Video Transcript
Creating groups is a great way to control who has access to which policies and applications. Let's see how it works.
First, I'll click Manage groups.
There are a number of groups that can exist in Workplace for a variety of reasons.
Let's start with the All Users group. Here you can specify some blanket policies that will apply to everybody in your organization. For instance, will you allow file sharing? Or file sharing with a public link? Will you enable on-demand work folders, and many more settings that can be managed for all users in the All Users group.
Although you can assign these features to all users, it is common practice to make groups that allow access to certain policies and applications, for a certain set of users. And, individual user settings override group settings. For example, the user might be allowed to access Microsoft Office 365, but not have on-demand folders.
Let's explore the types of groups we might create.
Policy Groups
Heading back to the Company management page, I'll select Groups. Here you'll see some policy groups, such as Allow All File Sharing, Allow on-demand work folders, and Allow tracked and public file sharing.
Let's look at the On-demand policy group that has been set up for my company. You'll notice that this group only has two settings enabled: Allow on-demand Work folders, and Allow file uploading.
The On-demand work folders policy is an important conversation, because it can really change how people work. (WJ clicks on the carrot for explanation).
When this is enabled, all members of this group will be allowed to work with company files via Workplace on their computer using local, native applications to modify those files, which then get synced back to the Workplace cloud.
On-demand work folders also controls a few other things, such as working in the Workplace Web app, where a user can delete, move, rename or otherwise modify those files.
Also, users can also download the files directly from the Web app. For companies that are more concerned about control, you may want to disable the On-demand feature.
APP_ Groups
Let's look at some other groups by clicking the Groups link. Often you'll see a group beginning with App, such as App_basic, App-Office. What this means is that anyone who is a member of this group will have these applications assigned to them. Typically the App_Basic will be a collection of applications that everyone in the group will have access to. When I take a look at App_Office, we'll notice all of the Microsoft Office applications have been added to this group. Often, applications that have a more complex configuration will also have other settings applied to these groups. That can include things like special drives when you're working in the hosted Citrix environment, or various policies that apply on the backend. Feel free to reach out to support for any questions about those groups.
File Folder Groups
There are a few more types of groups we'd like to cover. First, let's look at the column File folder. When we see that a group indicates Yes, I know that when I go into that group, for instance Administration, this has file folder enabled, and for those companies using our Classic Workplace file system, this means that in your Work (Groups) folder you'll see the Administration folder.
Click Group Members to see who has access to the Group folder, or add new members, and specify their type of access, which we recommend Read AND write. If you need to change that setting for a user, click Edit settings, and check the Read and Write boxes for Access to group folder. Click OK, and then Save Changes.
Email Groups
Now we'll look at email groups. I'll select the group Everybody. Here you'll notice that this group will have a check mark next to email distribution list. From here, we can look at the group email alias, and we see that it's everybody@workplaceeducation.com. Basically what this means, is that when I send an email to this alias, (click Group members) that's going to be distributed to all of the group members listed. It's important to note that if your mail system is hosted in Office 365, the email distribution settings will not apply to you.
In this module, you learned about designing your company's data workflow using Groups. In the next module of the CM:104 course, you'll see how to create groups and add members.