Setting Up User Groups

Before you begin

Before you go about setting up your user groups, first make sure that you've actually created all the users in your account. By default, new users are placed into the Master group and therefore have access to all the customers in the system.

You can add new users to your account via the users page.

A simple two-level hierarchy using "private groups"

The most common real-world application of user groups is restricting a single user to only see their own customers. In Handshake, this means creating a group with that user as the sole member, commonly referred to as a "private group".

Andy Bernard and Ryan Howard from the previous page are examples of users who have been placed into private groups.

Because this is such a common configuration, there are bulk actions you can invoke from the users page to move users into and out of private groups. These bulk actions make it easy to create a simple two-level hierarchy with admin users in the Master group who can see everything, and salespeople in private groups who can see only their own customers.

Hierarchies with more than two levels

If your organizational structure includes an element of "middle management", then you will want to use the user groups editor to set up a deeper tree than the simple two-level structure described above.

Setting up regional sales managers is a common use case for having a three-level user group structure, and Jim Halpert from the previous page is an example of this. He is assigned to the California group and can see all customers attached to that group or its subgroups, but he cannot see any customers in the Hawaii group.