There are three general types of Unit groups:

• People, such as agents, employees, managers
• Static locations, such as stores, hotels, websites, and products
• Business-to-business (B2B) which are a combination of people and locations

Companies typically organize groups along business hierarchies, mostly for reporting purposes, but also to identify the data a user may see, such as only the units in their sales district, or the units managed by specific individuals.

In the database, each group is a column, and the value for each field identifies where the unit belongs in that group (if at all). In this illustration, the last two records do not belong to the State group.

The Groups editor lists and manages unit groups. For ease of management the list of groups and values in the editor is arranged in a hierarchy, but the nesting does not correspond to the business hierarchy! In the Groups editor, the list of groups might look similar to the following example. Notice:

• Groups can contain other groups, such as the Location group, but those "container" groups do not appear as a column in the database nor do they appear in the company hierarchy. They are just for organization in the editor.
• There is a first-level container group (Employees) that corresponds to the unit types. A company can track different types of Units. By creating a unit-type group you can more easily manage the groups as the program expands. Do this even if the company (currently) has only one unit type. Further, the Groups editor has an option to filter the list to show just a selected unit-type (first level groups).

All units         < Company group, included for all company's
  Employees       < Unit type (container)
    Region        < Unit group
    Location      < Container group
      State       < Unit group
      Country     < Unit group
      City        < Unit group
    VP            < Unit group
    Manager       < Unit group
      ...

When you first create Unit Groups for a company, the list looks similar to the example above. However, once there are Unit records in the database, the list also shows each unique group value that has been assigned to a Unit record.

All units
  Employees
    Region        < Unit group
      East        < Group value
      West
      Central
      South
    Location
      State       < Unit group
        CA        < Group value
        IL
        MA
      Country     < Unit group
        USA       < Group value
        CAN
        MEX
      City        < Unit group
        Palo Alto < Group value
        Mtn View 
        ...
    VP            < Unit group
      nsands      < Group value
      mgreen
    Manager       < Unit group
      ...

While the group values do appear in the Groups editor, and they can be edited, it is best practice to define the values in the data feed that loads the Unit information for the company. Use Auto Importer to load Unit records (the Org Hierarchy) and to define Unit Group values.

For additional information about groups and organization hierarchies, see:

• The Org hierarchy field

• Org hierarchy filtering