Smart Groups

Overview

Smart Groups allow you to automatically add or remove users from groups, based on user attributes. This means that memberships always stay up to date, with minimal admin work required.

Creating a Smart Group

1. Either create a new group and opt for members to be added automatically,
   
   or go to the list of members of an existing group and click the 'Add rules' button.
   
   

2. Now, specify rules for user membership. Upon every user update and rules save, the Smart Group will check for users that meet these conditions.

   Rules can refer to user profile fields and values that may be stored in those fields.

   

3. Click 'Save'. Your group is now Smart.

Please note: Depending on number of users in your company account, applying rules may take a while. Simply refresh the groups page, to see members being added automatically.

How do Smart Groups work?

Smart Groups are groups that have membership rules defined. These rules refer to users profile fields and their values.

You can specify conditions for profile field values, and the Smart Group will check if a user meets these criteria or not.

How does a Smart Group check for updates?

The Smart Group checks whether a user should be a member of a Smart Group when you save changes to the Smart Group rules, when a user is created and when a user's profile is updated.

User profile field updates done manually, through workflows or through user imports all will trigger a check for Smart Group membership.

How long does it take for Smart Groups to be updated?

Changes to the Smart Group memberships are not instant. Depending on number of users, number of updates, and conditions to be checked, it may take up to few hours to update the Smart Group.

Can I add or remove users manually from a Smart Group?

Yes, you can add users manually to a Smart Group. This is basically, an override of the Smart Group rules.

You can also remove users from a Smart Group manually. Remember that if you remove a user that was added automatically, they will be added back again if their profile is updated and they still meet the rules of the Smart Group.

Please note: Group membership applied on a user level (through API, user import or dashboard) are considered “manual”, and exceptions above apply.

What happens when I apply rules to a group with existing members?

Members added manually remain in the group. To automate the group, you can either empty it before applying a rule or remove members that were added manually after applying the rule. Users who meet the new group criteria will be re-added to the group automatically.

Which profile fields can I use to create a Smart Group?

You can select any profile field. You will find them listed in the dropdown menu when you are creating the rule.

Please bare in mind that:

• All profile fields will be treated as text, regardless of the profile field type. E.g. if you select profile field Hire date which has a format of YYYY-MM-DD, and you want to create a group that contains all users hired in October 2023, then, you need to select in operator, and provide the list of all dates in October (2023-10-01, 2023-10-02, ... , 2023-10-31).
• Smart Groups support only and operators which means that all added rules must be true for a membership to be applied.

What type of operations do Smart Group rules support?

When you select a profile field you can specify what value it should have ("in" operator) or shouldn't have ("not in" operator).

You can specify multiple profile fields values to be checked. For example:

• John - list with a single item, it will check if users name is or is not John
• John, James, Jake - we will check if users name is any of these or none of these

You can also use the API to add, update, and clean the rules for groups.

How many rules can I add to a Smart Group?

There is no limit to the number of rules you can add to a Smart Group.

Does a user have to meet all the conditions to be a member of a Smart Group?

Yes, smart groups support only "and" operators which means that all added rules must be true for a membership to be applied.

Potential conflicts with user syncs

For the correct group membership assignment for tenants using UserSync, please make sure you either apply rules through UserSync or through Smart Groups. If rules are applied in both solutions it can result in conflicts. So if you move from UserSync to Smart Groups, make sure that group membership rules from UserSync are removed.

If you need more help setting up your Smart Group, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager, or contact Support.