About cross-site groups

Cross-site groups let you create a group of users that can be used in all sites in a site collection. In contrast, site groups are used to assign rights to users or cross-site groups. You assign rights to a cross-site group by adding it to a site group or using list or library permissions settings.

Cross-site groups are a convenient way to manage groups of people who collaborate frequently on many sites in a site collection. For example, if a team has many Meeting Workspace and Document Workspace sites, you can create one cross-site group to use for all the workspace sites.

With cross-site groups, you can assign an owner who controls who can be added or removed from the cross-site group. You can also set up a cross-site group so that the members of the group can add or remove users.

Notes

• You can create a cross-site group only by using the Windows SharePoint Services Site Administration pages, and not through the stsadm.exe command line.
• Because cross-site groups do not have e-mail addresses, you cannot add them to a site from Windows SharePoint Services-compatible programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Word 2003.
• When using Microsoft Active Directory account creation mode, the Minimum Password Age group policy on the domain controller must be set to 0 days. Failure to do so will result in users being unable to change their passwords, unless they have administrator rights on the server. For information about setting the Minimum Password Age group policy, see Microsoft Windows 2003 Server online help.

Related topics

About domain and Active Directory account modes

Create, edit, or delete a cross-site group

Add a user to a cross-site group