Groups

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Introduction

This setup document explains how the SolarWinds Service Desk (SWSD) Groups module lets administrators set up groups that can be used to assign incidents to multiple people who are members of a group, for example, Tier 1, Tier 2, HR, or Facilities. People can be in multiple groups.

Groups are created based on services provided, workflows, and regions, and they can consist of:

• Other groups
• Teams of technicians
• Administrators
• Departments
  Departments is a system field used to understand where an asset is located or which department a user belongs to. Groups can be made up of various departments and internal service providers.

Group members (users):

• Receive notifications of incidents
• Can be assigned tasks
• Can provide approvals

When an incident is assigned to a single person and that person is on vacation, an incident assigned to that individual can go unaddressed until the specific assignee returns to work.  By assigning incidents to a group this situation can be avoided. All members of the group receive the incoming incident and any group member can immediately re-assign the ticket to an appropriate team member.

Navigation

ITSM customers	ESM customers
Setup > Users & Groups > Groups	Organization > Setup > Users & Groups > Groups It is important to note that ESM customers can only create and manage groups at the Organization level. After the groups are created, they can be viewed and used at the Service Provider level.

All Groups index page

To see the All Groups index page, navigate to Setup > Users & Groups > Groups. As you build the repository of groups within your organization, you can customize the All Groups index page to a view that best meets your needs. See List view for more information.

Best practice

Group Assignments

SolarWinds recommends that you create groups that contains your default assignees. By setting up default assignees in a group, you make it easier to maintain assignees in the event a new employee joins your organization, or someone leaves or is on vacation. This also can help you reduce the number of notifications received by staff when the group is assigned an incident, service request, approval or workflow task.

Groups are also useful to get multiple users involved as part of workflow processes.  You can assign the service request or tasks/approvals within a service request to a group. 

As soon as a user has been created or imported into SWSD, that user can be added to a group. You can select multiple users simultaneously to add them to a group. 

Add new group

1. From the Groups index page, click Add to reveal the New group form.

2. Create a name for the new group and provide an optional description.

3. Select the person the group reports to.

4. Using the On/Off toggle, establish whether the group will receive email notifications.

5. Click Create group to the lower left.

6. Add individual users or nest groups by doing the following:

   1. Click Add to group.

   2. Search for locate the users and/or groups you want to add, and then select the checkbox next to each.

   3. Click Attach in the lower right.

Related topics

• Queues
• Queue Management
• Setup resources
• Users