By tagging your message, you make it a lot easier for people who care about the topic you are posting about to find your message.

When you bookmark a message, you can add tags as a way to help you organize your bookmarks. You can even add tags to someone else’s message when you are reading it.

To browse messages by tag, click on the Messages tab and go down to the Tags section. You can see the tags you have personally applied (My Tags) or tags applied by anyone in your group (Group Tags). The tags are arranged in a “tag cloud”, where a tag in a larger font has been used more often. Click into a tag to see the messages associated with that tag.

 

What are message types and why are they useful?
Grouply currently supports the message types Event, Discussion, News, For Sale, Free Stuff, and Wanted. Message types add convenience and save you time. With message types you can:

  • Find interesting messages quickly. For example, the Event message type in Grouply is represented by a prominent calendar icon that includes the month and day of the Event. A user interested in events can quickly identify event messages in a long list. In addition, you can quickly search for messages by type.
  • View useful summaries. In various places in Grouply, messages are grouped together by type into convenient summaries. An Event messages can be viewed together in a calendar view in addition to a list.
  • Find the most important information fast. When you view a message in Grouply, the most important information for a given message type is highlighted. For example, an Event message in Grouply highlights the start and end times of the event and the event location, including a map. This helps the user find the most important information about the message quickly without having to read through a lot of text.
  • Post messages easily and more accurately. Posting messages is easier with message types. When you post a message in Grouply, you select the message type, and Grouply provides you a template with fields to fill out based on the type. This simplifies the posting process and ensures you don’t forget any important information!
  • Benefit from special features. Grouply adds type-specific functionality for some message types. For example, Event messages include an RSVP feature so Grouply users can track who is coming to the event.

 


Why are message types in Grouply sometimes wrong? How do I fix an incorrect message type?

Grouply assigns a message type to all new messages, whether they were posted in Grouply, via email, or on the Yahoo Groups website. Messages posted through Grouply will always carry the proper message type, so post through Grouply if you can! Grouply sometimes gets the message type wrong for messages that were not posted through Grouply, however. There are two ways you can help:

  • Fix incorrect message types. When you encounter an incorrect type on a message, you can fix it! Click the message title to get to the message detail page. On the message detail page, click Edit. Now you are able to correct the message type and fill in the type-specific fields. When you are done, Grouply gives you credit for editing the message by displaying your photo in the First Contributors box on the message detail page!
  • Set the default message type for a group. If Grouply is unable to determine the message type for a new message, it will set the type to the default for that group. For most groups, the default message type is Discussion. However, Discussion may not make sense as a default type for all of your groups. For example, in a job posting group, the best default message type is Wanted. In a buy/sell group, the best default message type may be For Sale. You can change the default message type for your groups on the Settings > Set Default Message Types page.

 


How do I post a new message to my group?

After you join Grouply, you can continue to post messages to your groups via email or through the Yahoo Groups website as before. However, we recommend that you post through the Grouply website. In the upper right hand corner (just below the search box) of any page in Grouply, click the “Post a Message” link.

Posting through the Grouply website enables you to choose the right message type, to use a template so you don’t miss any fields (e.g., location for an event), and categorize your message with tags, which can help ensure that your messages reaches the group members who will be interested in it.

Of course, if you like, you can post a message to your group through email just as you always have. Each group has a “posting address” in the format of groupname@yahoogroups.com. Your group’s home page in Grouply lists the posting address on the left-hand side. To get to your group’s home page, click the Groups tab and select a group from the list.

 


How do I reply to a message posted by someone else?

When you click into the subject of a specific conversation in any list, you are taken to the detail page for that conversation. You can reply to any individual person who participated in the conversation, or you can add your comment to the conversation, which is the same as replying to the whole group.

  • Reply to Individual – To reply to an individual, click the blue Reply link next to their name. In the Reply popin box that opens, the To: field will be pre-selected to the name of the individual who wrote the previous message. Just fill in your message and click Send. Your message will be sent to the individual, not the group.
  • Post a Comment (Reply to All) – To add a general comment to the conversation, enter your comment in the Post a Comment section at the bottom of the page and click Post Comment. Alternatively, if you wish to respond to a particular comment made by someone else earlier in the conversation, click Reply next to their name, and in the To: field in the Reply popin box, select the posting address for the group. Then fill in your message and click Send. In both cases, your comment will be added to the conversation and will be available to everyone in the group – even those not using Grouply.

