About Groups

A Group can be defined as a set of multiple users that all need to interact with your Issuetrak system in the same way. Groups allow you to establish and control role-based Permissions collectively without manually granting individual users the same permissions over and over.


 

Terminology

It’s best to be familiar with several terms going forward:

Term Definition
Group Allows you to associate users together. Members of a group inherit the permissions granted to the group.
Group Membership Type: Any Any user record may belong to this group. This group cannot be granted any agent-level permissions.
Group Membership Type: Agent Only users with the type of Agent can belong to this group. This group can be granted agent-level permissions.
Group ID A unique identifier for your group. Can contain letters and numbers, but no spaces. It’s recommended to include the term “group” or “team” within the ID for it to remain clear when selecting or searching. The Group ID cannot be changed without the assistance of the Support Team.

 

Purposes of Groups

Groups have four main purposes that are all related to linking users together. Users can be associated with one or more groups. The users within a group inherit the permissions from that group. If a user belongs to several groups, then the user receives the permissions from all of the groups. While groups are not required, they can be a powerful tool.

The use of Groups is optional. However, controlling common permission sets at the group level instead of the user level makes user administration easier and more consistent. In addition, Group Restrictions allow you to control access to specific Issue Templates, Issue Types, Tasks, Knowledge Base articles, and other values based on group membership(s). We strongly recommend using groups whenever possible.

Example:

Create a Managers group with permissions to run reports, view all issues and administrative information, as well as assign issues and tasks.

Create a Technicians and CSRs group with permissions to view and submit issues for other users, create and maintain Knowledge Base articles, as well as be assigned issues and tasks.

Create a Customers group with permissions to only view and submit their own issues and access your Knowledge Base.

When working with your site, think about what your users need to do within Issuetrak. Do they need different permission levels? Do you need to assign issues or tasks to more than a single person? Do you need to notify specific users when certain things happen? Do certain Knowledge Base articles, issue types, or Issue Templates need to be restricted? These questions help you decide what groups to create and which users should belong to each group.


Role-Based Groups

Some users have a specific purpose in the site or require a certain set of permissions. Every site normally has an End User group for users that may only need to login, submit, and view their own issues. You may have managers that need to view all issues, access the Dashboard, or run reports. You might create a group to grant agent-level permissions to all your agents. It’s important to include only the necessary permissions, keeping the permissions for each group to a minimum. Users can be associated with multiple groups. Additional permissions can be granted by adding the user to more granular groups. This can cover the different roles that each user needs to play on your site.


Assignment-Based Groups

The purpose of these is to assign an issue or task to more than one user. For example, if you have six people in your customer service department, you could create a customer service group with all six people as members. When an issue is assigned to your customer service group, all members of the group are notified and responsible. You may have agents with multiple areas of responsibility. In that case, you can use groups to create queues used for automatic assignment and reporting. We recommend using the word “group” or “team” in your group names. This makes it easier to differentiate between users and groups when assigning issues, in searches, or in dropdown lists.


Email Distribution Groups

These are for creating Issue Subscribers on your site. As an example, let's say that you need to set up workflow or issue notifications to go to a number of managers. Rather than add each one individually, create a group to add them all at once. This is especially helpful in times of staff turnover, or position changes. Instead of needing to update every notification list, you can simply update the group.


Restriction Groups

The purpose of these is to set “restrict to” values on issue types, subtypes, and Issue Templates when submitting issues. These groups effectively limit which values a user may select when submitting or maintaining issues. This does not impact the overall visibility of the issue. A group can also be used to restrict knowledge Base articles and categories. It’s also important to remember that these are "restrict to" values, not "restrict from" values. "Restrict to" means that if you’re a member of the group, you can see the item or value.


 

Group Permissions

Users can inherit all of their permissions through group membership(s). Or, inherit additional permissions to those already applied through a template or selected in their user records.

As users are added to a group, their inherited permissions will appear in a read-only format on their user records. These permissions cannot be changed without changing the entire group’s permissions or removing the user from the group.

Permission options on group records are almost identical to those on user records. However, there are additional properties that must be considered.

A group cannot log in or submit issues as if they were an individual user. But a group can:

Permission Description
Be assigned issues The individual group members may be assigned issues if they have Can be assigned issues permission.
Be assigned Next Actions The individual group members may then be assigned Next Actions; if they have Can be assigned Next Action permission.
Be assigned Tasks The individual group members may also then be assigned Tasks; if they have Can be assigned Tasks permission.
Be added to Subscribers The individual group members will then be sent notifications to the email address in their user record. Notifications will also be sent to the address in the group record if one has been defined.
Be added as Project members The individual group members will then be included in the project.

