Disclaimer: Some content in this article outlines how to use functionalities that will be publicly released to all clients in July 2025. If you see differences between this article and your platform, check back at that time. Learn more about the release cycle.

Introduction

Groups in your platform allow you to segment users for targeted training, enrollments, reporting, content visibility, and communication—greatly simplifying administrative tasks and improving the efficiency of user management.

You can configure two types of groups:

Manual groups are created by manually adding or removing users. These are best suited for small or static user sets that do not share common attributes in their profiles. All membership changes must be made by an administrator. For more information see the chapter Manual groups.

Automatic groups are dynamically populated based on rules defined by administrators. Users are automatically included or removed from the group as their data changes. Conditions can be based on enrollment status in specific courses, membership in specific branches or manual groups, or values of certain user profile fields. Automatic groups are ideal for managing large or changing user populations, allowing you to scale group management efficiently.

Please note: For greater flexibility, administrators can also manually assign users to an automatic group, bypassing its eligibility rules. 
- Such users will remain in the group (irrespective of eligibility) for as long as they are manually-assigned. 
- You can remove the manual assignment, in which case these users will be removed from the group (if they are still not eligible) or kept in the group (if they now match its eligibility conditions), in accordance with the automatic assignment logic.   
→ For more information see the chapter Manually-assigned users in automatic groups.

Use case scenario

If your company wants to provide a dynamic and custom experience for its various types of users, you need to identify specific user segments in the platform to target an audience for various actions such as course enrollment, course catalog visibility, page/menu visibility, reporting and notification delivery.

To identify specific user segments, you can configure several user additional fields that capture important user attributes. These fields may include information such as job title, hire date, department, location, manager, product, employee status, or anything else that may be valuable to track within the platform.

With these attributes tracked for each user, you can set up groups with an automatic assignment to automate the process of identifying a user segment. You can set up broad-reaching groups that contain only one rule (for example: The “Sales” group should contain anyone whose job title contains the word “Sales”), and also narrow groups with multiple rules (for example: The “Los Angeles Sales Team New Hires” group should contain all users whose Location is Los Angeles, job title is Sales, and hire date is after x date). By creating multiple groups, you can easily target various user segments for use in the platform.

Creating groups

To create a new group, log into the platform and access the Admin menu from the gear icon in the top right corner of the platform. From the Admin menu, press the Groups item in the E-learning section.

On the main Groups page, press the plus button in the top right corner. In the New group right panel, assign a name and, optionally, a description to the group. Then, choose the policy for the group’s population process (either manual or automatic) and press Create and edit.

Proceed with the group configuration as described in the following chapters.

Manual groups

When you create a manual group, after setting the group name and description, you will land on the Properties page of the group. You can edit the group name and description in the General section and Superadmins only can change the group ownership in the Options section (this option is not available for Power Users).

Move to the Users tab and click on Assign users in the top right corner. Choose now whether you want to populate the group by selecting users individually, by copying the users already assigned to other groups, or by copying users from a branch.

You can repeat the group population procedure several times, using different options.

Once users are added to the group, they are listed in the Users tab of the group's main page. To remove a user from the group, hover your mouse at the end of the user row, click on the ellipsis menu, and select Remove.

In order to remove several users at a time from the group, select them by checking the checkbox next to the users’ names, then click on the Choose action button at the bottom right corner of the page, and select Remove.

It is possible to export the users’ list in CSV format by clicking on the Export users’ list as CSV button in the top right corner.

Please note! A user can be assigned to more than one group. Users of a group can be added or removed at any time.

Automatic groups

Automatic groups allow you to create dynamic groups that get populated by users matching one or more conditions. Thanks to these automatisms, users are also automatically removed from automatic groups when they no longer match the conditions regulating their population.

When you create an automatic group, after setting the group name and description, you will land on the Properties page of the group. At any time, you can edit the group name and description in the General section.

