Smart groups

"Rule-based segments of your workforce that update themselves as people are added, change team or trade." Define a smart group once and its membership looks after itself.

Find them in Users: choose the gear (Settings) and then Smart groups.

Two kinds of group

Choose + (Add group), give it a Group name and an optional description, then choose its Membership:

• Rule: membership is worked out for you. Choose "Members match All / Any of these:" and Add condition for each test. A condition looks at Access, Team, Trade, Classification or Driver, and uses is, is not, is set or is empty. As you build it, a preview shows "7 workers match".
• Manual: "Members are added by hand." Save the group, then use the Members button beside it in the list to choose people.

Groups that earn their keep:

• Team is North and Driver is Yes: your northern drivers.
• Classification is Contractor: every contractor.
• Access is Field worker and Trade is Jointer: the jointers on the tools.

Rules can only use those five built-in details. Custom profile fields can't be used in a rule yet.

They keep themselves current

A rule group is worked out again when you save it, and again on Maliru's regular background pass, which runs every few minutes. So when someone joins, changes team or updates their trade, they move in or out of the right groups shortly afterwards, with nobody maintaining a list. Rules never touch the members of a manual group.

Deleting a group affects nobody: "Members are not affected."

Where groups are used

• Chat: create a group chat with A Smart Group as its audience, and the chat's members follow the group. A new starter who joins the North team is in the North chat without anyone adding them. See Team chat.
• Updates: choose Smart Group as the Recipients of an update, so it reaches exactly that group. See Composing an update: templates, rich content and publish settings.
• Alert rules: an alert rule can email the members of one or more Smart groups, so a dangerous defect in the North region reaches the people who can act on it. See Admin alert rules.

Tip: build groups around how you actually schedule and talk to people — regions, trades, employees and contractors — and let the rules do the housekeeping.