Anatomy of a Chapter Group

Only AORN members who are members of your chapter have access to your Chapter group. Non-members, when they visit your chapter group, will land on the Group Profile tab (we'll talk about that more below) and will not be able to see chapter discussions, calendar, etc, unless you choose to make your group content public.

The Chapter group is composed of several features. I'll give you an overview of them now.

Group Navigation Tabs
In the top middle of your group page, you'll notice a group of gray tabs that allow you to navigate to different areas of your Chapter group site.

Overview Tab
The Overview tab is the group site "homepage". It's the page that you land on when you first come to your Chapter site. The Overview page will list the five Latest Discussion Posts on your Chapter discussion board and any recent comments.

Discussions Tab
The Discussions Tab will bring you to your Chapter's discussion board. A discussion board is very much like a cork bulletin board: you can post announcements, discuss chapter business, and share clinical information -- whatever interests your chapter members. All chapter members can post to the discussion board; chapter officers have special privileges to moderate discussions.

Group Resources Tab
Every Chapter group has its own Resource Center for members to upload and download documents and files relevant to the group. This is one of the places you could upload a Chapter newsletter.

Calendar Tab
Each Chapter has its own calendar to post events and meetings.

Members Tab
The members tab will list out all of the members of your chapter. To pull chapter rosters, you'll still need to do that in the Chapter Resource Center on AORN.org. If the number of members in the Chapter group is lower than the number in your Chapter roster, here's more information about the discrepancy.

Owner Settings Tab
Only Chapter officers have access to the owner settings tab, and here's an explanation of the features on the owner settings page.

Message Members Button
The big orange Message Members button in the right-hand column of the site allows chapter officers to send an email to everyone in the chapter all at once. You can use Message Members to send out your Chapter newsletter. The Message Members button appears on every page of the Chapter group.

Start a Discussion Box
The Start a Discussion Box allows you to post a new message on your Chapter discussion board. All Chapter members can post a new discussion. This box appears on every page of the Chapter group.

About This Group Box
The most important information in the About This Group box is the list of group owners. Group ownership is automatically assigned to Chapter officers and board members. If you need to update your group owners, you'll need to update your chapter officers. Here's a video tutorial and written instructions for updating your chapter officers and changing your group owners.