Options

In the Options section, you can set whether to Remove deactivated users from the group (only if added to the group by an automatic condition). If you select this check box, the automatic population of the group will exclude users whose status is deactivated. This means that:

• Only activated users (who meet the eligibility conditions) will be automatically added to the group
• Users who were previously automatically added to the group will be removed upon becoming deactivated. 

Note that this exclusion applies only to automatically added users.  You will still be able to add deactivated users manually, as described in the Manual management of automatic groups chapter of this article. 

Please note: The option to Remove deactivated users from the group considers only whether a user is activated or deactivated. It does not consider expiration, which is independent of activation. Expired users retain the activation status (activated/deactivated) that they had when they became expired. For more information see the article on User account statuses.

Also in the Options section, Superamins can change the group ownership, this option is not available for Power Users.

Eligibility conditions

Move to the Eligibility area to create the conditions for the automatic population of the group. Users will be automatically added or removed from the group depending on the conditions you configure.

To empower the automatic management of the group, conditions are grouped in sets. You can define up to 50 sets, each set can include up to 10 conditions.

For each set, define whether the user must meet all the conditions of the set or at least one of them to be added to the group. When working with more sets, you can also define whether all the sets or at least one set must be satisfied for users to be added to the group.

Add a new set by clicking on New set.

In the right panel click on the Condition dropdown and select one of the following options:

Add the conditions to the set, then set whether all of them or at least one of them must be satisfied for users to be added to the group by selecting either All conditions must be satisfied or At least one condition must be satisfied in the top right corner of the New set of conditions panel. Click on Create to confirm the creation of the set.

Repeat the set creation procedure to create different sets. If you have more than one set of conditions, select whether all of them or at least one of them must be met to add users to the group using the dropdown menu in the top right corner of the Manage Conditions area. 

Tip: If you have multiple sets, in the top right corner you can choose whether All the sets or At least one set must be satisfied to add a user to the group.  Then, within each set, you can choose whether All conditions or At least one condition must be met to satisfy that set. 

When you have configured all of the sets of conditions, click on Save changes to start the automatic population of the group. Users will be added to the group as they satisfy the conditions you have defined and will be listed in the Users tab. Their assignment method will be set to Automatic.  Remember that the auto-population procedure also takes into consideration deactivated users, unless you select the Remove deactivated users from the group option in the Options section.

After the group is populated for the first time, the automatic population procedure will constantly monitor the events of the platform to keep the group population aligned.

At any time, you can edit or remove your set of conditions by hovering your mouse on the top right corner of the set, clicking on the ellipsis menu, and selecting Edit or Delete. The group population will be recalculated from scratch every time you edit or delete any of the conditions you have configured.

Group recalculation delay

When an automatic group's membership rules are changed or when user data relevant to those rules is updated, the system needs to recalculate the group's members. Please be aware that this recalculation process can require significant system resources and is performed in the background (asynchronously). As a result, membership updates are not instantaneous.

• The time needed to complete the group population is dependent on various factors including: the number of users involved, the types of eligibility conditions configured, the number of groups and branches, any automatic enrollment rules set for the group, as well as the platform’s other ongoing activities.
• Under normal conditions, group updates occur in the range between 0 and 15 minutes, based on the complexity of the recalculation.
• Occasionally we may see slower executions. If that happens the internal SRE team is notified and reviews the cases. Significant slowdowns in execution will be communicated on the Docebo status page while we work on resolving them.

Power user visibility of eligibility conditions

When a Power User edits or deletes the conditions of a group involving resources not assigned to them (such as a manual group) they will not be able to restore it because they do not have visibility into the resource involved in the condition.

History of group eligibility conditions

The History tab retains the last 10 versions of group eligibility conditions, while other group changes, including ownership transfers, do not create new versions. Power Users can see the History tab only if they own the group.

Please note that you cannot roll back to previous versions. If you need to revert your changes, you have to re-configure your sets manually. 

Manually-assigned users in automatic groups

Automatic groups are automatically populated by users who match the eligibility rules you have configured.
→ In the group user list, you can see that the Assignment method for these users is Automatic. 

