What are the actual differences between Teams and Groups in Agiloft?
If you find this a bit confusing, trust me, you are not alone on this. It is a commonly asked question, especially from admins, when going through the setup and configuration of Agiloft. Groups and Teams play a pivotal part in the user's experience and accessibility.
Agiloft users belong to both teams and groups. Groups membership grants access to tables, records, and fields. Team settings affect various parts of the user interface such as the color scheme, available table views, and the user's default home page. Teams also define the working team within an organization including who can receive emails that go to that specific team.
Let's start with the basics, what does each membership control?
TEAMS |
GROUPS |
Working Hours |
Access and Permissions |
Group Email Distribution |
Which Records a User may View, Edit, or Delete |
Team-Specific Views |
Which License Type is Used |
Look and Feel Scheme Used |
Access to Tables and Records |
Access To Searches |
Power vs. End Users |
What is affected by Team Assignment?Teams represents a set of users who share a role and work on projects together. So whenever notifications are sent out, they are being sent to the appropriate teams. For instance, if an approval is sent out to a set of people, it is determined by the team assignment. This is why setting up working hours for teams is important. It ensures that time-based rules are not triggered to send out an email at 3 a.m. on a Sunday to a team that is scheduled to work on Monday-Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Teams help model your business processes and the company's entire hierarchy or supplier/customer relationships. The nice thing is, there are several pre-configured teams that are available in the system that are setup out-of-the-box so that you don't have to create every single one. Can't find the right team in that list? You can create custom teams as well.
Users must be part of a Primary Team. The Primary Team determines a lot about how you can interact with the system, so it is vital that users in your system are assigned to the right team. Improper team assignments can prevent employees from doing their jobs, or can enable someone to .
Teams can have subteams. For example, Sonya may be a member of the West Coast Sales Team, which is in turn a member of the US Sales Team.
Teams can be hierarchical. For example, email notifications sent to a parent team will also go out to all subteam members.
Teams serve different functions for Power User and End User groups:
Power User teams are used primarily to identify functional units to whom records and chat requests might be assigned, emailed, and so on. End User teams are used primarily to enable distinct branding in the end user interface (EUI). Customers on different teams can see a completely different EUI color scheme, logo, etc.
Now that you have a good understanding on Teams, let's talk about Groups.
What is affected by Group Assignment?
Group membership defines the access permissions each user has within Agiloft. For example, groups define the records a user may view/edit/delete and which fields within the record the user may view/edit. Groups are designated as either End User or Power User. The type of group determines which license is needed to access Agiloft.
A User can belong to multiple Groups. They will get all of the permissions that each group has assigned to them.
With this in mind, there are two possible strategies for group permissions: using groups as permission layers, which are combined to give appropriate permissions; or creating self-sufficient groups, so each user might be a member of just one group that contains all the permissions they need.Groups are assigned as either End Users or Power Users. End User groups cannot access the Power User Interface or edit records created by other users. By placing users who only need to create/submit record and use the only FAQ only in an End User group, you limit their access and reduce licensing costs.
For more information about Teams, check out these wiki articles on
creating new teams as well as
team management and overview. For information about Groups, check out
creating new groups and
group overview and configuration.