What are Groups?

Learn about the benefits of using Groups and how they affect your experience in KaiNexus

Groups allow you to divide your organization into distinct sections, helping each Group accomplish its work independently with less clutter from unrelated functional areas.  

Groups exist within a single KaiNexus instance, meaning they share the same URL. The purpose of Groups is to place barriers within an organization, restricting what a User sees in the system depending on what Group they are in. 

For example, a User in Group A can sign in to KaiNexus and only see completely different Items, Boards, and Reports from a User in Group B.  This allows the Groups to work independently, designing their own Roles, Templates, Network, and more. 

In summary, Groups create a unique experience for Users and are ideal for organizations with distinct business areas that function separately. 

Keep reading to learn about:

• The benefits of using Groups
• How Groups work, including what happens when they are assigned to:
  • Templates
  • Locations
  • Roles
• Can Groups share Boards?
• How does Reporting with Groups work?
• What cannot be assigned a Group?

What are the benefits of using Groups? 

• Groups help you divide areas of your business into distinct units. Organizations with independent divisions love using Groups because they allow each division to customize its improvement system without compromising with a different division's priorities. 
• Users are less overwhelmed while using Groups. They only interact with information relevant to their Group, cutting down on clutter in the system. This streamlined experience improves User adoption and engagement. 
• Groups allow you to prevent Users, including administrators with advanced Permissions, from seeing sensitive or secure information within another Group. You can design a User's Permissions to be comprehensive within their own Group while blocking them from seeing data in another Group.  
• Reporting is easy with Groups. Groups can report on their own data independently, and Users in multiple Groups can compare metrics between them. 

How do Groups work? 

After the Groups have been created for your organization, they can be assigned to three key elements of KaiNexus:

• Templates
• Locations
• Roles

When a Group is assigned to one of these elements, it and its related elements will adopt the Group.

A great example of this is Users. It would be tedious to assign a Group individually to every User in the system. Instead, you only need to assign Groups to Locations. Because every User in KaiNexus has a Location, they will automatically adopt the Group of their Location. 

Assigning Groups to Templates, Locations, and Roles creates an experience where Users only see elements in the system belonging to their Group. 

In the following three sections, we will discuss each element to which a Group can be assigned and the impacted downstream elements. Your Customer Success Manager will help you through the process of assigning Groups to Templates, Locations, and Roles. 

Templates

When a Template is assigned a Group:

• Only Templates in your Group will appear in the Create Button drop-down, Create Button Widgets, and Quick Create on Nested Item Lists.
• Only Templates in your Group will be available in Item Filters and Quick Filters.
• All Fields and Attributes present on the Template will inherit the Template's Group. This means you will only see the Fields and Attributes belonging to your Group in the Admin section, Item Filter, and other drop-downs in the system. 
  
  • Attribute Values, which are the selection choices beneath each Attribute, do not automatically inherit the group of the Attribute. This allows Groups to have their own unique Values on an Attribute shared between them. 

Locations

When a Location is assigned a Group:

• All Users within that Location will adopt the Group of their Location.
  • Users will only see other Users in their Group. This includes User Filters, Team Role selection, sharing Boards, and "by Person" Reports.  
  • If a User has multiple Network Locations and those Locations exist in different Groups, then the User will have more than one Group. 
• Only Locations in a User's Group will appear in the Network displayed in the Admin section and Location Filters in the Boards, Reports, and the People section. 
• Unless specified otherwise, all Locations nested beneath the Location will adopt the Group of the Parent Location. 
• Only Locations in a User's Group will appear as filtering options, possible Locations on Items, and other Fields in the system.
• All Items with that Location marked as the Responsible Location will adopt the Group of the Location. The Item will be visible only to Users in that Group and will pull into Reports of that Group.  

Roles

When a System Role is assigned a Group:

• Users with the Role Administrator Permission will only see Roles assigned to their Group in the Admin Section. 
  • When editing Roles, they can only add System Roles within their Group to a Global or Local User Administrator's Grantable Roles. 

• Users with the Global or Local User Administrator Permission with the ability to grant Roles can only give Roles that are assigned to their Group. This is true even if their System Role displays they can grant "Any" Role. 

Can Groups share Boards? 

Groups can share boards, or Boards can be exclusive to only one Group.  This provides flexibility on whether each Group wants to design Boards specific to their processes or whether a Board could be mutually useful among Groups. 

A Board's visibility between Groups depends on who the Board is shared with. 

• A Board's Owner will always be able to view and edit the Board. 
• Users with the Board Administrator System Role Permission in the Board's Location can view and edit the Board. 
• Board Editors will always be able to view the Board and edit Cards on the Board.
• Any Locations, Roles, or Users specified as Board Viewers can view the Board. 
• A Board's Subscribers can only view the Board if they are included in the Board's Viewers. 

When a Board is visible between multiple Groups, the content (Items, Reports, People, Comments, Widgets) of the Board will be filtered based on the Group of the current viewer. 

How does Reporting with Groups work? 

While viewing a Report, you will only see Templates, Locations, People, Items, and Attributes belonging to your Group included in the findings. For example:

• The User Engagement Summary, User Participation Summary, and "by Person" Reports will only include Users within your Group. 
• Attribute Reports will only include Attributes belonging to your Group. 
• Activity, Impact, and Attribute Reports will only pull data from Items within your Group. 

Users in multiple Groups will see People and Items from all their Groups in Report data.  They can use the Location Filter to differentiate between Groups while reporting. 

What cannot be assigned a Group? 

Although many KaiNexus features can be given a Group, some app areas cannot be assigned a Group. These are the elements in KaiNexus that Groups must share:

• User Attributes such as Titles, Positions, Countries, and Certifications
• General System Settings such as Terminology, Text Customization, Security, and Branding
• Additional modules, such as Advanced ROI, Charts, Milestones, etc. 
• Badges, including to which Users they can be awarded
• Login Notices
• Impacts
• Weighted Scores
• Standard Work
• API Keys
• Workflows

What's Next? 

In summary, Groups are a great way to enact barriers between different parts of your organization, focus User attention on the work that matters to them, and protect distinct functional areas of your organization from overlap. 

If Groups could be beneficial for your organization, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to enable this module.