Workflows & Group Structure
Groups are the heart of Workplace, where teams gather to get things done.
Why it's important
By setting up core groups and adding members before launch day, you can ensure that your users have an active and set up Workplace they can explore when they log in for the very first time. This shows immediate value and educates your community on how they should be using Workplace groups for their own day-to-day work.
Storing key information in your Knowledge Library can also be a major driver of Workplace adoption. By building your Workplace Knowledge Library, you can create a central home for your organization. A place for both essential company resources (in Knowledge Library) and dynamic updates (in Workplace groups) that helps you drive alignment, preserve critical knowledge and engage your employees.
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Groups
When creating Workplace groups, you have a few important things to consider:
- Group purpose
- Privacy settings
- Posting permissions
- Group membership
Group purpose:
Groups are typically created for:
- Company, regional and office-specific announcements
- Common and repetitive workflows, such as:
- An HR Q&A group or IT Helpdesk group: To allow employees to quickly find answers to their questions.
- Facilities group: To quickly and efficiently report equipment and facilities issues.
- Shift cover group: To allow frontline employees to request coverage or pick up available shifts. Learn more about Shift Cover in the Help Center.
- Social communication, to help you connect with your coworkers over shared interests and experiences
- Department, team and project collaboration
- Departmental announcements like new launches, marketing campaigns, sales wins, etc.
- One-on-one communication between a manager and a direct report
Define and create your launch day group structure early on. We recommend having announcement groups, repetitive & common workflows and large team/department groups all set up with members added by launch day. Use this group structure template as a guide.
For large company-wide announcement and social groups (such a "[COMPANY NAME] Social"), you should plan a content calendar to ensure that there's a regular stream of company updates and posts for your users to explore in Workplace. Check out these toolkits for internal campaigns and comms inspiration.
Pro-tip: Create a standardized naming convention to make all groups easy to find through search.
Privacy settings:
There are 3 different privacy settings for Workplace groups:
- Open: Anyone can find the group using search and see posts. Content from open groups can appear on anyone's News Feed.
- Closed: Anyone can find the group through Workplace search, see its description and request to join. Only members can see posts.
- Secret: You have to be invited to join a secret group. Only members of the group can find the group through search and see posts.
System administrators will be able to see all Workplace groups, including secret groups, under Groups in the Admin Panel.
This table can give you an idea of what privacy settings work best for each group type:
Posting permissions:
When you create a Workplace group, you automatically become that group's admin. As a group admin, you can control key functionality for that group, such as updating group settings, managng member requests, accessing group insights and more. To see group admin options:
- Navigate to your group and clicking on the ... at the top right corner of your screen
- Select Admin Options
Posting permissions are managed by group admins in the Settings page of your Admin Options. You can choose from the following permission settings:
- Anyone: Everyone sees the post composer box and their post automatically goes into the group
- Admins only: Only admins can post to the group. Others won't see the composer box
- Posting Approval: Everyone sees the composer box and can submit posts however they will only be visible in the group if approved by an Admin/Moderator
Company announcement groups are often managed by internal comms teams. To reduce noise and ensure only the most important messages are posted, group admins often set posting permissions to admins only. Choose posting permissions based on the importance of posts and how the group is managed.
Group membership:
There are several ways to control membership to groups:
- Individual invite: Invite colleagues one by one. This option is best for small team groups
- Default group: You can make a group a default group so that everyone in your organization is automatically added. This setting works best for groups that are relevant to everyone, such as company-wide announcements. System administrators can make a group a default group from the Admin Panel. Learn how in the Help Center.
- People Sets: Use People Sets to organize members of your organization based on critreia like location, department, role and more. Anyone who meets the criteria you set will be added to the People Set automatically. You can then assign People Sets to groups to automate group membership based on profile critria. Learn how to create a People Set in the Help Center, or watch the video below.
Knowledge Library
Workplace’s Knowledge Library allows organizations to create and curate company resources their employees can easily discover and meaningfully engage with. Organizations often use Knowledge Library to store:
- Benefits, expenses, PTO, travel policies
- Employee handbooks and onboarding materials
- Company mission and values, brand guidelines and annual and quarterly goals
- Diversity and inclusion policies and resources, health and wellbeing
Building your Knowledge Library is simple and there is no coding required. Once your content is built, you can share Knowledge Library categories with the right people, using filters for profile information or group membership. We recommend setting content viewing permissions before inviting people to Workplace. This ensures that employees have access to resources that are relevant to them when they log in to Workplace for the first time.
Watch the video below for a quick overview, and check out the Knowledge Library Resource Hub for everything you need to plan and deploy your Knowledge Library.
Key takeaways
- Define your launch day group structure and then set your groups up for launch.
- Develop a content calendar and strategy for your large groups
- Identify the right privacy settings for groups based on who should be able to join and see posts.
- Choose whch of your groups should be moderated to control content quality.
- Add group members to the right groups before launch day.
- Build out key company resources in your Knowledge Library and share them with groups before launch day.