 


Why does it take a few minutes for my message to appear in Grouply?

When you post a message to the group through the Grouply website, Grouply posts it to Yahoo Groups on your behalf. Grouply then waits for the message to be officially posted to the group, which may require approval by the group owner or moderator. Once Grouply detects that the message has been posted to the group, Grouply then adds that message to the Grouply database. Grouply then indexes the message so it will be visible in various lists in Grouply. This process will take just a few minutes if the message does not need to be approved by a moderator. However, if the moderator must approve the message, it could take much longer. And of course, ultimately the moderator could reject your message, in which case it will never appear in Grouply.

 


Connecting with Others

 

Click on the People tab and enter any part of a person’s name, email, or username into the “Search for people” box click the arrow button. You can refine the results using any of the available filters.

 


What is my Grouply profile and how do I update it?

Your Grouply profile page provides a great way for your friends and fellow group members to get to know you better and discover mutual interests. On your profile page you can share your photo or avatar, contact information, and a list of your groups. You can add photos, videos, or widgets from sites such as YouTube or Slide. Visitors to your profile can also see photos of your friends.

On your profile page you can share with fellow group members the group messages you found interesting. Visitors to your profile get to see the messages you posted in the groups they share with you. (They cannot see messages you posted in groups they don’t belong to.)

To get to your profile, click the My Profile tab. To upate your profile, go to Settings > Update My Profile.

 


Who can access my profile and what do they see?

Grouply provides you with powerful privacy settings that let you control who can get to your profile page and what they can see when they get there. For example, you can share your contact information with some groups and not others. Or you can prevent one or more groups from displaying in your group list. Note that visitors can never see group messages for groups they don’t belong to. Use the “View as” controls on the top of your profile page to see what the page looks like to visitors. To access your privacy controls, click the Privacy button or go to Settings > Privacy.

 


What are “friends” in Grouply and how do I get some?

You can create a two-way link with another Grouply user and become “friends” with each other. This connection provides certain added features in Grouply. For example, if you become friends with Ben, then:

  • Ben’s photo will display on your profile page.
  • Ben can access your profile page.
  • You can access Ben’s profile page.
  • Ben can see any information on your profile page that you have made visible to your friends.

Grouply will provide more features in the future to leverage friends. For example, you will be able to see when you friends update their profile pages or join new groups. Grouply will also highlight for you messages that your friends have found interesting in the groups you share with them. You can add to your friends list in several ways:

  • Click Add Friends in the upper right of any Grouply page and use any of the Friend Finder options to invite others to Grouply.
  • Go to a Grouply user’s profile page and click the Add to Friends button.
  • Search for user in Grouply and click “add to friends” on the Member Search Results page.
  • Accept a friend invitation from someone else.

 


Why should I tell my groups and others I know about Grouply?

Grouply is even better as more people use it. You’ll have more friends to connect with and there will be more people you can get to know better. In addition, as more people in your groups use Grouply, it becomes easier for you to focus on what is important to you. You will see more messages categorized with the right message types and tags, and it will be clear what’s popular across your groups.

You can invite others to Grouply using the Add Friends link in the upper right of any page.

 


Setting Up My Grouply Account

 


How do I change my account settings?

Go the upper right corner of any page in Grouply and click Settings. On the Settings page, select the setting you would like to change.

 


I forgot my password. How do I reset it?

You can reset your password by clicking on the Forgot ID or Password? link on www.grouply.com .

 


How do I change my Grouply password?

You can change your password by going to Settings > Manage Grouply Username and Password.

 


Can I change my Grouply username?

It is currently not possible to change your Grouply username yourself in Grouply. If you need your Grouply username changed, please contact us at support@grouply.com.

 


How do I change the email address where my Grouply emails are sent?

