Standard & Professional Plans: How do I set up Groups and Users?

Creating Groups in Sprout is a great way to streamline your user management. Groups ensure your profiles stay organized and that only the users who need access to certain profiles have the amount of access they need. After you set up Groups and invite users to your Sprout account, you can get more granular with Company and Feature Permissions to keep your team running smoothly.

This article contains the following sections:

• Overview
• Groups
• Professional Plan Only - Profile Permissions
• Inviting users
• Updating User Attributes
• Removing users

See this related article:

• User permissions

Overview

You want to ensure that your team members have the access they need to your Sprout account to post, report and manage content. But you also want to ensure that your team members don’t have too much access to features they don’t need. Sprout’s permissions are flexible, so you can toggle permissions based on exactly what each user needs.

Start by creating Groups that organize your social profiles together. Think of a Group as a way to put together profiles based on how your organization is set up. For instance, if you have an internal team that manages all of your Facebook profiles, you can create a Group and give the team access to it, rather than assigning individual profiles to each user.

After you create your Groups based on your organizational needs, you can configure user permissions. You can apply profile-level permissions to control who can publish, who needs approval and who can reply. 

Now users can only access their specific Groups, with their profile permissions, ensuring that your social networks stay on-brand, with the right messaging, handled by the right users. 

Groups

A Group in Sprout is a collection of related social profiles you can use to help organize your profiles. You can organize your profiles into groups based on how your business operates and grant team members access to Groups that contain specific profiles. Some best practices for setting up Groups include:

• Grouping social profiles by internal teams or organizations
• Grouping profiles according to language or location
• Grouping profiles to separately manage reporting for your clients 

To create a Group:

Note: You must have the Manage Permissions Company Permission to create Groups. 

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings > Groups & Social Profiles.
2. Click Create a group. The Create New Group popup opens.
   
   
3. Enter a name for your Group.
4. Select if you want to create a Group From New Profile or From Existing. 
• If you create a Group From New Profile, you’ll need to connect the profile.
• If you create a Group From Existing, select the profiles you want to include in the Group.
5. Click Proceed. The Group is created and you can start managing the profiles and users associated with it.

Professional Plans Only - Profile Permissions

Profile Permissions encompass any profile-specific permissions you’d like to assign for a user. These permissions focus on publishing to a profile directly, replying to messages and overall access to a single profile.

You set Profile Permissions when you invite new users to a Group and you can adjust these permissions at any time with the Manage Profiles Company Permission. 

The Profile Permissions are broken down as follows:

• No Access - the user can’t see the profile when they access Sprout.
• Read Only - the user can see the profile, but can’t publish to it.
• Needs Approval - the user can see the profile and submit posts and replies for approval.
• Can Reply - the user can see the profile, request approval and reply.
• Full Publishing - the user can see the profile, publish and reply without restrictions. 

Inviting users

After you create your Groups and assign the appropriate profiles to each, you can start inviting users to your Sprout account. To invite users:

Note: You must have the Manage Permissions Company Permission to invite users. 

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings > Groups & Social Profiles.
2. Click Invite a team member. The Invite Users popup opens.
3. Enter the user’s first and last name, along with their email address.
   
4. Repeat this process for as many users as you’d like to add.
5. Select Roles & Permissions to adjust any Profile Permissions and add users to groups.
6. Click Send Invites. The users you added receive an email invitation to join.

Updating User Attributes

For each user that you add in Sprout, the following personal information is tracked:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Initials
• Email address

You can update these personal settings for your users on an individual basis.

However, you also have the option to update user attributes in bulk via .CSV upload. Let's say your company is moving to a new email domain. Rather than individually updating all of your users, you can work with your Account Owner and Sprout Customer Success Manager to update user attributes in bulk.

Note: You must have an assigned CSM at Sprout in order to bulk update user attributes.

After your Account Owner reaches out to your Sprout CSM, your CSM provides a template for you to fill out with the requested user attribute changes. Once the template is complete, return it to your CSM who can then complete the process with Sprout's Support Team.

This workflow is only to bulk update existing user attributes, not to add or remove users.

Removing users

Before you remove a user from your Sprout account, it’s important to note that all Cases assigned to the user get reassigned to the Account Owner and any content the user had scheduled, added to the Sprout Queue or saved as a Draft remains active in Sprout. The procedure for removing users differs for in-app vs. out of app payers so follow the instructions for your situation.

Note: If you remove a user in the middle of your billing cycle, the seat remains open until the next billing cycle, so if you want to replace the user, you can.

For out of app payers:

If you decide you need to remove a user:

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings > Roles & Team Members.
2. Select the user you want to remove from the list.
3. Click . A confirmation message appears.
4. Click Remove. The user is removed from your Sprout account.

For in- app payers:

If you decide you need to remove a user:

1. Navigate to Account and settings > Settings > Roles & Team Members.
2. Select the user you want to remove from the list.
3. Click . A confirmation message appears.
4. You can remove only the team member or remove the team member AND the user seat from the plan. Removing only the team member keeps the user add-on on your plan so you can invite someone else later.