Workgroup Administration

Owned by Alecia Elia (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 30, 2024 by Will Rensmith
5 min read

Overview

Workgroups are sets of users who work together and perform common business functions. Many of the detail pages in nVIRO allow the assignment of an item (such as a submission) to a workgroup and a user. 

Workgroup membership in combination with security group roles impact the effective permissions that a user has in the system. See Security Groups for information on security role scope and workgroups.

Searching Workgroups

To manage workgroups, navigate to Admin > Workgroups.

The Workgroups list page is displayed with all workgroups. Narrow down the displayed list by using one or more of the filter fields: Workgroup Name, Boundary Type, Supervisor Name, or Status.

Adding a Workgroup

On the Workgroups list page, click the Add New Workgroup button.

To add a new workgroup, a workgroup name and boundary type are required. See Workgroup Fields for more details about each field.

Workgroup Fields

The following fields are available on the Edit Workgroup page:

Field

Description

Workgroup Name

The name of the workgroup, which must be unique.

Supervisor

This is an optional field that indicates the supervisor of the workgroup. The supervisor name is available as a document template merge field and is also is available as a notification recipient for any notification that is sent to the item's assigned user or processor. Note: selecting a user as a supervisor does not automatically make them a member of that workgroup; if you want them to be a workgroup member, you'll need to add them to the workgroup separately.

Boundary Type

Options are Statewide, By County, or By HUC.

  • Statewide is for groups that are not bounded by a county or HUC.

  • By County allows the workgroup to be specific to a single or multiple counties. This can be used to route newly received applications to the correct county-level workgroup based on the geographic location of the site or the facility referenced on the submission form. This is done automatically by a background process in nVIRO that cross-references the site location with the appropriate workgroups based on the site coordinates or the site county.

  • By HUC allows the workgroup to be specific to a single or multiple HUCs (Hydrologic Unit Code).

Workgroup Users

The list of users assigned to the workgroup.

Status

Indicates whether the workgroup is active or inactive. A workgroup cannot be deleted after it has been created—it must be inactivated instead. Inactivating a workgroup prevents the workgroup from being assigned to items in nVIRO.

Editing the List of Workgroup Members

From the Workgroups list page, click Open for the workgroup you want to update. The Edit Workgroup page opens.

  • To add a user, type and select their name at the bottom of the Workgroup Users list.

 

  • To remove a user, find them in the Workgroup Users list and click the Remove button (x) that corresponds to their name. 

Workgroups may also be added or removed from individual users from the User Detail page.  See User Management form more information.

Assigning Roles to a Workgroup

If automatic assignment of tasks based upon is desired, upon adding a user to a Workgroup, they can also be assigned a Role. Workflow tasks that are configured for assignment based on role will be assigned to the person assigned to the corresponding role.

In the example below, if a workflow template contains a task to be assigned to the Permit Engineer, when the workflow is added to a record, the role assignment is based on the primary processor’s workgroup. Thus, if the record is assigned the NW Region, the workflow task is assigned to Sally; if the if the record is assigned the NE Region, the task is assigned to Aisha.

To assign roles to a workgroup:

  • Navigate to the workgroup.

  • The workgroup page displays:

    • Name - User Name

    • Role - If a user has a specific agency role, this will be stated here

    • Edit Role button - This provides for adding or editing the user role

  • Click Edit Role (Default is Unassigned)

  • Select from the dropdown list the Role to assign to the User.

A Role needs to be configured in the Role Types lookup to be available for selection.

  • Workflows tasks that specify a role assignment will now be assigned to the user designated with the corresponding role.

Workgroup Change Impacts

If a workgroup is changed on a parent record (submission, evaluation, etc.) any incomplete role-based tasks are automatically reassigned to the user in the new workgroup that has the corresponding role.

Workgroup Status

A workgroup can be marked as active or inactive by changing the status accordingly.

Copying a Workgroup

When creating a new workgroup that is similar to an existing workgroup, it can be convenient to make a copy of the existing workgroup and then make some changes rather than starting from scratch. This can be done as follows:

  1. On the Workgroups list page, click the Copy button for the existing workgroup. This opens the Copy Workgroup page and creates a new workgroup with the same Supervisor, Boundary Type, and Workgroup Users as the original workgroup; however, the name of this new workgroup is blank.

  2. Enter a name for the new workgroup. 

  3. Make any desired changes to the other fields on the page (such as editing the list of workgroup users).

  4. Click Save to save the new workgroup.

Deleting a Workgroup

A workgroup can be deleted if it is not referenced anywhere (e.g. set as a default workflow on a form or project, or assigned to any record). If a workgroup is unreferenced, a Delete option will appear on the Workgroup List page’s context menu for a workgroup row.