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Groups are reusable collections of employees. Create a group once, then select it wherever Windmill offers group selection. Open Company settings > Groups to browse the groups you can access.

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Why use groups

Use groups to target pulse surveys, choose review cycle participants, filter Analytics, and share resources such as skills. Groups can represent departments, committees, locations, or cross-functional teams beyond your reporting structure.

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Choosing a group type

Create group offers Manual, Smart, and Synced. SCIM groups arrive through identity-provider provisioning instead. A category is an optional label, such as Team, Department, or Region. You can choose a suggestion or enter your own. Categories don’t control membership: labeling a group Department doesn’t add employees from that department.

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Browsing groups

Search by name or filter by type. The list shows each group’s name, type, member count, source, and visibility. Use the column controls to show optional columns, including category and creator.
  • Company means the group is shared company-wide.
  • Restricted means access is limited by sharing settings. Admins and HR Admins retain access.
Open a group to see its full member list and, for a Smart group, its rules. Available actions depend on your access and the group type.

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Creating groups manually

1

Open Groups

Go to Company settings > Groups and select Create group.
2

Choose Manual

Select Manual, then Continue.
3

Name the group

Enter a name and optional category, then select Create group.
4

Add members

On the group page, select Add members. Choose employees, then select Add members to confirm.
Adding employees keeps the existing members. To remove someone, open their row’s actions menu and select Remove from group. You can also add or remove Manual-group memberships in the Groups section of an employee’s profile when you have edit access. Smart, Synced, and SCIM memberships appear there, but you can’t change them manually.

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Creating smart groups

Smart groups keep a reusable employee segment current as employee information changes. Configure the filters during creation.
1

Choose Smart

In Groups, select Create group > Smart > Continue.
2

Name the group

Enter a name and optional category.
3

Add membership rules

Under Membership rules, add employee filters. Review the rules before creating the group.
4

Create the group

Select Create group. Windmill calculates the matching membership.

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Choosing membership rules

The filters work like employee filtering in Analytics. Employees must match all filters you add. The editor supports a flat list of filters, without nested condition groups. For example, combine a Department filter for Engineering with a Job title filter to include only employees who match both. Only active employees are included. You can’t reference another group as a rule or manually add or remove exceptions. Change the rules or the relevant employee information instead.
To include everyone, leave the filters empty and explicitly select Include every active employee. This confirmation is also required when you remove every rule from an existing Smart group.

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Editing rules

1

Open the smart group

Find the group in Groups and open it.
2

Edit membership rules

Under Membership rules, select Edit rules and update the filters.
3

Save rules

Select Save rules to recalculate membership. If no filters remain, confirm Include every active employee before saving.

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Refreshing membership

Windmill refreshes Smart groups in the background after relevant employee changes, including profile updates, hires, archive or restore actions, and reporting-line changes. Nearby changes are batched together, and a periodic refresh helps catch missed updates. Updates aren’t instantaneous. Changes from an HR system must reach Windmill before they can affect group membership. If you have edit access, open Group actions > Sync now to recalculate membership using employee information already in Windmill. This doesn’t force your HR system to send fresh data.

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Syncing groups from integrations

Use a Synced group when another system already owns the member list. Syncing is one-way: source groups flow into Windmill, and Windmill groups aren’t pushed back.

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Choosing which groups to sync

1

Choose Synced

In Groups, select Create group > Synced > Continue.
2

Find source groups

Search the Sync integration groups picker. Check each group’s source and mapped employee count.
3

Select groups

Choose up to 100 groups per submission.
4

Sync the selection

Select Sync N groups, where N is the number selected. If some groups fail, the dialog keeps the failed selections available so you can retry them.
Only active employees mapped to people in the source system enter the roster. A source group can have more members than its Windmill group if some people aren’t mapped or are archived.

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What stays in sync

The source owns the group’s name and membership. Change them in the source system; you can’t edit them in Windmill. Windmill refreshes linked groups periodically. Freshness also depends on when the integration collects source data. With edit access, use Group actions > Sync now to refresh from source data already stored in Windmill. This doesn’t force a fresh fetch from the provider. If the source is no longer active, a refresh can archive the linked group. Restoring the source can make it available again.

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Supported integrations

Sources include Google Workspace, Microsoft (Outlook), Salesforce, Slack, and your connected HRIS (Human Resources Information System). Available group types depend on the integration. Slack groups are user groups, not channels.

