Table of Contents

• Introducing groups
• Creating groups
• Adding control panel users to groups
• Assigning lists to groups
• Assigning websites to groups
• Point People -> Control panel users tab
• Context moving forward

Groups are collections of CPUs who are responsible for similar types of supporters or job functions within an organization. Lists of people and individual Websites can be assigned to these groups to limit the types of records the CPU has access to in the nation. Groups could be made up of multiple CPUs who have the same role in the organization and are responsible for a large number of supporters (e.g. Volunteer Coordinators), or CPUs with different roles but in a similar region or area of focus (e.g. regional chapters within an organization).

When a list of people is assigned to a group, any CPU who is a member of that group and has “Assigned” or “Everyone” People permissions is able to see those people in the nation. This allows you to distribute ownership of that people-universe to more than one control panel user, something that the Point Person assignment functionality did not allow for. Any new people who are added to assigned lists will be visible to CPU members of the group, and removing people from the list will similarly remove access from the CPU group members.

We’ve extended this “Assignment” concept to websites, and there is a new option in Permission Sets for users to see “All websites”, “Assigned websites,” or “None.” Because all permission sets before allowed access to all websites when Website permissions were granted, the default for this new option is “All websites”. Assigning management of a website to a specific group allows any CPU who is a member of that group and has “Assigned” or “Everyone” Website permissions is able to see those people in the nation. This allows for chapter or group-specific websites to be created, and it prevents people from outside of the group from being able to edit a particular website.

Once a group has been created, use the Manage Group Members button to surface the list of CPUs you can add to the group. Clicking on the name of a CPU will add a check-mark near their name, and clicking “Save” will cause them to be added to the group.

When a CPU is added to a group, the groups name will be displayed as a badge on their profile.

You can uncheck the CPUs name in the “Manage group members” form, or you can use the dropdown menu on the right-hand side of the groups listing to remove individual users:

Lists of people that are assigned to the group can be selected when creating the group, but you can also change this after the group has been created by navigating to the Settings tab of the groups view. New lists can be added, existing lists can be removed, and you can associate more than one list with a particular group.

Once a list is assigned to the group, the Dashboard tab of that group will display stats about the assigned people, and a history of which CPUs were added to or removed from the group.

When a person in the People section is on a list that is assigned to a particular group, the group will appear in their profile under their name, contact info, membership status, etc.

When new people are added to this list, they are automatically assigned to the group. When they are removed from this list, they have that assignment removed.

Groups can also be used to restrict management of a particular website to one or more groups of control panel users. Previously, anyone who had website permissions was able to exercise those permission on any website in the nation. To help solve this problem, we’ve added an “assignment” dropdown in the Website permission settings, similar to the one that already existed for People.

When a user with “Assigned” website permissions is a member of a group that is assigned to a website, they’ll be able to edit that website (if they have permissions to edit websites), but they won’t be able to access any other websites in the nation. This allows for a specific chapter, branch, or IT team to cordon off access to specific websites depending on that persons
group membership.

Groups can be assigned in the Site Settings section of a particular website (or when creating a new website), and a website can be assigned to more than one group. This can allow for chapter-specific access to a particular website, as well as allow for an organization-wide IT team who might also need access to the individual chapter websites.

The tab named “Point People” in the People section of NationBuilder has been changed   to “Control Panel Users”.

While every Control Panel User (CPU) is eligible to be the Point Person of a supporter in the nation, not every CPU is a point person. This updated tab shows the same information as the former Point People tab, and introduces a new button to “Invite control panel users” directly from this view.

This button surfaces the same “invite” form as described in our Managing Control Panel Users documentation, with the addition of a new “Add to groups” Field that allows a new control panel user to be added to a group when they’re created.

The “Assigned websites” permission set addition is something that we see being added to more sections in the future. It’s not hard to imagine assigning a broadcaster to a group, for example so that only those group members can send emails from that broadcaster. Similarly, in the Finances section, having access only to financial transactions from people Assigned to a given point person would allow for more  people to be given finances access in general. 

We also know that allowing people → group assignment via lists causes some manual work to be required to update the universe of people that a group of CPUs has access to. More programmatic/scalable means of regularly assigning new supporters is something we are currently investigating and do plan to work on in the future. One benefit of using Lists is that the Lists API can be used by external applications to allow for some of this functionality using the API - when a person is created through the API, they can also be added to a list that is assigned to a particular group through the API. This will cause CPUs in that group to automatically have access to those people.