Go to Settings > Manage Email Subscriptions to change the address where individual emails or your Grouply Smart Digest are sent. To add another email address to the picklists, go to Settings > Manage Email Addresses.

Non-group (e.g., personal) email messages sent to your grouply.com email address will be routed to the primary email address you have registered in Grouply. To update your primary email address on Settings > Manage Email Addresses.

 


How are my groups connected to Grouply? What are Email Connect and Web Connect?

See Connecting Your Groups to Grouply for detailed instructions.

 


Does Grouply support Google Groups now? How about other group systems?

Currently Grouply supports only Yahoo Groups. However, we do plan to support Google Groups very soon. In the future, we will also support many other online groups systems. Let us know what other online systems you would like us to support by sending an email to support@grouply.com.

 


What is my grouply.com address?

When you registered with Grouply, Grouply provided you with a free email address in the format username@grouply.com (e.g., jsmith@grouply.com). When using the Email Connect method to connect your groups to Grouply, your Yahoo Groups are configured to send group messages to your grouply.com address. Any emails sent to your grouply.com address that are not Yahoo Groups group messages are forwarded to the primary email address listed on Settings > Manage Email Addresses.

 


What does it mean to access a group through Grouply?

When you elect to access a group via Grouply, you are able to use Grouply to read and post group messages, and you can include group messages in your Grouply Smart Digest. Go to the Settings > Update Group Access page to change your access settings for a group.

 


What does it mean when conditions are “out of sync”?

If you use Email Connect to connect one or more of your groups to Grouply (see Connecting Your Groups to Grouply, then Grouply expects your settings in Grouply to be “in sync” with your settings in Yahoo Groups. If you manually make changes to your settings in Yahoo Groups, then these settings could become out of sync with Grouply, and Grouply will detect this the next time you login. Grouply will report this to you as an “out of sync” condition, and you will be asked to make a selection and get Grouply and Yahoo Groups back in sync.

 


How do I join a new group?

You can join a new group through Yahoo Groups as you always have. Grouply offers a link under the Groups tab.

 


A group I belong to is missing from Grouply. How do I connect it to Grouply?

Grouply is constantly on the lookout for the list of groups that you currently belong to. If you have provided Grouply with your Yahoo ID and password on the Settings > Manage Yahoo and Google Accounts page, then each time you login to Grouply, Grouply will collect your latest group list from Yahoo Groups. If Grouply does not have your Yahoo ID and password, then you must send your group messages to your grouply.com email address in order for Grouply to detect that you belong to the group. See Grouply Manual Setup Instructions for more on manually configuring your Yahoo Groups to use Grouply if you have not provided Grouply with your Yahoo password.

When Grouply detects that you belong to a new group, Grouply will notify you in one or more of the following ways:

  • A red Action Required alert will appear at the top of the page in Grouply.
  • You will see a New Groups Detected page the next time you login to Grouply.
  • You will receive an email indicating that a new group membership has been detected.

Once Grouply has detected your membership in a group, then you can tell Grouply if you want to be able to see and post messages to the group in Grouply. If you belong to a Yahoo Group but you do not see it in Grouply, it may be because you have set Access via Grouply to NO. Go to Update Group Access to review and update your Access via Grouply settings.

If you are accessing a group in Grouply, then you can set how you want Grouply to collect new messages from that group—via email (Email Connect) or directly from the Yahoo Groups website (Web Connect). You can update your connection settings at any time on Settings > Update Group Access page.

 


How do I discontinue using Grouply or disconnect one or more of my groups from Grouply?

You can update or delete your Grouply account yourself from within Grouply. Your first step is to login to Grouply at www.grouply.com . If you do not remember your Grouply ID and password, try your Yahoo ID and password first. If that does not work, you can reset your password at http://www.grouply.com/pass_reset.php .

You can use Grouply to access and interact with just a subset of your groups if you want. Go to Settings > Update Group Access. Under Access via Grouply, select “No” for any groups you do not want to access via Grouply, then click Save.

To delete your Grouply account entirely, go to Settings > Discontinue Using Grouply.

 


Just for Group Owners

 


Does Grouply offer any special features for group owners?

