Showpad Coach User Management: Grouping Best Practices

What is User Management?

User Management is the backbone of Showpad – a well-defined framework allows you to run an effective, scalable and sustainable training and coaching program at your organization!

User management is a process to facilitate desired user flows in Showpad via the below actions:

1) Provisioning and de-provisioning User Profiles (“Who”)
2) Managing Permissions Sets (“What”)
3) Creating and assigning User Groups (“How”)

This post focuses on the “how” of grouping best practices. Note: some of the methods below are supported by automated provisioning systems, and some are not. This focuses primarily on manual provisioning methods.  

Keep in mind, groups are made of users, so this system is dynamic and is not “one and done”. That said, Showpad makes it easy for you to update users and groupings throughout the training and coaching lifecycle. By setting up your groupings in a sustainable manner, you’ll avoid challenges when any large organization or hierarchy changes take place.

We recommend setting up groups in 3 ways, using your company’s team hierarchy as a starting point. 

•  By Team Manager, required for pitch/test scoring and reporting
•  By Role (and initiative, where applicable) for course assignment
•  By Reporting view (where applicable) for data slicing & dicing

1. Manager-team relationship 

Note: Managers will only see user data associated with the groups they expressly manage. Meaning, as long as you have managers assigned to their correct groups, it does not matter how users are assigned to courses - since they could be assigned courses as individuals, outside of a group! - the system will recognize the manager-group relationship to provide managers with visibility to their team's assignments, pitches and tests.

Tip: You can think of manager groups as a utility or a means to an end – for this reason, you do not need to assign courses via this group. 

• Benefits for Managers:
• Scoring pitches & tests in My Team
• Viewing reports and user insights in My Team
  
  

2. Role & Initiative-based groups for assignments

• Benefits of these groupings
• Assignment for specific team-based courses as well as:
• Initiative (New Hire Onboarding - 2020)
• Event or one-time training (SKO 2020, Methodology Training, etc)

3. Reporting-only Groupings

Tip: all assigned groups can be reported on and tracked in Showpad, regardless of which group is actually assigned to a particular course.  However, some customers may want to maintain groups just for reporting purposes. 

For example: regional teams (LATAM, EMEA, US) or regional & role teams (LATAM - Inside Sales).  

• Benefits of these types of groupings: 
• Create multiple dimensions for reporting within one group (e.g. Role & Region)
• These can be created as needed

We hope you find these tips helpful and encourage any feedback or questions in the comments. Happy grouping!