# Groups

A group is a name for the people who do a kind of work -- Site leads, Night shift,
QA -- so you can assign a task to the role instead of to three individuals.

## Why bother

Because people change and workflows should not have to.

Assign a task to a group and it belongs to **whoever is in that group at the time
the task is worked**. Someone joins the team, you add them to the group once, and
every task that group holds becomes theirs -- including on
[checklists](checklists.md) already in progress. Nobody edits a workflow.

Assign the same task to three named people and you are editing workflows every
time somebody joins, leaves or changes team.

## Creating and editing one

Groups are managed from inside the [builder](building-a-workflow.md), next to the
task you are assigning: select a task, then the link beside the **Assigned to**
label. It reads **Create a group** until your organization has one, and
**Manage groups** after that.

The modal lists every group in your organization. **New group** asks for a name
and its members; **Edit** changes either; **Delete** removes the group.

Each group also carries a short key, like `sr-devs`, generated from its name.

## Groups belong to the organization

A group defined while editing one workflow is available in every workflow. As the
modal puts it: anything defined here shows up in every task's assignee box, in
this workflow and the rest.

There is no per-workflow group.

## Deleting one

Deleting a group removes it from every task that was assigned to it. Those tasks
do not break -- they fall back to being assigned to whoever else was on them, or to
[anyone](assignment.md) if the group was the only assignee.

Worth checking what a group is holding before you delete it.

## Next

- [How assignment works](assignment.md)
- [Building a workflow](building-a-workflow.md)