How do I share a private group with people?

I tested this real quick and it works if you set:
- "Who can see your group?" to "Everyone" (*)
and
- "How do people join?" to "Approval Required"

Then you can share the activity feed link (the first thing which comes up when you click on a group) which looks like:
connect.garmin.com/.../feed

All of this is assuming you are using the GC website.

(* I realize this may not meet your criteria of "private group").

To answer your question better, yep it looks like you can search for private groups and press a button to join them, but you can't share a link directly. It's a shame.

I can think of a couple of ways around this:
1a) Inspect the network request that the "request to join" button sends and make a quick Python script to send this request. I'm sure that's not what you're looking for, though (*)
1b) Write a front-end webpage around that script which asks users to enter the Garmin credentials

2) Ask Garmin to fix this problem so you can share links to private groups

(*) If you really want this script I could write it for you since I have something very close, but then you would need to write the webpage or ask your users to execute a python script which seems like a lot more trouble then searching for a group by name

No-Thanks Okay, here's a two part answer that should meet your needs (for sharing a private group) and requires minimal effort from the user. It works best if the users are on desktop, but it could work on mobile, too.

1) On your intranet webpage for inviting group members, add a link called "Join Garmin Connect group" with the following URL:
javascript:void%20function(){var%20e=window.location.href;if(e=e.match(/https\:\/\/connect\.garmin\.com\/modern\/group\/([0-9]*)/i),null==e||2!=e.length)alert(%22Please%20click%20this%20bookmark%20from%20a%20valid%20Garmin%20Connect%20group%20page.%20e.g.%20'connect.garmin.com/.../json"),r.setRequestHeader("x-requested-with","XMLHttpRequest");var o='{"userGroupId":' t ',"requestorId":' n "}";r.send(o)}},n.send()}}();


Have users drag-and-drop this "bookmarklet" link to their Safari or Chrome bookmarks bar. (This is the part that's harder on mobile. You would have to have them copy the link location or the literal code above, create a new Favourite/Bookmark, then edit the URL and manually paste the code in.)

This bookmarklet will allow users to join any GC group, private or not, as long as they are logged-in and looking at the group page (even if it says they don't have privileges to view it.)

2) Send people the same group link as you did before.

e.g. Something that looks like:
connect.garmin.com/.../feed
or
connect.garmin.com/.../1234567

When they click on the link (and log in to GC if necessary), they will get the same old message: "It looks like you don't have access privileges to view this."

But now they should click on the bookmarklet that you gave them in step 1. This will send a request to join the group, just like the button you see when you search for a group.

If the request is sent successfully, they should see a message reading "Sent request to join Garmin Connect group", otherwise they'll see a message reading "Failed to send request to join Garmin Connect group". If they send the same request a second time (without it being ignored or confirmed), they'll get a message reading "Already sent request to join Garmin Connect group." It will also display an error message if the user clicks on the bookmarklet from the wrong page.

This should work for any group you create.

Hope this is useful for you or anyone else who wants to share private groups.