How to set up a dynamic Group with membership rules
Applies to user roles: Account Owner
Available on platforms: Vatix Workspace web app
A dynamic Group keeps its own membership up to date as people's details change. You write a rule once against the details held on user records, and membership follows the data from then on. It suits any cohort your user records already describe: everyone in a department, at a site, in a region, or reporting to one manager.
Before you start
- The details your rule depends on must be filled in on people's user records, otherwise they won't match. See 'How to manage user fields' and 'How to view and edit a user's details'.
How to create a dynamic Group
- Click the gear icon in the top right to open 'Settings'.
- Select 'Organisation'.
- Go to 'Groups'.
- Click 'New group'.
- Enter a name and a description.
- Select 'Dynamic' as the membership type, so members are added and removed automatically from your conditions.
- Under 'Membership rule', select the detail you want to match on, for example 'Department', then an operator, then a value.
- To narrow the Group further, click 'Add condition' and set up the next one.
- Check the preview underneath, which tells you how many people will be members and lets you look through them.
- Click 'Create group'.
Which user details a rule can match on
Rules are built from the employment and organisation details held on each user record:
- Job title, Department, Employment type, Region and Country
- Site, taken from your Sites records
- Line manager and Cost centre
- Your organisation's five custom user fields, listed under the names you have given them
Note: Not every field on a user record can be used in a rule. Employee ID and Start date are recorded against people but aren't available as rule conditions, so you can't build a Group from them.
How the operators work
| Operator | What it matches |
|---|---|
| is | The detail matches the one value you pick |
| is not | The detail is anything other than that value |
| is any of | The detail matches one of several values you pick |
| is none of | The detail matches none of the values you pick |
Note: 'is not' and 'is none of' also match people who have nothing at all recorded in that field. If your Region field is only half filled in, a rule for 'Region is not North' will pick up everyone with no region set. Check the matching people before you save.
How to combine conditions with 'and' or 'or'
Add up to 20 conditions to one rule. Between them sits a small 'and' dropdown: leave it as 'and' to require every condition, or change it to 'or' to accept any one of them.
That choice applies to the whole rule rather than to individual conditions, so you can build "everyone in Facilities at the Manchester site" with 'and', or "anyone in the North or South region" with 'or', but not a mix of the two in one Group.
How to check who a rule includes before you save
The preview under the rule is live. Until you pick a value it prompts you to choose one, and once the rule is complete it shows how many people will be members, with a searchable list of them and a 'Joining' tab for the people the rule is about to add.
Always look at it before saving. A rule that matches nobody is allowed, and Vatix won't stop you saving it, which is easy to do with a typo or an empty field. A Group in that state shows 'No one matches this rule yet'.
When a dynamic Group's membership is recalculated
Once saved, Vatix recalculates the Group whenever something relevant changes:
- Someone's details are edited so they now match, or no longer match.
- You edit the rule.
- A user is deactivated or reactivated.
Recalculation runs in the background and takes a moment rather than being instant, so if you have just changed someone's details, give it a moment and check the Group again.
Note: You can't hand-pick exceptions in a dynamic Group. The rule decides, on its own. If you need to add or remove one person by hand, the Group has to become manual, which is covered in 'How to change a Group's membership type'.
Finding a Group and editing its name and description work the same way for manual and dynamic Groups, and are covered in 'How to find a Group and edit its details'. Taking a Group out of use is covered in 'How to deactivate and reactivate a Group'.
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