Employee Groups organize employees, normally based on values in their employee record. They can be used as filters applied to reports, geofencing, and clock prompts, and in some cases, they can be used to assign employees to a supervisor. This article explains the steps to create Employee Groups by using several examples that progress from simple to complex. You will also find instructions on editing a group in this article.

Both Client and Supervisor-level users have the ability to create Employee Groups in the TimeWorksPlus system. In WorkforceHub Plus and Time Plus, only Administrators can create Employee Groups.

To access the Employee Groups page, follow the click-path that matches your system:

• TimeWorksPlus: Maintenance Menu ⇒ Employee Groups
• Plus and Time Plus: Admin ⇒ Timekeeping ⇒ Group Setup (The page opens in a new browser tab.) 

If your site already has groups, the Add New Group button appears below the group list.

In addition to naming the group, you also have the option to make it visible to all managers or just yourself. If you make the group visible to all managers, supervisors will only see their assigned employees within that group. That's because a supervisor's employee visibility supersedes the group's membership.

There are four ways to populate an Employee Group, and they show up as radio options labeled as Who is in this group?:

• All active employees includes all current employees.
• All employees (including inactive) includes all employees, active and terminated.
• Specific employees allows you to pick, one-by-one, which employees are in the group.
• Select by criteria bases group membership on data in the employee record, like their Department.

 

Select by Criteria Examples

While the first three group selection methods are self-explanatory, using the Select by criteria option (also referred to as "Smart Groups") is best explained through examples. While it can be more complex than using the Specific employees option (which allows you to hand pick group members), Select by criteria is a much more efficient method since it automatically updates the group whenever an employee's record changes in a way that affects their group membership.

All the following Select by criteria examples start with the same six steps:

1. Click Add New Group.
2. Name the group.
3. Leave the "Who can see this group?" value to "Everyone". If you wanted to create a group for your own use, you can choose "Just Me".
4. For "Who is in this group?", choose Select by criteria. The page updates with dropdowns for setting criteria.
5. The dropdown following "For each" defaults to "employee", meaning the criteria will be applied to all employees — active and inactive. You can use that dropdown to restrict the group to just active or inactive as needed.
   

Group Select by Criteria Examples:

• Select by a Department
• Select by Multiple Departments Using "or"
• Select by Department and Location Using "and"
• Exclude Employees with Not Equal
• Using "contains" to Match Multiple Values
• Uppercase vs Lowercase "and/or"
• Using "Name" Fields in Criteria

Select by a Department

In this example, the Employee Group is determined by choosing employees with "Hardgoods" in their Department field. This example could be applied to any scenario where the group is based on one value in an employee record field:

6. In the dropdown that follows "include if…" (which defaults to "First Name"), select Department.
   
   
7. Leave the "=" dropdown as is.
8. Enter Hardgoods in the remaining field.
   
   
9. Click Save.

The group now includes any employee with "Hardgoods" in their Department field.

TIP: Watch Your Spelling

The values you enter in the criteria will be strictly applied, so if some employees have a typo or leading/trailing space in this field, it could affect their membership in the group (case is not a factor in evaluating conditions). For that reason, it's suggested to be consistent with your values in employee records; you should avoid using different terms for the same value, like "Operations" and "Ops", but there is a workaround based on the next example.

 

Select by Multiple Departments Using "or"

In the previous example, "Hardgoods" was chosen as a single department, but suppose you want to create an Employee Group that contains multiple departments? This example creates a group including employees in both the "Hardgoods" and "Shop" departments:

6. In the dropdown that follows "include if…" (which defaults to "First Name") select Department.
7. Leave the "=" dropdown as is.
8. Enter Hardgoods in the last field of your condition.
9. Click the Advanced button.
10. A new dropdown will appear with an ellipsis (…). Select or from that dropdown.
    NOTE: Don't worry about whether to use "or" or "OR", that will be explained later in this article. For this example, either version of "or" will work.
11. A second set of condition fields will appear. (You'll notice your first set is no longer a dropdown.) As you did in steps 7 through 9, you can choose to include employees from the second department using "Department = Shop".
    
    
12. Click Save.

This group now includes two sets of employees, those with "Shop" in the Department field as well as those with "Hardgoods".

TIP: Use this Method for Values with Different Spelling

This method could also be used as a workaround if you have variations in your employee record values. For example, you could use the "or" example above to include employees that have either "Operations" or "Ops" in their Department field.

Why Wouldn't I Use "and" Instead of "or"?

Most people assume that "and" would be used in this case because we want to include "Hardgoods" and "Shop" employees—but that's not the case. Think of it this way, in order to belong to the group, the employee could be in either "Hardgoods" or the "Shop"; their department can't simultaneously be both "Hardgoods" and "Shop".

 

Select by Department and Location Using "and"

The previous examples used a single field, Department, to determine the group membership, but in some cases, you may want to use multiple employee fields. In this example, the criteria select employees from the "Clothing" department at only the "Ketchum" location:

6. In the dropdown that follows "include if…" (which defaults to "First Name") select Department.
7. Leave the "=" dropdown as is.
8. Enter Clothing in the last field of your condition.
9. Click the Advanced button.
10. A new dropdown will appear with an ellipsis (…). Select and from that dropdown.
    NOTE: Don't worry about whether to use "and" or "AND", that will be explained later in this article. For this example, either version of "and" will work.
11. A second set of condition fields will appear. (You'll notice your first set is no longer a dropdown.) The first dropdown field (which will default to the field from your previous step, in this case "Department") needs to be changed to "Location".
12. Leave the "=" dropdown as is.
13. Enter Ketchum in the last field of your condition.
    
