The Groups section is where central group management functions are provided.
This includes several main activities related to groups, including:
- viewing and filtering the list of groups
- adding groups
- editing groups
- removing groups
- creating group hierarchies
- assigning capabilities to groups
- bulk actions
Viewing the list of groups
This screen shows you all the existing groups, their assigned capabilities if any, the brief description of each group if given and the ID of each group (which is useful when used with some of the shortcodes that Groups provides).
Filtering the list of groups
You can locate a specific group or reduce a long list of groups using the Filters.
You can input the ID of a group or the name of a group in part or fully – click Apply to obtain the filtered list of groups. The filter will remain active until you hit the Clear button – even if you navigate away from this page, when you come back, you will still have the filter applied. This is useful if you usually work with a reduced set of groups.
Adding groups
To add a new group, go to Groups > Groups and click the New Group button. This will bring you to the screen that allows you to create a new group.
Input at least the Name of the group you want to create.
You can also add a brief Description and you can assign any desired Capabilities to this new group.
You can also indicate the parent of this group if it’s going to be part of a hierarchy. This can be useful if you would like the child group to inherent capabilities from the parent(s) and in some other cases. If enabled, the Tree menu item renders an indented view of the group hierarchy. Groups supports group hierarchies with capability inheritance.
The available capabilities include those that come with WordPress by default, those defined by other plugins and additional ones that you can define freely. Also review the section on Capabilities for more details on managing those.
This allows you to define very fine-grained sets of permissions that you can use to grant partial access to back end features. Instead of fiddling with roles, just define a group and assign those capabilities it needs to access appropriate functions on the WordPress Dashboard.
Editing groups
To edit an existing group, go to Groups > Groups locate and hover over the entry of the group you would like to edit.
Click the name of the group or the Edit link
This will lead you to the group editing screen where you can modify the Name, the Parent, the Description and the Capabilities previously assigned.
Remember to hit the Save button to register any changes made to the group.
Removing groups
Caution! – If you remove a group, its related user assignments, the relation to its capabilities, the protection of assigned posts and potentially other important settings in extensions related to that group will be irrevocably lost. You will not be able to simply undo this, so please make absolutely sure that you really want to remove that group before you proceed. On a production site, please make a backup before you remove an important group.
To remove an existing group, go to Groups > Groups locate and hover over the entry of the group you would like to remove and press the Remove link 
of the group you want to remove and confirm this action.
Bulk-actions
Several bulk actions are available here which allow you to delete sets of groups and to assign or remove sets of capabilities to and from sets of groups.
Caution! – Please read the warning on removing a group above. You will create a complete mess if you remove not just one but several important groups in bulk in error.
Example:
Let’s assume that we want to remove one capability or more from some groups.
- Tick the checkbox to select the groups you want to apply this action to.
- Select the Bulk Action you want to apply (Remove group, Add capability or Remove capability).
- Choose the capabilities you want to remove from the selected groups and hit Apply.
