To streamline user management, many schools find utility in grouping students, staff and admins into custom cohorts, which are often fluid and function on attributes beyond just campus, program, and course. For example, the successive stages of a program, or groups of students assigned to specific instructors on specific days, and so on.

With Custom User Groups, school admins can now create and manage custom groupings of CourseKey users that mirror their real-life custom cohorts, and both admins and staff can conveniently filter by them throughout CourseKey. As well, school admins with access to Cortex Automations are now able to target custom messages to specific groups.

1. Accessing the Custom User Groups management tabs
   
   
   1. Specific admin permissions are required to view (and additionally edit) the Groups and Contacts tabs within the User Management area
      
      
      1. For view access, admins need to be granted “Access User Management” permission
      2. For edit access, admins need to be granted “Edit Users” permission
      3. Note: for all other staff members without the requisite permissions listed above, user-level group assignments will be displayed (read-only) throughout the platform as described below
         
         
   2. All existing groups will be listed on the main Groups page, with the ability to filter the view by school and search by group title. The following summary information will be listed with each entry:
      
      
      1. Group Description
      2. Number of Users
      3. Number of Contacts
      4. Color bar depicting Group color
         

3. View Group Details: From this page, admins can open a specific group to view the entire list of members, contacts, and to make edits to the group details or members.
   
   
   1. Hint: shortcuts to Group pages are available on ALL UIs where Custom User Groups are listed

2. Creating new Custom User Groups
   
   
   1. To start the process of creating a new custom user group, simply click the “+ New Group” button on the main listing page
      
      
   2. Users will be required to input a group title, select a school (max: 1), and select a group color before proceeding. 
      1. Optionally, a group description can be supplied to provide more context about the group for other staff/admins to conveniently reference.

3. Once the group has been created, users will be automatically redirected to the newly created group management page, where they can begin to populate the group with both users and contacts, or change any of the group details (e.g. name, description, or color).

3. Managing Custom User Group members
   
   There are multiple areas of the CourseKey UI where admins with “Edit Users” permission can edit (add/remove) group memberships:
   
   
   1. Within a group page (bulk & single)
      
      
      
      
   2. On the users list table (bulk & single)
      
      
      
      
   3. On a user page (single)
      
      
      
      
      
   4. Note: is a group name disabled in the Add/Remove flows? That’s because our system detected that the user(s) you’ve selected are already in the group.

4. Custom User Groups throughout the UI
   
   Once custom user groups have been created and populated with members, all school staff members can more efficiently manage user-centric lists throughout the platform by leveraging group filters. Areas of the platform that include groups include:
   
   
   1. Users - view and manage Group memberships, both individually and in bulk

Filtering by Groups on the main User listing page

Note: as was the case before the Groups feature, when there are multiple locations associated with the same user, they will have multiple lines on the table associated with each location. In this case, their Group icons will be identical across all entries.

Viewing Groups on an individual user’s page

2. Programs / Skills Tracker Checklists - filter programs and Skills Tracker Checklists by Custom User Groups
   
   

Filtering by Groups on the Program Info table

Filtering by Groups on the Program Progress table

Filtering by Groups on the Skills Tracker Checklists Approval Queue

3. Cortex Workspaces - Automations
   
   
   1. Automations can now be targeted to specific Custom User Group(s), which will work in conjunction with any selected School and/or Program filters. This allows admins to more granularly curate messages to specific recipients.
      
      
      Targeting a Group in the Automation setup workflow
      
      

Filtering the Automations list by Group

4. Forms
   
   
   1. In the Send Form modal, more easily find the correct/most relevant recipients by filtering by Custom User Groups
      1. Only Groups associated with the same school as the Form will be selectable

Additional support for Custom User Groups is planned for other areas of the CourseKey platform in the near future, including Courses!

5. Associating Contacts with Custom User Groups

School admins can optionally associate external contacts with a user group. Contacts can be any individuals associated with the user group that, for whatever reason, do not have a CourseKey account (e.g. Preceptors).

Contacts can be added to user groups through either a) the Contacts management page, or b) within a Group management page.

Create New Contact view


A contact listed within a user group (bottom-left)