User groups

• Applies to: All Board Cloud subscriptions

WHAT: Introduction to user groups

User groups can be used to define authorizations for chat and feeds in Board:

• Feeds can be published to all groups or specific groups. In this case, it is possible to publish a news and make it visible to all users or to specific groups

• Enabling the chat feature for a group allows users to view and chat only with other members of the same group

The feed and chat features can be defined at the user group level; it is possible to publish feed content that will only be visible to members of a specific group or limit the chat feature so that only users of the same group can chat with each other.

Administrators can create as many groups as they like. For example, users can be divided in groups based on the department they work in, such as "Marketing", "Finance", etc., or based on geographical areas, such as "EMEA", "Americas", and so on.

Users can be members of multiple groups.

How to use user groups: examples

If you want to publish feed content intended only for the Marketing group, you can do so by selecting that specific group as the only audience of the news. This way, only members of the Marketing group will be able to read that piece of content.

By enabling the chat feature only for the Marketing and Finance groups, users in Marketing will only see other users in Marketing and chat among themselves. They won't be able to chat with users in Finance.

Users in Finance will only see other users in Finance and chat among themselves. They won't be able to chat with users outside the Finance group.

Users added to both groups will see members of both groups and will be able to chat with all of them.

Access to the feed and chat features by end users is managed through the creation of user groups. If both features are disabled for all groups, users won't be able to use them, regardless of other configurations applied at higher levels.

Members of user groups

Any active user in the Subscription Hub can be added to a user group. Each member of a user group can be:

• A simple member. Can start chat sessions and read content in the Feed area within Board Platforms

• A Feed author. Can start chat sessions, create, edit, publish, and read content in the Feed area within Board Platforms.

When the Feed feature is enabled for a group, at least one Feed author must be defined.

User groups can be selected by Feed authors as recipients for news or other contents published in the Feed area within Board Platforms, provided the feed feature is enabled at all levels.

Members can also initiate chat sessions with an entire user group or multiple user groups, provided the chat feature is enabled at all levels. 

• When the feed feature is disabled for a group, all members of that group including Feed authors won't be able to access it in all Board Platforms associated with the Subscription Hub unless they are members of multiple groups and the feed feature is enabled for at least one of them

• When the Chat feature is disabled for a group, all members of that group won't be able to access it in all Board Platforms associated with the Subscription Hub unless they are members of multiple groups and the Chat feature is enabled for at least one of them. In that case, the users will be able to chat within Board Platforms; their contact list will automatically show all users and groups available for chatting, while the recipient list of existing group chat sessions will be updated to hide all participants who can no longer chat

• Users who aren't associated with any Board Platform won't be able to chat or read content in the Feed area, regardless of groups they're members of

• When the features are disabled for a user group, all existing chat sessions and published contents are saved. They will become accessible once the corresponding feature is enabled again.

All groups the user is a member of are displayed in the Collaboration table in the User profile panel. From there, you can easily assign the "Feed author" role to the user or revoke it and you can add him/her to other existing groups.
See the Users section for more details.

The "All Users" group

The "All Users" group includes all active Board user accounts. It's a system group that cannot be deleted or edited: in this group you can only assign the "Feed author" role to selected users and enable or disable the feed and chat feature.

The "All Users group" can be used, for example, when you want to notify all users about an important event, like a future maintenance window that will prevent them from accessing the Board environment.

If you enable the chat feature for the "All Users" group, all users will be able to chat 1-to-1 with each other and their contact list will include all Board users.

The "All Users" group is created by default and includes all active Board users in the Subscription Hub. It cannot be deleted, and its name and description can't be changed; in this group you can only assign the "Feed author" role to selected users, provided the News feature is enabled on all levels.

The "Feed author" role allows selected users to publish news or other contents in the Feed area of Board Platforms. See the last paragraph of this page for more details.

If you delete a user account from the Subscription Hub, it will also disappear from the "All Users" group. Likewise, any new active user account in the Subscription Hub will automatically appear in the "All users" group as well.

If you want to manage the feed and chat features at custom groups level, you should disable them for the "All Users" group.

The "All Users" group is useful for managing access to the chat and news features for users that don't belong to a custom user group. For example, you can disable the chat feature for the "All Users" group while leaving it enabled for custom groups; by doing so, users who are not members of those custom groups will not be able to chat across all Board Platforms.

See The Collaboration section for more details about enabling and disabling Collaboration features.

Custom user groups

Custom user groups contain selected Board user accounts. Administrators can create as many custom groups as they want and and enable or disable the feed and chat feature for each of them.

Any active Board user in the Subscription Hub can be added to one or more custom groups and can be granted the "Feed author" role.

The "Feed author" role allows selected users to publish news or other contents in the Feed area of Board Platforms. See next paragraph for more details.

All groups the user is a member of are displayed in the Collaboration table in the User profile panel. From there, you can easily assign the "Feed author" role to the user or revoke it and you can add him/her to other existing groups. See the Users section for more details.

See Create, edit, delete a user group for more details.

The "Feed author" role

Feed authors are group members with the ability to create, edit and publish content in the Feed area within Board Platforms.

All members of a group can be granted the "Feed author" role, regardless of their Board license and authorizations.
See Create, edit, delete a user group for more details.

A group may have no Feed authors or may have several, depending on the status of the feed feature:

• If the news feature is enabled for a group, at least one Feed author must be defined

• If the news feature is disabled for a group, that group can have no Feed authors

If the "Feed author" role is revoked, the user will still be a member of that group and will be able to read content in the Feed area of Board Platforms, provided the news feature is enabled at all levels; the user will not be able to create, edit, or publish new content, however, all content that was created or published in the past will be retained.