However, you also have the option of manually adding users who do not match the group’s eligibility conditions. You do this in the same way that you add users to a manual group: Click the Assign users button in the top right corner and choose whether to add users individually or based on a branch or group membership. 
→ For users added in this way, the group user list shows the Assignment method as Manual. 

Automatically assigned users remain in the group if they match the eligibility conditions. Otherwise they are removed from the group. 

Manually assigned users are included irrespective of the eligibility rules, and so will remain in the group for as long as their assignment method remains manual.

You can use the following ellipsis menu actions: 

• For an Automatically-assigned user, Switch to manual assignment changes them to Manually-assigned. This means they will be kept in the group even when they no longer satisfy its population conditions.
• For a Manually-assigned user, Remove manual assignment removes the user from the group. 
  Note: The user will stay out of the group if they are not eligible, but if they meet the eligibility criteria, they will be added back as Automatically-assigned. 

To Switch to manual assignment or Remove manual assignment  for multiple users at a time, select the checkboxes next to their names, then click the Choose action button and select the appropriate option.

Manually excluding a user from an automatic group

Although you can force the inclusion of a user in an automatic group through manual assignment, you cannot manually force the exclusion (removal) of a user. 

• If a user matches the eligibility conditions, they will always be included in the automatic group. 

The only way to manually exclude a user from an automatic group is to edit the user’s data in such a way that the user no longer matches the eligibility conditions. 

To do this, carefully examine the various Eligibility conditions for the group, and see if you can safely make a change to the user’s data (for example, to a user field, user additional field, enrollment status, group/branch membership) that would cause them to be excluded. Remember that “All conditions must be satisfied” will require only one data change for the user to no longer match, whereas the “At least one” setting may be more difficult to accomplish. 

Important: Changes to a user's profile, course status, group/branch membership or other data may affect their experience and reporting across the platform. Review the broader impact before making updates

Managing the group activation status (New!)

When a group is created, its status is inactive by default. Keep the group in this status while fine-tuning its settings to prevent any side actions, such as enrollments linked to enrollment rules, from being triggered before everything is properly configured.

Group owners and Superadmins can use the Status selector in the group footer to change the group status to Active and can switch the group back to Inactive at any time to perform maintenance or make changes without immediately affecting the group population or triggering any associated actions.

Alternatively, change the group status directly from the Groups page by using the radio button in the Status column.

While a group is inactive:

• Any changes to its population, whether made manually, via CSV, or by modifying its conditions, are reflected in the Users tab as a preview for the group owners and Superadmins. This allows you to verify the group composition before activating or reactivating it.
• The enrollment rules and the automation rules tied to the group are not triggered.
• If you assign the group to entities (for example, catalogs, channels, menus, pages, bundles), users will not gain visibility over these items until the group is activated.
• You can still configure notifications targeting the group, but new and existing notifications for the users belonging to the group are not triggered.
• You can assign the group as a resource to Power Users, but its users will not be assigned as resources until the group is activated.
• Audit trail events are logged.

When you activate a group:

• The enrollment rules and the automation rules tied to the group are triggered.
• The users belonging to the group gain visibility over the entities assigned to the group (catalogs, channels, menus, pages, bundles, etc).
• The notifications targeting the group are triggered according to their configuration.
• Group users are assigned as resources to the Power Users having the group assigned as resource.

When you inactivate a previously active group:

• Any changes to its population, whether made manually, via CSV, or by modifying its conditions, are reflected in the Users tab as a preview. This allows you to verify the group composition before activating or reactivating it.
• Any enrollments triggered by enrollment rules while the group was active are kept.
• For Power Users, the group remains assigned as one of their resources, and they will still see it in the Groups page, but the users in the group are removed from their assigned resources. The users will be assigned back to Power Users if the group is reactivated.
• Users will lose visibility over catalogs, channels, menus, pages, bundles, etc.

Managing groups (Updated!)

