(Beta) Dynamic groups

Create groups for flexible reporting and quality assurance.

Restriction: This functionality is currently in Beta. During this early access period, clients in the Beta program can try out and test this feature, and provide feedback about it. This stage allows Medallia to refine the feature's design before its general availability. Be aware that functionality may change before then.

Within Agent Connect, you can segment users into groups for greater flexibility in performance reporting and QA assignments.

Performance reporting can be filtered by team, but sometimes segmenting data by team is not robust enough. Groups allow you to segment users into logical categories, such as their department, work site, start date, or other differentiated criteria, on the Performance page.

QA reviews can be assigned for groups, allowing reviewers to understand the performance of employees who share common characteristics. QA assignments can be scheduled at different cadences for different groups, allowing you to give more attention to groups of employees who need it.

Additionally, groups can dynamically add or remove users over time based on defined conditions, such as their role, QA scores, star ratings, locations, and more.

Note: Some of the functionality detailed in this guide is available by default, while the dynamic aspect of automatically updating group membership and some UI elements are only available to beta participants.

Create a new group

We recommend mapping out the group hierarchy before setting up a group in Agent Connect. This will make the process easier as you proceed. When you are ready, follow the steps below to create a new group:

  1. On the Settings page, click Manage Team.

  2. On the Manage Team page, open the Groups tab, then click Create Group.

    image of the manage team page
  3. Configure the group on the next page:

    • Group Name and Description — Enter a name and description for the group.

      image of the group name field

      You can use the color, emoji, and image options beneath the name to customize the icon displayed beside the group name throughout the UI.

    • Members — Configure criteria to automatically assign or remove users from the group, and/or select users to always include or exclude.

      If you would like Agent Connect to adjust the group membership dynamically, use the available condition filters to specify the criteria for adding or removing users.

      To configure the automatic assignment, first select one or more filter types shown on the page. After selecting a filter type, configure the conditions relevant to that filter below.

      image of members options

      Filter criteria falls into two categories, which affects the timing of changes to group membership:

      • Attributes of user profiles (start date, location, team, group, role) — Since these are static values, users will be added to groups or removed as soon as the relevant attribute changes.

      • Performance metrics (average star rating, average QA score) — Since these are rolling calculations with frequent changes, the criteria will only be checked once per day to determine any membership changes.

      To assign certain users to always or never belong to the group, regardless of the membership conditions, click Add Employee beneath the heading Always include these employees or Always exclude these employees.

      • If you wish to only use static membership while adding or removing users through user profile, bulk upload, or API requests, you can list all your group members under Always include these employees.

      • If you would like to exclude team leads or other specific members while using dynamic conditions, list those members under Always exclude these employees.

      Note:
      • Data for each user in a group only goes back as far as the moment the user was added to that group. The user's data will still be available in other contexts (team and individual stats, for example). For group reporting, only data that was generated while the user was associated with the group will be included.

      • When a user is removed from a group, that user's data will no longer be included.

      • For the Avg Star Rating and Avg QA Score filters, only the last three months' worth of data can be analyzed. If you need a longer calculation period, please share your feedback with the Support team or your account manager so that we can consider it when making further updates to this feature.

      • The Location filter is based on the Employee Location field on user profiles. For bulk profile uploads, this refers to the Location (country) column.

    • Hierarchy — Select the direct parent group of the new group. If this group has no parent, select your organization name in the drop-down menu, instead.

      image of the hierarchy section

      Consider the following points when setting up a group hierarchy:

      • Performance data aggregates from child groups to parent groups. For example, if "LATAM Support" is a child of the "LATAM" group, then all data for "LATAM Support" will be present in the "LATAM" group.

      • If you place vendor organizations into distinct groups beneath a common parent, you can set the Default Data Scope to "Own Group" in a custom user role to ensure that each vendor group can only see their own data.

      • In most cases, a user will only be a member of one group in a hierarchy, with the user's data aggregating upward into any parent groups.

    • Preferences — Review the additional options in this section and enable any that you would like to use.

      image of the preferences section
      • Filterable — When enabled, users will be able to filter reporting data by this group. Groups will remain filterable on the QA Dashboard even when deactivated.

        Tip: We recommend always enabling this option to realize the greatest benefit from groups.
      • Stream footer displayable — When enabled, the group name will be displayed on the Stream for feedback associated with a member of the group.

      • Hidden group — When enabled, the group name, membership, and data will not be visible to members of the group.

        This setting can be appropriate for organizations that rely on the "Own Group" data scope while using dynamic conditions for group membership changes, since automatic changes can group employees together who are not intended to see each others' data.

  4. Click Save Group when finished.

Edit groups

You can edit any existing group on the Groups tab of the Manage Team page. Click the options icon for any group to see the options available.

example of editing a group
  • Edit Group​ — Click to change any configuration of the group, including its members.

  • Duplicate Group​ — Click to create a new group with the same users and configuration, which you can then edit as needed.

  • Deactivate Group​ — Click to deactivate the group and remove it from reporting.

Tip:

Select the Include Deactivated check box​ above the table to include deactivated groups in the table.

Update group membership

Membership of a group can be managed in several ways:

  • Through automatic updates based on the configured membership criteria

  • When creating user profiles in the UI

  • When creating user profiles in bulk via CSV upload

    Within the Bulk Create User template, a column is available for group assignments. Groups should be listed in brackets ({}) and can be comma separated.

  • By editing user profiles in the UI or in bulk

    In the Edit User slide-out panel, you can change a user's group membership.

  • By updating the group in bulk via CSV upload (see below)

Update groups in bulk

Follow the steps below to update groups in bulk:

  1. On the Users tab of the Manage Team page, open the Bulk Actions dropdown menu and select "Bulk Groups Update".

    image of the bulk groups update button
  2. On the Bulk Groups Update page, click Download group membership to download a properly formatted CSV file containing the current group membership.

  3. To add a user to additional groups, list those groups in Column F (Groups to Add). To remove a user from one or more groups, list those groups in Column G (Groups to Remove). Save the file when finished.

    example CSV format
    Important: All group names must be contained in curly brackets, whether an individual group (for example, {Group1}) or multiple groups (for example, {Group1, Group2, Group3})
  4. When finished, click Upload on the Bulk Groups Update page, then select the updated CSV file.

    A preview section will appear, listing the pending changes and any errors found in the file.

    example preview results
  5. After reviewing the changes and any errors, click Process to apply the changes.

View group performance

To view performance metrics for a group, open the Performance page. Use the Company, Team, Group, or Team Member filter to select a single group to analyze.

example of groups in a report
Tip:

The two most popular use cases for group-level reporting are:

  • BPO or work-site level

  • Lines of business or department-level

Group reporting is most valuable when employees belong to a specific group and their membership in that group does not often change over time.

If employees switch between groups often (for example, when they work across multiple lines of business), you may prefer to report on that data using custom properties instead of groups.

QA assignments for groups

You can use the "Groups" option when selecting reviewees for a QA assignment to assign reviews for one or more groups. After selecting groups, you can further specify which user roles within that group to include as reviewees, or exclude specific users (such as a team lead) entirely.

example qa assignment

Targeting groups for QA provides the added benefit of scheduling different QA review cadences for different user groups. For example, you might choose to review a Top Performers group once per month while reviewing a New Hires group once per week.

To learn more, see Assignments