Managing with Workgroups
SolarNexus uses Workgroups to help you manage your teams more effectively. Using Workgroups, you can better manage the assignment and tracking of work among your company's staff. Workgroups are especially helpful for larger companies that have teams of people working on similar tasks, such as sales and engineering roles.
Main uses for Workgroups
The Workgroup feature has two primary functions:
1. Automate assignment of work to a group of users.
Milestones and Project Roles can be assigned to workgroups, and SolarNexus can subsequently automatically assign members of the workgroup to specific milestones or roles (see below for details).
2. Enable work (leads, projects) to be segmented into groups, each with its own sales manager.
The manager of a Workgroup can only see the projects assigned to a member of the Workgroup (or to the Workgroup itself). This is similar to the user role "Global sales management" (previously called "Sales management"), which provides a user visibility to all projects in the SolarNexus account, but in this case it's limited to the Workgroup members' projects.
Defining a Workgroup
A user with Admin or Global Sales Management permissions can create Workgroups and edit their membership (under Administration > Workgroups).
Each Workgroup has:
- a name
- a set of active users in your SolarNexus account. A user can be a member of more than one Workgroup, or not be a member of any Workgroup.
- a manager (optional)
- a specification of other Workgroups to which the manager is allowed to reassign project roles (optional)
- Assignment modes for milestones and project roles - settings that determine whether project roles or milestones must be manually reassigned to individual members or whether the system will automatically assign an individual group member to the project role or milestone in question (see below for details).
Assigning Individual Group Members to Project Roles and Milestones
When defining project milestones, you have the option to assign the milestone to a workgroup. A workgroup may also be added to a project fulfilling a project role. In both cases, the setting configured for the workgroup controls how individual members of the workgroup are assigned to each, if at all. Options are the following:
| When workgroup is assigned to a project role (sales owner, project manager, engineer, etc.): | When workgroup is assigned to a milestone: |
Auto-assign to member with fewest assignments for that role In this case, SolarNexus will automatically re-assign the role to the "least busy" Workgroup member, i.e. the member who has the fewest current project assignments for that role. |
Auto-assign to member with fewest assignments for that milestone In this case, SolarNexus will automatically re-assign the milestone to the "least busy" Workgroup member, i.e. the member who has the fewest current assignments for that milestone. |
Auto-assign to member in a round-robin fashion In this case, SolarNexus will automatically re-assign the role to the next Workgroup member in line (round-robin). |
Auto-assign to member in a round-robin fashion Regardless of load, SolarNexus automatically assigns the milestone to the next workgroup member (round-robin). |
Leave it assigned until a workgroup member manually takes ownership. SolarNexus will leave the Workgroup assigned to the project role. Any member of the Workgroup can then access the project and manually re-assign that project role to him or herself (i.e., "take ownership" for that role on the project). |
N/A |
Workgroup Behaviors
Project Roles
- A project role can be assigned to a Workgroup instead of a user (e.g. Sales Owner = workgroupName, or Project Manager = workgroupName)
- A project role may be assigned to a user OR a Workgroup, not both. If a project role is re-assigned from a Workgroup to a user, then other Workgroup members no longer have access to it.
- When in manual assignment mode, a Workgroup assigned to a project role remains assigned until a member of the workgroup manually takes (or is given) ownership. All members of a Workgroup can access projects where their Workgroup is assigned to a role. For example, from the Sales or Installs screens, view the current list of projects where sales owner = workgroupName.
- A member of a Workgroup can open a project assigned to the Workgroup and reassign that project role to themselves to "take ownership" of that project (e.g. change sales owner to themselves)
- When in automatic assignment mode, when a Workgroup is assigned to a project role, SolarNexus automatically reassigns the project role to the "least busy" member of the Workgroup, defined as the member who has the fewest current project assignments for that role. This allows you to automatically balance project assignments across your team.
- Each individual user's Profile settings control their notifications. If a Workgroup is assigned as sales owner to a project, ALL individual members of the Workgroup who wish to be notified of sales ownership will receive a notification if their profile is set up to receive such a notification.
- When a user is removed from a Workgroup, that user ceases to have access to any leads/projects that have the Workgroup as a role.
- When a user in a Workgroup is deactivated / deleted, that user is removed from the Workgroup.
- When deleting a Workgroup, the administrator deleting the Workgroup is prompted to re-assign role responsibilities for all projects on which the Workgroup is currently assigned to project role(s).
- A milestone cannot be completed if there is no sales owner. However, a milestone may be completed if a Workgroup is assigned as sales owner.
- if sales owner is a Workgroup, document template variable outputs will be:
- {{sales_owner}} variable will output the Workgroup name.
- {{salesperson_first_name}} | {{salesperson_last_name}} | {{salesperson_email}} variables will output nothing.
Milestones / Sub-Tasks
- A project milestone may be assigned to a Workgroup.
- A pre-defined sub-task on a milestone can be assigned to a Workgroup.
- A manually created ad-hoc sub-task cannot be assigned to a Workgroup.
- ONLY automated assignments are allowed for milestones or sub-tasks.
The Workgroup Manager
Some companies have teams large enough to have multiple teams, each led by a separate manager. Workgroups provide a means to give a specific user, the Workgroup Manager, visibility to the projects that have sales ownership by a subset of the account's users. This is a broader scope than a normal user (just their projects), but more restricted than having Global Sales Management rights (all projects).
- Admins and Global Sales Managers can assign any user to be a Workgroup Manager. A user can be a Manager for more than one Workgroup.
- Workgroup Managers are limited to only viewing projects on which they or a group member have a role (e.g. sales owner or other).
- Workgroup Managers can only view report content from projects where group members have an assigned role
- Workgroup Managers can only view users on his group(s), and can only assign project roles to users in his group(s).
- On Sales and Installs screens, under Sales Owner, Workgroup Managers has the choice of group names for which they are a manager.
- Admins and Global Sales Managers have the ability to select a Workgroup under Sales Owner to filter the Sales and Installs screens, and can specify a Workgroup as a filter for reports.
- Workgroup Managers may assign other workgroups to project roles on which a user in his workgroup is playing a project role. Admin user defines which, if any, workgroups that a workgroup manager may assign project responsibilities to.