Where you can use a Group

There are four places in Vatix where a Group can stand in for a list of individual people. Each one treats a change in membership slightly differently, and this article explains what to expect so you can rely on a Group for access and assignments with confidence.

How a Group behaves wherever you use it

Wherever you add a Group, you can still add individual people alongside it. A Group is one source of access among several, and it only ever grants access, it never takes away access that someone has another way.

Each of the four refers back to the Group itself rather than copying its members, so a membership change reaches all of them. Add someone to a Group that has access to a Document and they gain that access straight away.

Assignment rules in Events

When a particular kind of Event always needs the same people involved, a Group saves you naming them on every one. A rule for accidents reported at the Manchester site can bring in the Manchester Safety Team automatically, so the right people have access from the moment the Event is reported.

A Group's members become collaborators on any Event the rule matches, which gives them full access to that Event record and its notifications. As membership changes:

• Someone who joins is added as a collaborator on matching Events that are still open.
• Someone who leaves is removed from those Events, unless they own or reported the Event, in which case they keep it. Account Owners keep access to everything regardless.
• Events that are already finished are left exactly as they are, so the record of who was involved is never rewritten.

To set up a rule, see 'How to manage collaborators and assignment rules to control access to Events'.

Scheduled Audits

A recurring inspection can be assigned to a Group rather than to named people, so the monthly fire door check always reaches whoever is on the North Site Team at the time.

Each instance of the Audit is generated for the Group's current members, and you can mix Groups and named individuals on the same schedule.

• Only members with an Audits licence receive instances. When you assign a Group, Vatix tells you how many of its members are covered, for example "97 of 129 people have an Audits licence. The 32 without one won't be assigned this audit."
• If the last licensed assignee leaves the Group, the schedule pauses and tells you which Group it was relying on.
• Deactivating a Group detaches it from the schedule and clears any instances nobody else is covering.
• Leaving one Group doesn't cost someone their Audits if the schedule still reaches them another way, either because they are named on it individually or because they are in a second Group it also targets.

To set up a schedule, see 'How to create and manage a Scheduled Audit'.

Document access

Sharing a Document with a Group means new joiners pick up access as they arrive and leavers lose it as they go. This suits a standing set of reading for a committee or a site team, where the Documents stay the same and the people change.

You can give a Group either view or edit access, and it appears alongside any individuals who have been given access to the same Document.

Access follows membership. Joining the Group grants that Group's level of access, and leaving removes the Group's contribution. Because people often hold access from more than one source, the level someone ends up with is always the highest one any source gives them:

• If a Group grants view access and someone already has edit access through a personal grant, they keep edit.
• If someone leaves a Group, they drop to the highest level anything else still gives them, whether that's another Group, a personal grant, or an organisation-wide setting. They only lose access altogether if nothing else grants it.
• The Document's owner always keeps edit access, so a Document can never be left with nobody able to change it.

To share a Document, see 'How to share and export Documents'.

Document acknowledgement requests

Where a policy has to reach several hundred people, a Group turns that into a single selection, and the Group keeps track of who those people are as staff move.

Adding a Group as the recipients sends every member their own acknowledgement to complete.

The recipient list is fixed at the moment you send, and Vatix reminds you of this on the form. Someone who joins the Group afterwards is not added to a request that has already gone out, and someone who leaves keeps the acknowledgement they were sent.

To send a request, see 'How to send and track Document acknowledgement requests'.

Membership changes at a glance

Changes are applied for you in the background. Allow a short time for them to appear rather than expecting them to be instant.

Related articles

• Getting started with Groups
• How to create a manual Group and add its members
• How to set up a dynamic Group with membership rules
• How to view a Group's history
• Why someone is missing from a dynamic Group