What does it mean when you add someone to "group membership"?

[Toby McDaid]

In SharePoint Online there's a few different ways you can grant users access to a site.

The first, which I always use, is to click the cog in the top-right, select 'site permissions', and then choose 'advanced permissions settings'. This takes you to a screen where you see the typical visitors, members and owners groups.

I've noticed on the home page of a site that there is an area in the top-right that says "[X] Members" (see screenshot below).

When you click where it says '6 members', you can add users here also. However, when adding users this way it doesn't seem to add them to the permissions groups you see in 'advanced permissions settings'?

It's as though these are two separate things? Is there any way to disable this, as we have users reporting that they add people this way (since it seems most simple), but it's not actually putting the users into the permissions groups found through site settings???

[#2]

@Toby McDaid 

Hello, 

You right this is two separate places, classic view helps you to add user and if users are under any groups it's not showing up in the Modern view. The modern view is usually using to show the Office 365 groups and individual users. Honestly, this is really depends on your environment but I highly recommend using one of these (Recommend modern) try to do the user management with Office 365 group (Microsoft 365 Group) or Dynamic Groups then assign them to each site.

Please let me know if you need more help.

Regards,

Alireza