How to use groups

Click on Manage, then click on Groups. If you only have a few trainees (e.g. less than 40) in one location, one group (Default Group) is usually enough, but if you want to assign different Managers to manage different groups of trainees, you do this using Groups. E.g. you set up a Napier group, assign a Manager to Napier and that manager will only see trainees assigned to the Napier group.

To add a group called Delivery, enter it in the field and click Add group. 

What is a group?

Think of a group like a label you assign to a particular trainee. You can define any number of groups to help segment your trainees for easy reporting and management. Trainees can belong to multiple groups.

Options for setting up groups

You can define as many groups as you like, for example by

  • region (e.g. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch)
  • reporting line or department (e.g. sales, production)
  • manager (e.g. Dave, Sue, Bob)
  • depot (e.g. Penrose, Albany, Lower Hutt)
  • type of vehicle driven (e.g. car, ute, truck, bus)
  • job function (e.g. sales, delivery)
  • team (e.g. orange, red, green)
  • external assessment requirements (e.g. D endorsement trainees)


However, the more groups you have, the more complex it is to administer who has access to each one. We've found that 5-10 groups is a good number to give you a lot of flexibility with anything up to around 500 trainees. Try to avoid assigning a trainee to more than two or three groups.


Using groups solely to restrict access to modules

Using groups, you can restrict optional modules, i.e. you can hide modules that aren't relevant. Let's use a simple example with three location-based groups that you can see in the image below. Your Auckland and Christchurch trainees drive trucks, but Wellingtonians only drive cars. We'll assume that you are only adding your trainees to one of the location-based groups. Auckland trainees don't see any modules related to snow and ice. Wellington drivers see the ice module, while Christchurch drivers see all of the modules.



Nice and easy so far. You can use this in other ways. For example, set up two groups: truck drivers and car drivers. Hide all the truck-related modules from the car drivers group. 


Or, let's say your Hamilton depot has forklifts that use attachments, but your Gisborne depot doesn't. Set up Hamilton and Gisborne groups and hide the Attachments module from the Gisborne group.


Using groups to restrict access to modules and to segment trainees for managers

Let's take it one step further. We'll add some groups to help managers manage their team based on location. Assuming you've got three depots, let's set up Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, plus add Induction for new drivers and Delivery for your experienced drivers. Your groups should now look like this:


We're going to use the location groups so you can have people manage different sets of drivers, but the Induction and Delivery groups will control the modules the drivers see.


When you invite your drivers you will choose both the job function and their location, like this:


Setting up module restriction correctly

Deselect every module in groups that you only use for segmentation purposes!

In this case, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are only there so that we can have individual managers check them out. We control the modules using Induction and Delivery, which is why we deselect all modules from the locations.


If a driver belongs to multiple groups, they will see the sum of all the modules available to those groups. That means if the Driving in icy conditions module is available in one group but not in another, if the person is assigned to both groups, they will see that module. 



Assigning managers

Managers can now be assigned by depot and/or job function. For example:

  • you can assign your Auckland manager to the Auckland group and they will only see trainees who are assigned to Auckland, whether they are in the Delivery or Induction group.
  • you can assign your operations manager to the Delivery group and they will only see trainees who are assigned to the Delivery group, whether they are in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch.


This is a very powerful function that allows you to have multiple different segments of trainees while maintaining the ability to restrict the modules they see.