Help Community Groups

What is an E3P Group?

The E3P provides the opportunity to its users to start virtual groups on specific topics of Energy Efficiency, similar to interest groups of other academic societies. This provides a common ground for interested parties to contribute and share information on a given topic.

E3P Groups also have different levels of accessibility, giving the opportunity to the owner of the group to choose whether the information being shared can be of public domain or whether it is too sensitive to be shared with public users.

How can I contribute and Join a Group?

To start contributing to an E3P group, you must first be a registered user. To do so, visit the login section of the E3P Portal, where you can register a new account through the European Commission Authentication Service website (ECAS).
Once registered, you may now browse the groups which are visible and subscribe to the ones that allow it (E3P groups are of 4 types: Public, Moderated, Invited, Closed). Here they are in more detail:

1. Public: Content of group is public, users may subscribe without validation;
2. Moderation: Content of the group is public, users may request to subscribe and are validated by a moderator;
3. Invitation: Content may be public or private, users are invited to the group by the administrators;
4. Closed: Content is private, registration is only done by the administrator.

How can I start a new Group?

All registered users may start a new group, which will then be approved by the E3P moderators. To start a new group visit the E3P homepage, under the Community block click on "Start a Group". This will now redirect you to the group creation form where you will be asked to fill in the details of your group.
Here is the form in more detail:

The Group creation form is split into two tabs, Properties and Group Audience (top left corner).

1. Properties: This section is made up of the basic information that identifies your group.
   1. Group Name
   2. Group Logo
   3. Thematic and Cross-thematic Areas (assigns the group the topic of interest)
   4. Group Image (refers to the top banner of the page)
   5. Group Description
      
      

      

Fig. 1 Properties tab of the group creation form

1. Group Audience: This tab allows to select the level of visibility of the group.
   a. Group content visibility (refer above for more details on group types)
   b. Group roles and permissions (leave the existing preselection)

Fig.2 Group Audience tab of the Group creation form

Once filled in, browse to the bottom of the page and from the Moderation state drop down select needs review. This will send the request for validation to the E3P moderators.

Fig.3 Moderation state pane

Please note, it is strongly suggested to browse through the existing groups in order to avoid creating groups that overlap.

How can I invite users to my group?

To invite people to your group first log in as owner or coordinator of the group, then go to your group page, where you will see the administrator tabs at the top of the page. From the tabs select Groups, which will open new options. From the listed options select "Add People" (Fig. 4), once the page opens you will see a text field entitled "Add a group member to …", in this text field start typing the name or the user name in. If the person you are inviting is already a registered user of the E3P the system will autocomplete the name.

Fig. 4 Add people option

Please note, if the person is not registered to the platform, the autocomplete text field won't work. Therefore, invitations will have to be done manually via email, inviting contacts to first register to the E3P website, and subsequently inviting them to the group through the above mentioned procedure.

Assigning content to my Group?

The E3P content types that can be assigned to a group are articles, events and publications. When creating such content, in the top left hand corner of the administrator panel, you can select the "group Audience" tab. Through this pane, you are given the following options (Fig. 5):

• Your groups: This allows you to assign the content you have created to a group you are registered to. From the list of groups you are registered to, select the one you want this content to be associated with (multiple selection of groups are allowed), and press the arrow with the green + sign to add it as selected.

Once selected the group audience, proceed to save your content as you would do normally.

Fig. 5 Group audience tab in the content creation pane.