Create Group Rules – Connect

Select “User Management” and the “Group Manager” will be located in the left-hand column. To create a group role complete the following steps:

Click on the “Create group rule” button
Enter the group rule settings
Enter the group rule conditions
Enter the group settings
Click on the “Save” button
Assign one or more group administrators

Create Group Rule – Group Rule Settings

When you click on “Create group rule”, a window will open. The first section that you will need to complete will be the group rule settings. Enter a rule name, rule type, and decide if you want to enable attributes as a variable value.

Enable Variables

The variables allow you to create multiple Workplace groups and manage the group memberships with one group rule. By default, the variables are deactivated which means that you will only be able to create and manage one Workplace group with the rule. When the setting for variables is disabled, the group rule conditions for the location and department field will allow you to enter a free text value.

If you chose to activate the variable setting, the “Variable attribute” field will become active. Here you can select either the location or department field to be set as the variable attribute field.

When the variables are enabled, the condition will be updated so that it is no longer possible to set a value for the chosen attribute. In this case, we have used the location as an example.

Enabling variables allows you to create multiple groups in Workplace with a single rule. For example, you have three locations, and you would like to create a group for your general managers and assistant managers. You want to create three different Workplace groups where the members of these groups are general managers and assistant managers, it would be beneficial to use variables to create the groups in one go.

Connect will use the variables to look at the value of the location field and each user. It will then look at the job title and if the job title contains the word ‘Manager’, a Workplace group for that location will be created, and that user will be added as a member to that group. Connect will then continue to look at the remaining users. If that user has a different value in the location field but has a job title containing manager, a new Workplace group will be created. In case a Workplace group for a specific location was already created, Connect will automatically add the user as a new member to the existing Workplace group instead of creating a new group.

Example:

User One | London | General Manager
User Two | London | Assistant Manager
User Three | London | Head Chef
User Four | Bristol | Head Chef
User Five | Bristol | General Manager
User Six | Bristol | Assistant Manager
User Seven | Cambridge | General Manager
User Eight | Cambridge | Head Chef

If you look at the example above, you will be able to create three different Workplace groups with one group rule.

London: User One and User Two
Bristol: User Five and User Six
Cambridge: User Seven

Rule Name

The value that you enter in the rule name field will be the name of the Connect group rule that will be visible in the list of your group rules.

Rule type - Static

A static group rule means that they have matched the condition once. If you would create a condition where the job title contains ‘Manager’, the static group rule would add everyone to the Workplace group that has the word ‘Manager’ in the name. If the job title for the user changes to ‘Executive’, that user no longer matches the original condition but because the rule type is set to static, the user will remain a member of the Workplace group.

Static group rules will assign the Workplace group memberships when the group rule was met at any given time and will never remove users if the condition is no longer a match with the user attributes.

Rule type - Dynamic

A dynamic group rule means members will only be added to the Workplace group if they match the condition. If you would create a condition where the job title contains ‘Manager’, the dynamic group rule will add everyone to the Workplace group that has the word “Manager” in the name. If the job title for the user changes to ‘Executive’, that user no longer matches the condition and as such, the user will be removed from the Workplace group.

Dynamic group rules will only assign Workplace group memberships when the user attributes are matching the group rule condition.

Create Group Rule – Group Rule Condition

The group rule condition consists of four key sections:

The parent condition block will allow you to search within the full database of users
The attribute selector will allow you to choose an attribute
The condition selector will allow you to choose an expression
The value selector will allow you to choose a value or type a value

Parent Condition Block

Creating a group rule condition will start to search for all users and by adding in more and more values, you will narrow down the number of people that match the parent condition.

For example, if you enter the condition ‘Job Title’ containing ‘Manager’, you will narrow down the search database to the people that have a job title that contains ‘Manager’. If you then want to add in the expression ‘Location’ contains ‘London’, you will narrow down the search result to all people who have a job title that contains ‘Manager’ and where the location contains ‘London’

If you would add another condition that says OR job title containing ‘Executive’, the search will only happen within all of the people who have a job title containing ‘Manager’ and where the location is ‘London’. If you want to add in all people where the job title contains ‘Executive’, you will need to add in another parent condition block so that you can search all employees. Every time that you add in a new parent condition block, you will be able to start searching all employees again. In the example above, the first condition will search for all people where the job title contains ‘Manager’ and where the location contains ‘London’. The second condition will search for all people where the job title contains ‘Executive’. Finally, you will have a Workplace group that contains all of the managers in London and all of the executives from the entire organization.

When you create a condition, you will need to select an attribute that you want to search in. You will be able to search for all of the different work profile attributes. For note, it is not possible to search for custom security attributes.

In the current version of Connect, you will be able to select the following attributes as the attribute to search in:

Job Title: The job title attribute that’s stored in the user profile
Location: The location attribute that’s stored in the user profile
Name: The first name and last name attribute that’s stored in the user profile
Division: The division attribute that’s stored in the user profile
Department: The department that’s stored in the user profile
Manager: The manager that’s stored in the user profile
Start Date: The start date that’s stored in the user profile
Created Date: The date that the user was created in Connect

Once you have selected the attribute, you need to select a value that will be using (i.e. Contains, is one of, ends with) and add a text value in the last field. When you select a value, you will be able to select an existing value, enter a value in free text, select a date or search for empty values in the last box

You will only be able to select an existing value or a date when you select an attribute that supports a text or a date. Selecting a value that searches for empty values will not give you any possibility to enter a value as it’s specifically looking for empty values.

In the current version of Connect, you will be able to select the following expressions:

is one of: Select one or more attribute values to include in the search
is not one of: Select one or more attribute values to exclude in the search
contains: Enter a free text value that you want to include in the search
does not contain: Enter a free text value that you want to exclude in the search
ends with: Enter a free text value and will search for the end value of an attribute
starts with: Enter a free text value and will search the start value of an attribute
equals to: Enter a free text value and will search for the exact value of an attribute
not equals to: Enter a free text value and will exclude the exact value of an attribute
is empty: This will look for attribute values that are empty
is not empty: This will look for attribute values that are not empty
is not null: This will look for attribute values that are not null
is not null or whitespace: This will look for attribute values that are not null and aren’t a space
is null: This will look for attribute values that are null
is null or whitespace: This will look for attribute values that are null or are a space##

Value Sector

Create Group Rule – Workplace Group Settings

When you have configured the group rule settings and conditions, you will be able to configure the Workplace group settings. In this section, you will be able to choose a Workplace group name, description and settings.

Workplace group name: The name of the Workplace group that will be created by Connect
Description: The description of the Workplace group that will be created by Connect
Purpose type: The group type of the Workplace group that will be created by Connect
Announcements
Social & More
Teams and projects
Discussions
Privacy: The privacy type of the Workplace group that will be created by Connect
Open
Closed
Secret
Post requires approval: Each post will need to be approved by a group administrator or moderator
Post permission: Who is able to post within the Workplace group
Admins only
Any group member
Membership approval: Who can allow members to the Workplace group
Admins Only
Any Group

When you click on “Save”, the group rule will be configured and the Workplace group will be created. At this point, the synchronization of the group memberships will be triggered and the group rule will be in a synchronizing state.