Deep Dive on Navigating your Group Menu
A step-by-step guide to configuring your Hylo group — from choosing the right home view to setting up navigation, chat rooms, and custom views — rooted in one core question: what do you want people to
Navigating Group Setup
Before touching any settings, start with the most important question: What do you want people to do in this group? Whether that's coordinating events, sharing knowledge, or making decisions together — that answer should drive every setup choice you make.
Identifying Your Engagement Model
Think about how your community engages and how often. If people are checking in daily or in real time, lean on chat. If engagement is more weekly or monthly, posts will carry more of the weight. Many communities use both, and that's totally fine.
A helpful way to think about it: posts are for content you want to preserve — resources, decisions, requests, offers, announcements, knowledge sharing. Chats are for ephemeral, quick coordination and casual conversation.
One important note: chat rooms are flexible — they can hold both chats and posts. The stream, however, only shows posts. Think of the stream as an aggregated view of all posts shared in the group.
Choosing Your Home View
The home view is the landing page members see when they enter your group — think of it as the front door. It should reflect the primary action you want members to take. Here are some examples of how different groups approach this:
Welcome Page — best for groups where orientation is critical and you want members to immediately understand what the space is for and how to navigate it. Note: you can also set a welcome page to appear only the first time someone enters the group, separate from the home view.
Stream — best for content-rich communities where sharing and learning is central and members check in on their own time to see what's been posted.
Events — best for groups where events, meetings, and programming are the primary focus.
Chat Room — best for tight-knit working teams or circle-based organizations that need quick daily coordination.
Map — best for bioregional or place-based groups where geography is central to the work.
Setting Up Your Group Menu
The group menu is your navigation. Be intentional about what you include — highlight the views that are most relevant to your community's purpose.
To add views, go to Edit Menu and click the + icon. You can drag and drop views into the order you want. To keep things organized, create containers (sections) by clicking Add New View → Container, giving it a title, and then dragging relevant views into it.
You can also create custom views:
Post stream filter — shows only posts tagged with a specific hashtag (e.g., a "Research & Articles" view that surfaces any post tagged #research)
Post collection — hand-pick specific posts to feature in a view
External link — link out to an external website directly from the menu
Members can always click "All Views" to see everything available, so don't feel like you need to surface everything in the menu. Keep it focused.
Setting Up Chat Rooms
Resist the urge to create a chat room for everything. Start with the essentials to keep energy and conversation concentrated. A well-set-up group might only have two or three rooms — for example, a general chat for broad coordination, an introductions room, and one topic-specific room.
To create a chat room, go to Edit Menu → Chat → Add New Chat and title it based on the topic of discussion.
Summary
Start with the big question — what do we want people to do here? — and let that drive your home view, menu navigation, chat rooms, and custom views. Keep it simple, stay close to your community's actual needs, and build from there.
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