Groups are not valid for the assignment of Issues, Next Action, or Tasks without having active members added.


 

Group Restrictions

You may allow members of certain groups (or organizations) to view and select additional values not available to other users through Group Restrictions. This includes:

  • KB Articles

  • KB Categories

  • Issue Types

  • Issue SubTypes 1-4

  • Tasks

  • Task Groups

  • Issue Templates

Some examples of restrictions in practice are:

Restricting the Issue Template New Hire to your Manager Group. Then no employee other than a member of management can view and select it on issues.

Restricting the subtype Server to your IT Group. Then no employee other than a member of IT can view and select it on issues.

Restricting the Task Group QA Analysis to your Development Group. Then no employee other than a member of development can view and select it on issues.


 

Maintaining Groups

In order for a group to work, it must contain at least one active user. Users can only be added to a group from the Edit Group screen. Groups can be added and edited by any user with the Sys Admin parameter or Can access and maintain Administration functions permission.


Adding a Group

Steps:

  1. Click the gear icon in the upper right > click on Groups beneath Entities > click on Add beneath Groups on the right context menu. The Add Group screen will then appear.

  2. Select the Membership Type.

  3. Enter a Group ID. It cannot be modified once a record is saved. If no group ID is entered, a numeric group ID will be assigned by the system.

  4. Enter a Display Name(required).

  5. (Optional) Fill in the phone, email, and SMS email values. These are for informational purposes only and have no bearing on email notifications.

    • If no system-generated email notifications should be sent to any member of this group, select Suppress All Email.

  6. Select a default Organization (required).

    • If the organization selected is marked as Internal Only, then only issues, users, and other groups within this organization will be available to members on issues and in reporting mechanisms. If this group has members outside of this Internal Only organization, then these users will be allowed to see issues pertaining to this group only.

  7. (Optional) Select a Department value for the group.

    • Any assignments made to the group will show up in reporting for the department selected. If the department selected is marked Internal Only, then only issues, users, and other groups within this department will be available to members on issues and in reports. If this group has members outside of this Internal Only department, then these users will be allowed to see issues pertaining to this group only.

  1. (Optional) Select Round Robin Assignments, if desired.

  2. Select any Menu Options/Pages Allowed to display to all members of this group.

  3. Select any permissions that all members of this group are to inherit.

    • A license must be available for each member to have any Agent permissions.

  4. Click Save.

    • Clicking Reset will instead clear all current entries and selections.

A confirmation message will appear when this process is complete.


Editing a Group

Steps:

  1. Click the gear icon in the upper right > click on Groups beneath Entities. This will open the Group List screen.

  2. Perform a Quick Search for the record.

Once you're on the Edit Group screen, you can perform the following changes as needed:

  1. To deactivate, unselect Active.

  2. To add or remove members, use the View/Maintain Member List link.

  3. Modify any other appropriate details and/or permissions.

  4. Click Update.

    • Clicking Reset will instead return all entries to the values defined during the most recent save/update.

You will then be returned to the Group List screen and the message "Group successfully updated" will appear.

As a best practice, you should always deactivate rather than delete any existing items within your system. To deactivate a group, unselect Active as described in step 1.


Group ID Maintenance

The Group ID field is protected during routine group record edits as it is used by many other records throughout the system. This utility offers two options that allow you to update a Group ID.

If a group has been duplicated and you would like to merge two records with different Group IDs into one record:

  1. Click on the Merge Duplicate Groups beneath the Maintenance section option on the right context menu.

  2. Enter the Group ID for the group you wish to keep as the primary group. This Group ID will be used to replace all occurrences of the secondary Group ID, effectively transferring all of their records to the primary Group. While all records such as issue submissions and assignments will be transferred to the primary group, the group records themselves will not be modified.

  3. If you wish to delete the secondary group record after the transfer, check the Delete after Processing option.

  4. Click the Merge button.

The Change Group’s ID option is most likely to be used when the Group ID was entered incorrectly. In this case, all records containing the old value will be updated to the new Group ID value. The group record is then updated with the new Group ID value.


Please note that the video below contains navigation steps and naming conventions that apply to versions prior to Issuetrak 14. The actual use of the features depicted remains largely unchanged.  You may also notice that the terminology displayed in this video differs from what you see in your instance of Issuetrak.

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