Using dynamic user groups

You can automatically populate user groups (sub-groups of your community members) based on community platform participation (i.e. whether they have added an idea to a challenge, commented on a forum, or given a specific answer on a questionnaire) or on profile information (i.e. age, location, or interests).

Creating a user group with members who have participated

The following steps describe how you can create a user group with members who have participated:

  1. Go to Participants at the top menu in Admin.
  2. Choose User Groups in the dropdown menu.
  3. Click Add Category if you don’t have any categories yet. Categories help you categorize your user groups. In order to add your first user group, you should first create a category.
  4. After creating the Category, Click Add User Group.
  5. Fill in the Name and Category.
  6. Turn on the switch to make your group a Dynamic User Group.
  7. Go back to your User Groups.
  8. Click the Options button and select Edit Triggers.
  9. Add a new trigger based on participation in the assignment of your choice and save the user group trigger(s) with the save button in the upper right corner.
  10. All members who participated will be added to the user group when:
    A) Auto update is enabled.
    B) Manual update: Click the Options button and select Update.
  11. Triggers are not connected by default, so when there are multiple triggers a user will be added to that group if any of the criteria are met (they work like an “or” statement).
  12. Connect triggers by selecting them and clicking on the Connect Triggers button. When the triggers are connected, the users will only be added to the group if they meet all of the criteria (they work like an “and” statement). Dynamic user groups are updated with the system queue.

When creating a dynamic user group based on profile fields, you must use profile fields with preset answer options (Dropdown List, Radio, and Checkbox). The exception to this is that you can also use “Age” a profile attribute that is calculated on member birthdays and is not a traditional profile field.

Creating a user group with members who have not participated

The following steps describe how you can create a user group with members that have not participated in some community activity:

  1. Create a user group with members that have participated (see steps 1-4 above).
  2. Create a second Dynamic User Group.
  3. Click the Options button and select Edit Triggers.
  4. Add a new trigger based on the user group created in step 1, make sure to choose Not in user group as the action.

All participants who are not in the first user group will be added to the second user group. Your new user group will have only participants who have not participated in the specified activity.

Dealing with obsolete user groups

When you look at your user groups, you may sometimes see a group marked Obsolete. When a user group is obsolete, it means the user group has been deactivated due to the trigger no longer being relevant.

You can still adjust the triggers of an obsolete user group, if necessary, and to reactivate the groups, simply follow the steps below:

  1. Go to Participants at the top menu in Admin.
  2. Choose User Groups.
  3. Select Options next to a group. Here you can edit, add triggers, activate, deactivate, etc.

You may want to do this if you have a long-term community with many user groups, some of which are no longer needed. While you could delete the user group, this would also mean that any content assigned to the group could become available to all members. To avoid this, you can deactivate the user group instead.

Dynamic user groups can be deactivated automatically (i.e. when content or a profile field used in a trigger of this dynamic user group is deleted) or you can deactivate a dynamic user group manually.

Example: Suppose you have a dynamic user group with a trigger based on participation in a certain topic. All members who participate in this topic will be added to the user group. If you delete the topic, however, the trigger will no longer work, so the dynamic user group will be deactivated and marked as Obsolete.

When a dynamic user group is deactivated, the user group will no longer update automatically, but users in this user group will stay in the user group and the content assigned to this user group will still be assigned to this user group.

Using “Auto Update” with Dynamic user groups

Dynamic groups will be automatically updated every few minutes when Auto Update is switched on for a dynamic user group. During updates, new members who meet criteria based on triggers you’ve set will be added and current members who no longer meet the criteria based on triggers you’ve set will be removed.

When Auto Update is switched off for a dynamic user group, you can manually update the group at any time by following the steps below:

  1. Go to Participants at the top menu of Admin.
  2. Choose User Groups.
  3. Click Options next to a user group and then choose Update.

Note that it can take a few minutes for users to be added to a dynamic user group.

Limiting the size of dynamic user groups

Dynamic user groups are a great way to create segments from your community that fit specific criteria. There may be times, however, when you want to limit the number of users added to one of these groups. Perhaps you have 100 members participating in a questionnaire and you want to start a Forum discussion with only 10 of the respondents.

You can create a dynamic user group with a limit by following the steps below:

  1. Go to Participants at the top menu in Admin.
  2. Choose User Groups and click Add User Group.
  3. Make sure that the user group has been set as a Dynamic User Group and that the Limit is turned to ON. Fill in the maximum number of users that must be added to the user group (for example 10) and click Save.

When the dynamic user group is created, you can add the triggers as usual (for example, set a trigger based on participation in the questionnaire).

When the user group is updated, 10 random users who participated in the questionnaire will be added to the user group. If less than 10 members participated or fit the criteria, members will be added to the user group until the limit is reached.

When the maximum number of users is reached and the user group is being updated, the system will check if the users in the group still meet the requirements. Users that no longer meet the requirements will be removed from the user group and other users that meet the requirements will be randomly picked and added instead.

Because of this, when a dynamic user group is updated, it does not mean that a completely new random selection will be made. Users who are in the user group will stay in the user group as long as they meet the requirements.

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