ClearCompany Learning: Groupings

Groupings are a combination of existing conditions that use Learning platform data to bring users together. Groupings are similar to a “Group” but do not share the exact same characteristics. In this article, we dive into Groupings and how best to utilize creating groupings. 

In this article:
Groupings Overview
Groupings & Groups
Creating a Grouping
Best Practices

Groupings Overview

Groupings help to curate content for people who need it, for example; A new law states that anyone who works in New York and is a Manager must take a specific course. Using a grouping would allow users to assign to all users who are both in the Manager group and in the New York group without having to manually filter them. In order to create, edit, and view Groupings, users need to have the Grouping Rights.

Groupings & Groups

1. A “Group” may be a job title, department, or location, while a “Grouping” may include information from custom fields, like hire date, license numbers, or supervisor's name.
2. Like Groups, Groupings can be added to an assignment and allow automatic onboarding based on a user qualifying for the conditions within a Grouping.

Note:

Access to the learning object via Grouping only allows access to the current users in the Grouping and new users that qualify for that Grouping will need to be given access individually.

Creating a Grouping

Settings

1. Go to Admin Dashboard > Users/Groups > Groupings.
   
2. Click + Add Grouping.
3. Give the grouping a name, It is recommended that you name the grouping something that will allow you to know what the grouping will do.
4. Click Save.
5. Upon clicking Save, the additional tabs below will appear.

Condition

1. Choose the condition type.
2. Define the group.
3. If you want to exclude the users in the condition, click the exclude check box.
4. Click Add.
5. Repeat until all conditions are met.
6. For more information about conditions see below. 

Date Type Fields

• For date-type auxiliary fields the use of the "before" or "after" options appears in the grouping creation wizard.
• Below is an example of how a date-type aux field may come into play with a grouping:
• “I have the ‘date of hire” as an auxiliary field and I would like to be able to say “automatically assign after January 1st, 2020, or between January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2020.”
• Something like the above can be accomplished with 3 conditions:
  • Date of Hire is "after" January 1st, 2020 and
  • Date of Hire is "before" January 1st, 2020 and
  • Date of Hire is "after" 90 days
    

Users

• After all conditions have been added click the Users tab.
• This will allow you to review that the conditions have provided valid results.
• If the user tab shows no users then you have excluded too many users, or there are no users that match the required conditions. Go back to the Conditions Tab and adjust as needed.

Assignments

• To review assignments tied to the grouping select the Assignment Tab.
• If you have just created the grouping this page will be blank. After a grouping has been added to an assignment you can review on this tab.
• Groupings used in assignments will provide automated onboarding for new Users within the grouping or for Users that already exist with the conditions that have been set for the grouping.

Parent Grouping

If you are nesting groupings, you will be able to see the parent grouping.

Conditions Overview

Examples of conditions could include:

• Groups such as a department from the group structure
• Auxiliary fields from User profiles such as the supervisor's name.
• Administrators will be able to create groupings with conditions that they have access to.

With Grouping users can have either “All” of the conditions to be met for a User to be included, or “Any”, meaning at least one of the conditions to be met for a User to be included.

Condition Types include the following choices: Group, User, Group Type, Role, User Aux Field, Grouping, User Created On, User Language, User Expires On, and User Status. Checking the “Exclude” box does not include the condition selected. In the Learning platform, Superadmins can exclude Users from a grouping for example.

Best Practices

Groupings work well by themselves, or in pairs when assigning, but do not work well when nested. Nested Groupings can cause errors in assigning to the correct users. It is highly recommended to create a new grouping to encompass the information instead of nesting groupings.	Users cannot nest a grouping more than once. Adding a grouping that contains another grouping will trigger an error message.
Before creating Groupings carefully plan and use them minimally for specific subsets of users, such as all new hires or users that need to be grouped together and have no common groups or any other similarities.	Organizations are limited to 100 groupings within the system. During implementation, ClearCompany works with users on creating a group structure that allows organizations to assign with minimal need for groupings.
Groupings are not “groups” and do not drive membership access to anyone or anything in the learning platform. Groupings will not appear on the group structure and cannot be imported on a file or from a system of record Groupings do not allow visibility based on membership (i.e. users in the same grouping cannot see each other on the front-end dashboard)	The user creating the grouping will be able to see and access it. This is done to prevent making changes to groupings tied to a live assignment. The exception to this is the Superadmin role