Group owners who use Grouply save time in administering their groups and learn more about what’s going on in them. Since Grouply members are more satisfied and engaged, your groups are more successful overall! With Grouply Owner Controls, you have complete control over the Grouply experience of your group members. See Grouply Benefits for Group Owners for more details.

 


What is the Grouply Newsletter and how do I create one?

Some group owners find it useful to periodically distribute newsletters to group members that summarize upcoming events, highlight select articles, and provide other useful information. A group owner or designated group member can use Grouply to create a professional-looking group newsletter automatically from content posted to the group. Here are some of the features of a group newsletter created in Grouply:

  • Automatic calendar – Just enter your group events into Grouply and Grouply will automatically include them in the Upcoming Events section of the newsletter.
  • Automatic content and updates – Event location changed? New announcement from a group member? No problem. As your group posts and edits messages in Grouply, the latest and greatest versions are automatically available to be included in the newsletter. Providing newsletter material becomes a community effort instead of a one-person job.
  • Automatic layout – No need to spend any time diddling with PageMaker, Microsoft Publisher, or other desktop publishing packages. Grouply creates a professional-looking newsletter for you automatically based on the content you and other group members have entered into Yahoo Groups.
  • Automatic publishing – Once your newsletter is ready, click a button to publish it to the group. Or Grouply will publish the newsletter for you automatically on a schedule you define.
  • Automatically consistent – The Grouply Newsletter is created from the messages in Grouply, so all group communications—the Newsletter, the Smart Digests users receive each day, individual emails, and the Grouply website—are always in sync. No more confusion. No more time spent updating the same information in multiple places.
  • Automatically start the next newsletter from the last one – To create the next Newsletter, you are starting from the last one instead of starting from scratch, saving you even more time.

A Grouply Newsletter includes three sections:

  • The Upcoming Events section provides detail on all future Events.
  • The Features section is a collection of articles selected by the Newsletter editor and organized into sections.
  • The Sponsors section includes ads that the Newsletter editor would like to include in the Newsletter.

Here are the steps a Newsletter editor follows to generate and publish a newsletter to her group using Grouply:

  1. Set up Upcoming Events
    • The Newsletter automatically includes all upcoming Events. Ensure all information for upcoming events (e.g., dates, times, locations) is correct in Grouply.
  2. Set up Features
    • Ensure that all the articles you will want to include in the Newsletter exist as messages in Grouply. Post new messages as necessary.
    • Locate in Grouply the first message you would like to include in the Features section. Click “edit” to edit this message.
    • On the Edit Message page, click Show Advanced Options.
    • In section 5, select Yes to feature the message in the Newsletter. Fill in the Category field. (The Category field corresponds to a section title in the Newsletter.)
    • Repeat for each message to be included in the newsletter.
  3. Set up Sponsors
    • Using the Settings > Manage Ads page and the New/Edit Ad page, upload all of the ads that should appear in the Newsletter. (This feature is not yet available in Grouply but is coming soon.)
  4. Preview Newsletter
    • Under Settings > Publish Newsletter, review the “look” of the newsletter to ensure it appears the way you want it to. Make changes as necessary by revisiting previous steps.
    • Send a test newsletter to yourself by clicking Send Preview on the Settings > Publish Newsletter page.
    • Review the email you receive to ensure it looks OK. Make changes as necessary by revisiting previous steps.
  5. Publish Newsletter via Grouply
    • You can immediately publish the newsletter to the group by clicking the Publish Now button. Alternatively, you can schedule the newsletter to be published at a future time via the Update Newsletter Auto-Publish Settings page.
    • Grouply “publishes” a newsletter by posting the newsletter as a message to the Yahoo Group. If you do not want to post the newsletter as a message to the group, you can “publish” the newsletter simply by emailing out the “preview” you received from Grouply.

 


I am the owner of a group. I like Grouply, but I would like to prevent members from posting invitations to Grouply.

See How Grouply Keeps You Safe for detailed instructions on how to block members from posting invitations to Grouply.

 


I do not want my group members to use Grouply to access a group that I own. What do I do?

See How Grouply Keeps You Safe for detailed instructions on how to block your group from being accessed through Grouply.