Can my group's members use all Groups features without creating a Yahoo ID?

Question

I've set up a group for the small medical clinic I work at. I thought it would be very useful for disseminating important info & updates, conducting polls about proposed changes, making available frequently used contacts in the database where everyone can find what they need, and storing files with info for patients, blank forms, letterheads, etc. Also for a little fun with photos.

Everyone has enough logins and passwords to remember already, so I'm afraid this group will fail if I have to ask everyone to create a Yahoo ID to join. So my questions are: 1. Can my coworkers access all of the group features without creating a Yahoo ID? 2. Can they just use their existing (MSN, google, etc) email address instead? And 3. Can they access all features if I simply "add" them (without Yahoo ID) and not "invite" them?

Answer 1

to have acess to all group features, yes, members will need a yahoo ID/ account. you can use any mail provider  with or without a Yahoo ID/ acount. if you add members, they'll only be mailing list member and that's it (they'll only be able to get and send e-mail via their mail provider)

the link below explains this.

How do I join a group?

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/...

Answer 2

1. No, they'd only be able to get the Group's messages in their e-mail, and reply to those messages.

2. In a way, yes.  They'd still need to create a Yahoo ID to access the Polls, Database, Files, and other web features of the Group, but they don't need to use or create a Yahoo e-mail account - they can associate any existing e-mail account they want with their Yahoo ID.

3. No - see # 1 above.