Creating a group

A group in Scout is a small group, a class, or a ministry. Creating one takes about a minute. Getting it to show up in the member app is a separate step, and it is the one churches miss most often.

Create the group

1. 1

   Open Groups

   In the sidebar, click Groups. You land on /groups.

2. 2

   Click New Group

   The button sits at the top right. If you have no groups yet, the page shows No groups yet and the button reads Create your first group.

3. 3

   Fill in the form

   Only Name * is required. Everything else can wait.

4. 4

   Click Create Group

   You return to the list and the new group appears with a Draft pill beside its name.

Every field in the form

• Name * is the only required field. Placeholder: e.g. Tuesday Night Small Group. Names have to be unique inside your church, and archived groups still hold their name.
• Type is a dropdown with three options: Small Group, Class, Ministry. It defaults to Small Group. Type controls the chip on the card and the Small groups / Classes / Ministries filters on /groups. It changes nothing else.
• Description is free text, shown on the card and to members in the app. Placeholder: Optional description...
• Meeting day is a dropdown of the seven weekdays, plus a blank option at the top if the group has no fixed day.
• Meeting time is a native time picker.
• Meeting location is free text. Placeholder: e.g. Library · 123 Main St.
• Cadence is a three-way control: Recurring, Fixed-length, One-time. Choosing Fixed-length reveals an End Date field. Choosing One-time reveals Meeting Date, with the helper The single date this group meets. Switching cadence clears the date field you are leaving behind.

What the meeting fields actually do

They do two things. They render the schedule line on the group card and the group page (Meeting day, Meeting time and Meeting location combine into something like "Tuesdays at 7:00 PM · Library"), and they tell Scout when to ask this group's leader for a post-meeting reflection.

They do not create anything. Scout generates no meeting records, no calendar, and no recurring occurrences from these fields. A meeting only exists once someone records attendance on the group page or a leader saves a reflection from the member app. See Recording what happened at a meeting.

Meeting day is worth filling in for one reason beyond display: the leader reflection nudge is calculated from it. A group with no Meeting day (which is how every Planning Center import arrives) never prompts its leader.

Making the group visible to members

Every group Scout creates starts as a draft, and the New Group form has no visibility control. Drafts are hidden from the member app's Browse tab and cannot be joined. Publishing is a second, deliberate step:

1. 1

   Open the kebab

   Click the ⋮ button on the group's card, or the same button at the top right of the group's page.

2. 2

   Choose Edit group

   The same form reopens, this time titled Edit Group. It now has a Visibility control at the top.

3. 3

   Switch Visibility to Published

   Draft reads Hidden from members. Use while you're still setting up. Published reads Visible to members and joinable.

4. 4

   Click Save Changes

   The Draft pill disappears from the card and the group shows up under Browse in the member app.

There is no public signup page and no group directory on a website. Scout does not build or host church websites, so joining a group means a signed-in member using the app.

Add a banner

The banner lives on the group's page, not in the create form. Open the group and click the dashed panel reading Add a banner image. The helper spells out the limits: Recommended 1500 × 500px (3:1) · PNG, JPEG, or WebP · Max 2MB. SVG is rejected. Once a banner is in place, hover it for Change and Remove.

Who can create a group

Creating and editing groups needs the Create & edit groups permission (manage_groups), listed under Community in Settings → Permissions. Admin, Pastor and Staff have it by default. Volunteer does not.

The New Group button is not hidden from people who lack the permission. They can open the form and fill it in, and the modal will show Forbidden when they submit. See What each permission controls.

What a group does not have

Reach for one of these and you will not find it:

• No capacity or maximum size, and no waitlist.
• No age range, grade range, or gender restriction.
• No campus.
• No category, tag, or label of any kind. Type is the only classification, and it has three values.
• No duplicate-name check while you type. If the name already belongs to another group in your church, including an archived one, Create Group fails with Internal server error. Change the name and try again.
• No way to add members from the create form. Do that on the group page afterward: Members, leaders, and join requests.