    
14. Click Save.

By using "and" you're are setting two conditions on who belongs to the group; the employee must have "Clothing" as their Department and "Ketchum" as their Location.

 

Exclude Employees with Not Equal Operator (≠)

So far, these examples have used the equal sign to match values from Employee Setup to the criteria, but there are other options for comparing values in your conditions. In this example, the group includes employees at the Hailey location, but excludes all employees with "Supervisor" in the "Title" field.

6. In the dropdown that follows "include if…" (which defaults to "First Name") select Location.
7. Leave the "=" dropdown as is.
8. Enter Hailey in the last field of your criteria.
9. Click the Advanced button.
10. A new dropdown will appear with an ellipsis (…). Select and from that dropdown.
    NOTE: Don't worry about whether to use "and" or "AND", that will be explained later in this article. For this example, either version of "and" will work.
11. A second set of condition fields will appear. (You'll notice your first set is no longer a dropdown.) From the first dropdown field (which will default to the field from your previous step, in this case "Location") change it to "Title".
12. Change the "=" dropdown to not equal "≠".
13. Enter Supervisor in the last field of your criteria.
    
    
14. Click Save.

The group will now include all non-supervisor employees at the Hailey location.

 

Using "contains" to Match Multiple Values with a Common String

The "=" sign, as mentioned earlier, looks for an exact match in the Employee Setup Fields, but you can be more flexible in your matching by using "contains" instead of "=". "Contains" searches for any matching string of characters within the Employee Setup value. In this example, hourly employees are classified as either "PT Hourly" and "FT Hourly" in their Employee Type field. By using "contains", we can very simply group the hourly employees while also excluding the "Salary" employees:

NOTE: Some images in this article of the employee record may not match your experience however, the feature still functions in the same manner.

6. In the dropdown that follows "include if…" (which defaults to "First Name") select Employee Type.
7. Change the "=" dropdown to "contains".
8. Enter Hourly in the last field of your criteria.
   
9. Click Save.

The group will include any employee that has "Hourly" anywhere in their Employee Type field.

 

Uppercase vs Lowercase "and"/"or"

When creating advanced criteria for an employee group, you probably noticed an uppercase and lowercase version of "and" and "or" (also referred to as Booleans). Either option can be used for criteria with two conditions, but once you set three or more conditions, the version you use makes a difference. The lowercase version groups conditions together and considers them as a set, in addition to any conditions using the uppercase versions.

There is an explainer in the system that you can view by clicking Advanced Custom Help, but here are two examples that illustrate their use.

Using Three or More Conditions with "AND" and "or"

Here's an example where the group includes employees from multiple departments at a single location.

The criteria have four conditions that can be divided into two parts:

• Location = Hailey AND By using the uppercase "AND" following this condition, the criteria requires that every employee in the group must have Hailey as their location.
• Department = Cashier or Department = Hardgoods or Department = Clothing The lowercase "or" groups the Department conditions into one group considered in addition to the location condition. Any Hailey employee belonging to one of these three departments will be in the group.

Another way of explaining this is by setting off the criteria with parentheses:

To summarize, you can better understand the purpose of the uppercase and lowercase versions of "and" and "or" by imagining parentheses around those conditions connected by the lowercase "and" and "or".

Using Three or More Conditions with "OR" and "and"

To further our explanation of the uppercase vs lowercase Boolean operators from the previous example, here's another example where the group includes a department from one single location in addition to employees from two other departments at any location.

• Department = Clothing OR Department = Hardgoods OR The uppercase OR dictates if the employee is part of the Clothing or Hardgoods departments at any location, they will be included in the group.
• Location = Stanley and Department = Operations The lowercase "and" means that these two conditions need to be considered together. It dictates that if the employee works at the Stanley location, they must also work in the Operations department to be included in the group. 

Another way of explaining this is by setting off the criteria with a parentheses:

To summarize, you can better understand the purpose of the uppercase and lowercase versions of "and" and "or" by imagining parentheses around those conditions connected by the lowercase "and" and "or".

 

Using "Name" Fields in Criteria

You'll notice in the dropdown for selecting fields from Employee Setup, there are options for "First Name", "Last Name", "First Last" and "Last, First".

These can all be used to include or exclude a specific employee. However, if the employee has a middle initial in Employee Setup, it can cause problems with the "First Last" and "Last, First" options. 

Here's an example of a group criteria setup to add a single employee, by "Name First Last", to those employees at the Bellevue location: Name (First Last) = Warren Miller or Location = Bellevue

This will only work if the employee does not have a middle name in their employee record.

If they do have a middle name, you could use the individual name fields like this: First Name = Warren and Last Name = Miller OR Location = Bellevue

Notice how an uppercase "OR" is necessary so that "Warren" and "Miller" are considered together and independent of the location condition.

 

Editing Groups

After you create a group, it is possible to modify them by selecting the group from the Employee Groups list. Once you are viewing the group criteria, you can:

• Delete a condition using the "Delete" link to the right of each condition.
• Add conditions with the Add additional criteria button.
• Delete the entire group with the Delete button.
  IMPORTANT: The system will not prevent you from deleting a group that is being used for supervisor employee visibility, geofences or filtered prompts. So be cautious when deleting a group.