Google Groups is a great tool because it allows you to have discussions inside your organization (or with the entire world, if you want). It works as a sort of forum, accessible through a URL, where people can go and check the discussion topics and post their replies — they can reply over email as well.
From time to time we need to create a group or email distribution list to have a valid email address that forwards incoming messages to several people. In this case, the group does not work as a forum but as a forwarder. We then need to make sure that the group is configured to allow people outside our company to send messages, to allow the people in the group (members) to read the messages (if they access the group URL), and to prevent other people, even belonging to the company, from reading or joining the group without an invitation.
When creating the group, we start with the highest level of restrictions:
As you can see in the image above, there’s no option that fits our stated needs; that’s why we need to go to the group settings page and adjust a couple of options in Basic permissions:
You can explore other options, depending on your own needs. Groups are very flexible and can help you facilitate some specific communication requirements, so try them out!
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