Groups (People & Permissions)

Genesys Cloud has two distinct group systems that serve completely different purposes. This page covers Directory Groups — the groups used for access control, role assignment, queue membership, and communication. Do not confuse these with Work Teams (WFM-specific groupings) or group workspaces (document sharing). All group management lives under Admin → Directory → Groups.

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1. Two Types of Groups

Genesys Cloud has two fundamentally different group types, each with distinct behavior and use cases.

General Groups

Manual or rule-based groups used for communication, role assignment, and directory organization.

When to use general groups:

Skill Expression Groups

Dynamic groups whose membership is automatically managed by the system based on ACD skill and language proficiency conditions.

Example skill expression:

📌 Key distinction: General groups are managed by admins or rules based on profile data. Skill expression groups are managed entirely by the ACD skill engine based on skill assignments. Use skill expression groups when your queue membership should automatically track skill levels.

2. Group Limits

3. Group Membership — General Groups

Manual (Individual) Membership

Add users one at a time via the group's Membership tab.

Admin → Directory → Groups → select group → Membership tab → Edit → Individuals tab → search and add

📌 Members added individually are not affected by changes to membership rules. Manual additions are permanent until explicitly removed.

Automatic Membership Rules

Rules automatically add or remove members based on profile data and org hierarchy relationships.

Admin → Directory → Groups → select group → Membership tab → Edit → Inclusions tab → define rule

Owners vs. Members

📌 When you create a group, you are automatically its owner. If you create a group on behalf of someone else and don't want editing rights, remove yourself as an owner after creation. If you remove yourself as owner, you lose editing rights unless you have the Directory > Group > View and Directory > Group > Edit permissions assigned to your role.

4. Group Membership — Skill Expression Groups

Admin → Directory → Groups → Skill Expression tab → select group → Membership tab → Build Skill Expression

Membership is built by defining conditions using ACD skills and language proficiencies with relational operators (greater than, equal to, greater than or equal to, etc.) and logical operators (AND, OR).

⚠️ Skill expression groups are dynamic. If you modify an agent's ACD skill assignments or proficiency ratings, their membership in any skill expression group that references that skill updates automatically within approximately 1 minute.

5. Assigning Roles to Groups

One of the most powerful uses of general groups is bulk role assignment. When you assign a role (with a division) to a group, every current and future member of that group inherits that role scoped to that division automatically.

Admin → Directory → Groups → select group → Roles tab → Assign Roles → select role → select division → Save

📌 Best practice: For large teams with shared permissions (e.g., all Monterrey supervisors), use a group + role assignment instead of assigning roles to each user individually. This dramatically reduces maintenance overhead when staff changes occur.

6. General Group Types: Official vs. Social

When creating a general group, you designate it as Official or Social. This affects how users can search and filter groups in the directory.

7. Groups and Chat Rooms

📌 If you create test groups or temporary groups, be aware that their associated chat rooms persist indefinitely even after the group is deleted.

8. Limits & Operational Notes

Quick Comparison: General vs. Skill Expression Groups

Last verified against Genesys Cloud Resource Center – March 2026