You can manage both manual and automatic groups from the Groups main page. Groups can be managed only individually; performing the same action on a selection of groups is not an option. 

Use the Status radio button to change the group status from active to inactive and vice versa.

Click on the ellipsis menu at the end of the group to edit, duplicate, or delete the group.

When you duplicate a manual group, you can set whether to copy the users of the source group as users of the new group.

When you duplicate an automatic group, users are not copied, but, by selecting the option to use the same eligibility conditions, the rules will be reprocessed to populate the new group. As an option, you can choose to copy the manually added users.

Managing the group ownership

The user who creates a group is the group owner and is responsible for the group management. The group owner's name is displayed only to Superadmins in the Group ownership area of the Options section of the Properties tab.

It is not mandatory for a group to have an owner. When this field is not populated, the group ownership falls back to the platform’s Superadmins.

You can change the group ownership by clicking on the X button at the end of the Owner field and selecting a Superadmin or Power User.

Superadmins have full visibility and operativity for all groups. Instead, when you assign the group ownership to a Power User with the Groups / Edit permission:

• The platform automatically assigns the group (and thus the users belonging to it at that time) as a resource to the new owner. Please note that if the group is inactive, the new owner will have visibility into its users before activation and effective resource assignment.
• If the new owner has more assigned users than the previous owner, the population of the automatic group is recalculated based on the new owner's assigned users and the group eligibility rules. The population of manual groups is not recalculated instead.
• If a Superadmin updates the group eligibility rules after setting a Power User as the owner, the changes will always be applied based on the users currently assigned to the Power User, not according to the Superadmin’s visibility.

Export the list of group members (Updated!)

For both manual and automatic groups, it is possible to export the list of group members. To do this, open the configuration page of the desired group, then click the Export user list as CSV button in the top right corner.

The export always includes the list of users currently shown in the Users tab, even if the group is inactive and the displayed list does not reflect the actual group population due to pending activation of recent changes.

Associating users to groups via CSV files

As a Superadmin, you can associate users to either a manual or an automatic group using CSV files. To do so, click on the group name on the Groups management page, and click on the Manage group associations via CSV button in the top right corner of the page.

A slideout panel will open on the right side of the page for the CSV file upload. For a successful upload, it is important to create a properly formatted CSV file. Download the sample CSV file for an example of file formatting. Once your file is ready, either drag and drop it into the upload section of the slideout panel or click the upload area to find the file. Please note that the maximum file size for CSV files is 3MB.

Once the file is uploaded, press the Advanced settings title to configure additional options. The system is configured to automatically detect the Field separator needed to organize the information by columns. Information can be divided by a comma, a semicolon, or manually, depending on your needs.

Select the option to consider the first row as a header, if this fits your CSV file format, and select the File Charset from the dropdown menu. We recommend the UTF-8 charset, which is standard. Please remember to use quotation marks to delimit the text content. Press Confirm to upload your CSV file.

The system will then process your CSV file. Once ready, you will be redirected to the fields mapping page. In the Profiles section, you can select a preset profile from the dropdown menu to associate a previous mapping configuration to this CSV import. Press the Overwrite current preset button if you want to save changes to the current preset. Additionally, you can manually map the columns to platform fields (see more hereafter), then save the configuration by pressing the Save this preset as new button. In the pop-up box, provide a name for the preset, then press Save.

In the Preview section, drag and drop the fields in the Docebo Fields section on the left to match the fields with the column names of your CSV file, then press the Associate users button at the bottom of the page. Confirm the information in the pop-up message that will be displayed, then click Associate users.

The association will be carried out with a background job. In case of any errors, an error file will be made available for download. To find this file, access the Admin menu, then select the Background jobs item. Find the job in the list to download the file.

The imported users will be listed in the Users tab of the group. Their assignment method will be set as Manual.

Tips and tricks

Consider configuring the User subscribed to a group notification for users to inform them that they have been added to a group. The notification can act as a welcome message or you can use it to include specific information or instruction concerning the group itself. The notification works both for manual and automatic groups.