User Groups: Scalable Sharing, Settings, and Automation (Full Transcript)

[00:00:02] Speaker 1: User groups let you organize people once, then share, automate, and control access at scale. Instead of adding 15 people to every sales call, you share with sales team and you're done. A user group is a named collection of teammates. You create a group, add people, and then use it for sharing, privacy controls, and automation. Think of groups as reusable access lists. Instead of remembering which 12 people need to see customer calls, you create a customer success group and share with that. When someone joins or leaves, you update the group once, not every meeting and every automation. Without groups, sharing is manual and error-prone. With groups, it's consistent and scalable. You also unlock features that only work with groups, like rules engine automations and group-specific settings. If you have more than 10 people in your workspace, you should have at least a few user groups. If you're planning to use rules engine, you definitely need them. Before we create groups, let's clarify how settings work. Team settings are your workspace defaults. They apply to everyone unless something more specific overrides them. User groups can have their own settings. When you create or edit a group, you'll see a settings tab. These override team defaults for members of that group. For example, your team default might be record all meetings, but for your HR group, you set auto-join to only when invited. HR members now follow the group setting, not the team default. The hierarchy, team defaults apply to everyone. Group settings override team defaults for group members. Personal settings, where allowed, override group settings. Start with sensible team defaults, then use group settings only when a team genuinely needs different behavior. Create a group when you'll share meetings with the same people repeatedly, or when a team needs different settings than your workspace default, or when you want to automate sharing with rules engine. Don't create a group for a one-time share, just add those people directly. Don't create overlapping groups with the same members. Sales and sales team and revenue team creates confusion. And don't create groups for temporary projects unless you'll maintain them. A good workspace has between 5 and 15 groups. 50 means you've overcomplicated things. 0 means you're doing everything manually. Our recommendation? Start with department-based groups. Add permission-based groups like leadership only when you have a clear use case. To create a group, go to team, user groups, and click create group. Give it a clear, consistent name. Sales team, not sales or sales department. The handle is auto-generated but editable. That's what you'll see when at-mentioning. Add a description so other admins know who belongs there. Then add members. Start typing a name or email and select from the dropdown. You can only add people already in your workspace. One thing that catches people, creating a group doesn't add you to it. If you want to be in it, add yourself. To update membership later, click edit, add new people, or click the X to remove them. A few suggested groups for most companies. Sales team, customer success, recruiting, HR, product, leadership, and operations. Adjust based on your org structure. Groups unlock three key capabilities. First, group-based sharing. You can open any meeting, click share, and share directly with a user group. Everyone gets access instantly one click instead of 10 emails. Second, rules engine automation. You can automatically share meetings with specific groups based on conditions. For example, if a meeting title contains demo and there's an external participant, share with sales team. Every demo reaches the right people automatically. Third, channel access. Private channels can be shared with user groups. Instead of adding members one by one, share the channel with a group. When someone joins the group, they get access. When they leave, access is revoked. Groups are the foundation for all of this. Without them, sharing and access stay manual. Groups require maintenance. People join and leave. Roles change. If you don't update groups, the wrong people get access and the right people don't. Set a quarterly reminder to review membership. Is everyone still in the right role? Has anyone left but not been removed? Are there groups no one uses? Delete unused groups they create confusion when sharing. Permission sprawl is a real risk. If everyone is in every group, groups lose their value. Keep them focused if someone doesn't need access to sales calls, they shouldn't be in the sales group. Create groups based on how your team actually works. Use them for sharing and automation and review them quarterly to keep access clean. Next up, channels and meeting organization.