Group Management

This article explains how admins can manage groups in their intranet — from accessing group settings and controlling visibility and permissions for streamlined collaboration.

💼 Package information: Managing groups is available to all package users.

Managing groups in your intranet

Groups in Happeo allow you to streamline collaboration, assign permissions more efficiently, and keep your intranet organized. As an admin, you can manage all groups directly from the Admin Settings, ensuring that visibility, membership, and permissions remain aligned with your organization’s needs.

Use cases

Here are a few ways organizations commonly use Group Management to strengthen collaboration and governance across their intranet:

• Simplifying permission management: Instead of granting access to pages or channels one person at a time, admins can use groups (e.g., “Marketing Team” or “HR Managers”) to assign editing or viewing rights in one step. This saves time and ensures consistency when teams change or grow.
• Managing visibility of sensitive information: Some groups, like “Leadership” or “Finance,” may need access to restricted channels or pages. By managing permissions through groups, admins can make sure sensitive content is visible only to the right people without constant manual checks.
• Supporting onboarding and offboarding: When new employees join, adding them to a single group automatically grants them access to the pages and channels they need. Similarly, removing someone from a group ensures they lose access immediately, reducing risk and administrative overhead.
• Keeping intranet search relevant: By adjusting group visibility, admins can declutter search results so employees only see relevant groups. This improves findability and reduces confusion, especially in large organizations with hundreds of groups.

Best practices for group management

To keep groups effective and your intranet easy to manage, here are some best practices for admins:

• Use clear naming conventions: Give groups descriptive names (e.g., Marketing – Europe instead of just Marketing) so both admins and employees can quickly identify the right group in Search or when assigning permissions.
• Review visibility regularly: Periodically check which groups are visible in Search. Keeping only relevant groups discoverable reduces clutter and makes it easier for employees to find the right people.
• Audit member counts: Compare group membership in your intranet against your provisioning source (Google, Entra, or Okta) to ensure accuracy. Regular audits prevent outdated or incorrect access rights from slipping through.
• Rely on groups for permissions, not individuals: Whenever possible, assign permissions at the group level instead of the user level. This simplifies onboarding, offboarding, and role changes, and keeps permissions consistent as teams evolve.
• Check provisioning logs proactively: Don’t wait for employees to report issues. By reviewing provisioning logs and group health status periodically, you can catch errors early and maintain a smooth intranet experience.
• Plan for lifecycle management: Remove unused or outdated groups and update memberships as teams restructure. A clean group structure keeps your intranet organized and prevents confusion.

How to access group management

🗒️ Note: Managing groups is only available to admins.

1. Click your avatar at the top-right corner of your intranet’s main navigation.
2. Select Admin Settings > Group Management.

From here, you’ll find everything you need to monitor group health, adjust visibility, manage permissions, and export group data for auditing or reporting purposes.

Viewing group health status

For organizations using Entra or Okta, Happeo provides a Group Health Status view. This helps admins quickly understand whether groups are syncing correctly from your provisioning source.

Health status indicators include:

• Good: 0 update errors.
• Intermittent: < 10% errors.
• Error: > 10% errors.

You can also view provisioning logs for detailed insights into each sync attempt, including:

• Group names and emails.
• Last updated timestamp.
• Status (success or error).

This ensures you can quickly spot and resolve issues before they affect access or visibility across your intranet.

Group overview

The Group Overview provides a snapshot of all groups in your environment. This includes:

• Total number of groups.
• Group names and emails.
• Last updated timestamp.
• Member counts.
• Whether all users from the source group are included.
• Whether the group is managed from your provisioning source.
• Visibility status in Search.

This high-level view gives admins confidence that the structure of their intranet reflects the actual structure of their organization, making permissions and access easier to maintain at scale.

How to search for groups

You can use the search bar at the top-right corner of the Group Management page to quickly find the group you’re looking for.

Simply start typing the group’s name or email. Once you locate the right group, you can click into its settings, view its health status (Entra and Okta only), or adjust visibility.

How to manage groups

Each group offers flexible management options:

• Individual group settings: Click the three dots next to a group to:
  • Hide the group from Search.
  • Edit the group in your provisioning source.
  • Update the group from your directory.
• Permission management: Select one or more groups from the list and click Permission management at the top-left corner of the page. This allows you to update access rights across groups in one step, reducing repetitive manual work.
• Group visibility: To adjust visibility for all groups at once, click Visible in Search and choose from:
  • Include all groups in Search.
  • Remove all groups from Search.

This ensures employees can discover the right groups without being overwhelmed by irrelevant ones, keeping your intranet both secure and easy to navigate.

FAQ

General group management

How often are groups updated in Happeo?

Groups update whenever changes are pushed from your provisioning source (Google, Entra, Okta) or when you manually refresh them using Update from directory. Updates are typically near real-time, but the timing may depend on how your identity provider syncs with Happeo. For Entra and Okta users, Last updated column in Group Management shows when the most recent update took place.

Visibility and access

Can employees see all groups in Search by default?

Not all groups are visible by default. Admins control which groups appear in your intranet’s Search. This allows you to make important groups easily discoverable while hiding internal or sensitive ones. If a user can’t find a group they expect to see, it may be hidden in Search or restricted at the identity provider level.

What happens if I hide a group from Search?

When a group is hidden, it will no longer appear in Search results for regular users. However, the group still exists and continues to function for permissions and provisioning. This is useful for backend or system groups that aren’t relevant for daily collaboration.

Permissions and membership

Can I edit group membership directly in Happeo?

For all provisioned groups, membership changes must be made in the identity provider — Happeo will then update automatically.

How does group membership affect intranet permissions?

Groups can be assigned different roles and access rights across Happeo. For example, you might give an HR group editing rights on the HR Page, or restrict certain sensitive channels so they’re only available to a leadership group.

Troubleshooting

Why don’t I see the Group Management tab in Admin Settings?

If you can’t find Group Management, it’s possible that you don’t have admin rights for your organization. Only admins can access this section. Please contact an admin in your organization to confirm your access level.

I received an error status — what should I do?

If a group shows an Error status in the logs:

1. Go to Admin Settings > Group Management.
2. Click the three dots next to the group.
3. Select Update from directory.

If updating does not resolve the issue, please contact our support team. Be sure to include a screenshot of the error message (click the arrow next to the error log to capture the details).

Why are some groups missing from Happeo’s Search?

Groups may be hidden from Search depending on visibility settings. To check:

1. In Group Management, look for the Visible in Search setting.
2. Ensure the group is included.

If the group is hidden, only admins will be able to see it in the overview.

Why do member counts look incorrect in the group overview?

If member counts don’t match what you expect, it may be because not all users from the provisioning source are included. In these cases, check your provisioning source (Google, Entra, or Okta) to ensure the group is correctly synced and contains the right members.