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Managing SCIM groups

SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) lets your identity provider provision groups automatically. These groups appear when pushed to Windmill, without the Synced creation picker.
SCIM names and membership are read-only in Windmill. Rename the group or add and remove members in your identity provider, such as Okta or Microsoft Entra ID.
With edit access, you can still manage sharing and archive the group. Deleting a provisioned group through the identity provider archives it in Windmill. Future provisioning remains controlled by the provider. See Sync groups from your identity provider for setup instructions.

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Groups and permissions

Membership determines which employees belong to a group. Sharing determines who can view or edit it. Being a member doesn’t by itself grant permission to edit the group.

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Creating and managing groups

Creating groups and linking new integration groups require group-management permission. Admins and HR Admins have this permission in the standard roles. Other users can edit an existing group when granted Can edit access. This includes sharing and archiving, plus the actions supported by its type. It doesn’t make Smart, Synced, or SCIM membership manually editable.

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Viewing groups

New groups are company-visible by default. Manually created Manual and Smart groups are initially editable by their creator and group administrators. Source-created groups are initially editable by group administrators. Can view access exposes the group and its full roster. Viewers can select View sharing to inspect access settings without changing them.

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Sharing a group

1

Open sharing

Open the group and select Share.
2

Choose who has access

Configure access for people, groups, or reporting lines. Review general access for the company and managers too.
3

Set access levels

Choose Can view or Can edit, or remove a grant where appropriate.
4

Save sharing

Select Save to apply the settings.
To restrict a group, remove company-wide access and review the remaining grants. Grants add together: removing one doesn’t remove access provided by another, such as a manager or reporting-line grant.
Admins and HR Admins retain access to all groups, including Restricted groups. Their built-in administrative access isn’t a removable person row in the sharing dialog.
Sharing a group doesn’t automatically grant access to surveys, reviews, or reports that use it. Those features have their own access controls.

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Synced groups

Edit access lets you share or archive a Synced or SCIM group. Its source-owned name and membership remain read-only, including for administrators.

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Editing group details

With edit access, open Group actions > Edit group on a Manual or Smart group to change its name or category. Source-managed details for Synced and SCIM groups aren’t editable in Windmill. You can’t convert a group’s type. Create a separate group if you need a different way to manage membership.

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Archiving a group

1

Open the group

Find the group you want to archive. You need edit access.
2

Select Archive group

Open Group actions > Archive group.
3

Confirm the archive

Select Archive group in the confirmation dialog.
Archiving hides the group from normal active lists and selectors while retaining its stored record and memberships. It doesn’t delete employees.
Archiving a source-managed group in Windmill may not stop syncing permanently. A later integration sync or identity-provider update can reactivate it. Manage the source connection or provisioning for a lasting change.

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Using groups

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In pulse surveys

Choose groups when configuring a Pulse audience, such as a team check-in or onboarding cohort. Groups can overlap.

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In performance reviews

Use groups when choosing review cycle participants. Check the cycle’s participant list before launching.

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In analytics and sharing

Use groups in Analytics employee filters to compare segments. Where a feature supports sharing with groups, such as skills or 1:1 templates, grant access to the group instead of maintaining individual grants.
Each feature determines when it evaluates its audience. Changing a group’s roster doesn’t necessarily change an already-sent survey or an existing review cycle’s participants.

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FAQs

Yes. The same employee can belong to a department, a project team, and a pilot cohort.
Direct member changes require a Manual group and edit access. For Smart groups, change the rules or employee information. For Synced and SCIM groups, change the source system.
For a Smart group, first check that the changed employee information has reached Windmill. Allow time for the background refresh, or use Sync now with edit access. Review every rule: employees must match all filters. For Synced groups, check source data and employee mapping; Sync now uses data already collected by Windmill. For SCIM groups, check provisioning in your identity provider.
It may be archived or its sharing may not include you. Ask an administrator or someone with edit access to check. For an integration group that hasn’t been linked yet, an administrator can use Create group > Synced > Continue.
Admins and HR Admins retain access by design. Restricting sharing doesn’t remove their administrative permissions.
Archived employees disappear from active member lists and counts. Manual memberships are retained and can appear again when the employee is restored. Smart membership is recalculated against active employees, and integration refreshes rebuild Synced membership from active mapped employees.
Use Create group > Synced > Continue to select integration groups. SCIM groups arrive through identity-provider provisioning instead.
No. Group syncing is inbound only. Manual and Smart groups stay in Windmill.
No. Other groups aren’t available as Smart-group rules.
Use Archive group to remove it from active use while keeping the stored record. For a source-managed group, also manage its source or provisioning if you need it to stay inactive.