How to Set a Home Group 🏠

An organization's intranet works best when everyone is on the same page—literally. In Haystack, admins can define a Home Group to act as the central repository for company-wide news, announcements, and cultural events.

Setting up a Home Group guarantees that every person on your platform is automatically kept in the loop, creating a shared digital workspace. It simplifies internal communications by giving your team a single, trusted source of truth.

Why this matters:

Guaranteed Visibility: Content posted in this group automatically populates high-visibility areas like the optional dashboard post carousel or the "Recent Updates" feed.
Automated Onboarding: New users are automatically added to this designated group the moment they join the platform, removing manual administrative overhead.
Unified Culture: It acts as your digital town square where cross-functional engagement happens organically.

💡 Looking for localized home pages? If your company has multiple physical offices (e.g., NY, LA, London) or distinct subsidiary brands and you want users to land on a customized page specific to their location, you can set up Location-Based Home Pages. Unless you need this advanced, segmented routing, setting up a single global Home Group is all you need!

Step-by-Step: How to Set Your Global Home Group

📌 Before getting started: To configure or change your workspace's global Home Group, you must have Workspace Admin privileges. Regular members and standard group moderators will not see these settings in their dashboards.

A global Home Group is a public-facing group that every single person in your workspace automatically joins. For many teams, this group is named General, All Hands, Announcements, or [Company Name] Home. It is always a public group with no exclusivity (unlike role-specific groups like Sales or Accounting).

Follow these steps to designate your Home Group:

Log into Haystack and navigate to the Admin Console from your left-hand navigation sidebar.
Click on Manage Groups from the admin menu options.
Scroll through your list or use the search bar to find the public group you want to establish as your main hub.
Click the three dots (...) on the far right-hand side of that group's row. In this example, we're making "All Employees" our home group.
Select "Mark as Home Group" from the dropdown menu.

🏆 Best Practices

Keep it Broad and Public: Your global Home Group should always be a public-facing group. Avoid using department-specific groups (ie: contract, full time, part time, etc.) where information might feel irrelevant or exclusive to certain employees.
Leverage the Dashboard Carousel: Maximize the impact of your Home Group posts by ensuring your main dashboard post carousel is enabled. This ensures high-priority global pins are impossible to miss.
Post with Purpose: Because everyone is in this group, protect it from notification fatigue. Reserve it for company-wide updates, major milestones, and universal events.

💬 Still Need Help?

Have questions about organizing your workspace groups or setting up your digital town square? We're here for you!

Chat with us: Click the Support Chat icon in the bottom right corner of your screen for real-time help. Our AI good-girl, Luna will fetch you the right information quickly! 🐶
Create a ticket: Fill out our support form HERE and a team member will get back to you ASAP.
Email us: Drop our team a line at support@haystackteam.com and we'll help you track it down!

Keywords: Home Group, Home Page, Admin Console, Manage Groups, All Hands, General Group, Workspace Customization, Intranet Hub, Company Announcements, Admin Settings