Creating a Group in ActiveTextbook PRO

Welcome to the “Creating Groups in ActiveTextbook” blog. We are going to show you step by step how to create Contacts and Groups in ActiveTextbook, and how to assign a book to Groups.

Groups

A Group is a list of individual users that can be addressed in a single action, such as granting and revoking access to Books or sending messages. For example, you can setup a Group to represent a class. Each Group has an Owner – an individual user that created the Group and controls access to it. Accounts that are operating under Publisher roles are allowed to create Groups in ActiveTextbook PRO.

Creating a Group

Groups can be viewed or created from the People menu option in the left sidebar. The Group section contains an icon for each group that is visible to you, i.e. the groups you own, the groups to which you belong, and the groups that you may join. Groups that you own will show a pencil icon. Groups that you belong to will appear next.

You may add ActiveTextbook users directly to your Contact list by pressing the “+” button in the “Contacts” section. The system will display the Invitation window, prompting you to enter the e-mail of the user you want to add to your contact list.

To add a Group that is owned and controlled by you click on the button on the top right corner. By clicking on this button, the Create Group dialogue will open where you can set the Group Name, write a description for the group and set the access level: public group, restricted group, or private group.

You can enter the name and the description for the Group in the new dialog box as shown above. You will also need to assign permissions to the group that you are creating. You can make the Group available to the Public, Restricted number of users, or only to yourself. Anyone may join a public group; Restricted groups require you to approve membership requests, and private groups will not show up in searches, only you can invite people to join a private group.

After you entered all the required information, click on the “Create” button on the bottom right corner.

From the “People” page, click on the Group that you created. This will open a new page that displays details about the Group. In this page, you can add members, see pending invitations, and details about existing Group members (if any).
To add members to your Group, you can select from the 2 options available in the drop down menu under “Type. You can choose the type of users you want to add to your group by selecting either “Contacts” or “New Contacts” from the drop down menu.

By clicking on “Contacts”, you can select from the existing list of all individuals that requested or were granted access to any of your Books or groups.
If you want to add new individuals, you can simply select “New contact” from the drop down menu; you can create individual contacts by simply entering their email addresses.

Assign a book to Groups

We are now going to show you how to assign a book to Groups. To do this, click on “My Bookshelf” on the right sidebar menu. Now click on the “i” button located on the bottom right corner of the book you wish to edit. This will take you to “Access Control Panel”, where you can grant access to Groups or Contacts. You can select “Groups” from the drop down menu under “Type” and enter the name of the Group you want to give permission to read your book. When finished, click on the “Grant Access” button. This procedure allows to provide Groups permission to access your books.

We have now showed you how to create Contacts and Groups, and how to assign your books to individuals and Groups. Hopefully you found it useful!
Please contact us should you have any questions.