Groups

Ok, full disclosure;  'Groups' have a few caveats and would likely only benefit large organisations with lots of staff, roles and seats. If this isn't you, save your eyeballs and possibly check out Teams instead. 

Still reading? 
Great! Welcome. 
Let's get stuck in: 

What are Groups? 

We know you know what groups are, but in the realm of Autodesk, they can be used to combine clusters of staff with similar requirements, into a single category, so that you can assign access to them all at once. 

Eg. You could have a group of Architects and automatically assign them all an AutoCAD and a Revit license each. 

This saves time by not having to assign users one by one and can help you track usage data on a group level. 

How are Groups different to Teams

We have written a whole article here on Teams if you'd like to dig deeper, but on a surface level, a team is a cohort of staff that might operate under a certain subsidiary company, project, location or other characteristic, not defined by software requirements alone. 

You create groups within a team and can have multiple groups within a team, but it is a hierarchy, so it doesn't work the other way around. The group is also managed by the Primary admin or secondary admin assigned to the team the group sits within. 

In short, Teams are for company structures groupings and Groups are for managing software assignment for staff with similar roles.

Watch out for: 

There are few things to keep in mind when looking to implement Groups: 

• Groups are fairly rigid in that you can't unassign a person from a product within the 'By User' area of the portal as you normally would, you will need to remove the user from the group first before being able to make changes. 
• Any of the 'cloud' based tools such as ACC (Autodesk Construction Cloud), BIM products or ShotGrid to groups. Hubs may be more helpful for these products to manage groups of projects. 
• Also please keep in mind that Autodesk has completely switched to a single user per license model, so groups is not the same as the old Network licenses and so, can't be shared. 

How to set up Groups - Part 1

1. Log into your portal - manage.autodesk.com
2. Navigate to 'User Management" and click on 'Groups'. 
3. Click 'Create Group' and give it a name. 

Tip: Make sure you have selected the correct team from the drop down menu if you are using multiple teams. 

Adding Users to Groups - Part 2

1. Within the User Management head to 'User Management' then 'By Group'. 
2. Select the group you want to add a user to
3. Click 'Add Users then select the correct person from the list. *
4. If they are a brand new user, try these steps. or click 'Import' to upload a list of users via CSV file. **
5. Done! 

Tip: Make sure you have enough seats available for the number of users you are assigning seats to. 

If you need to free up additional seats, you can review the Usage Data to find out which users you can unassign and redistribute seats from before making additional purchases. 

*Add by user

** Import CSV file

Assign products to the Group members - Part 3

1. Within the same 'By Group' area, select your group with your members now added in. 
2. Click 'View Assignments' and you should see your list of available seats under ' Not Assigned'
3. Select the product/s you want to assign and, well... click 'Assign'.

Tip: You can also rename and delete groups. If you delete a group, it still retains all users product assignment and access after the group has been removed. 

Done! 

So as you can see, the setup is quite simple and straightforward, but it may not be an applicable tool for your business. If you find yourself repeatedly assigning the same group of people to the same software, then hopefully these few steps can save you a bunch of valuable time.