Add a Smart Group

1. Sign in to Zoho Directory.
   
2. Click Groups, then click Add Group.
   
   
        
   
   
3. Enter a name for the new group.
   
4. Click  to set a profile picture. Enter a description for the group. These actions are optional.
5. Select Smart Group under TYPE. Click Continue.
   
        
6. Select the Allow Exemptions checkbox if you want to add users to the group manually after creating it. If left unchecked, you can only add a user by modifying the existing rules.
7. Define a smart condition by picking a criterion, a relationship, and a value from the respective dropdowns. You can also add more than one smart condition and set a proper logical combination to them to plan the order of execution. You can configure as many as 10 conditions per smart rule, and up to 4 rules for a smart group.
   
8. Set a role to the potential members. Click Save Rule.
   
   

   The role chosen at this step gets assigned to all the members of the group. You can later change the roles of the members individually from the Members menu.
9. Click Create Group.
   
        
   
   
10. If you haven't chosen the Moderator role in the earlier step, you'll be asked to choose a moderator at this step. Click View Participants, hover over the name of the member that you want to be the moderator, and click Convert to Moderator.
    
         
    
    
11. After creating a smart group, there are two ways to add more users:
    
1. By allowing exemptions without modifying smart rules - This is especially useful when you want to add only a few users, and there's no way to add them through another smart condition due to a lack of commonality.
   
2. By modifying smart rules without allowing exemptions - This is useful when you want to include users in bulk, especially when they exhibit some commonalities that could be factored into another smart condition.
   

Edit Group Rules

1. Sign in to Zoho Directory.
   
2. Click Groups. Click the smart group you want to modify the rules for.
   
3. Go to the Group Rules tab, then click Modify.
   
        
   
4. To modify an existing rule, click Edit below Conditions or Role. To add a new rule, click ADD RULE.
   
5. Make the desired modifications, then click Save Rule.
6. Click Update. The rules will be updated, and the number of potential members will also get processed shortly.
   

Note: Updating a smart group's rules is a sensitive action, so reauthentication is required once every five minutes.

Exemption Preferences

1. Sign in to Zoho Directory.
   
2. Click Groups. Click the smart group you want to modify the rules for.
   
3. Go to the Group Rules tab. You can update the exemption preferences from there.
   
1. Allow Exemptions → Deny Exemptions: Moving forward, you cannot manually add a member to this group. And, you can either remove or retain the existing manually added members.
   
2. Deny Exemptions → Allow Exemptions: Moving forward, you can freely add members to this group manually.
   

Exporting Members: Smart groups also offer a useful feature by which you're allowed to export manually added users in various formats, including CSV, XLS, XLSX, and VCF.

User Removal from a Smart Group

1. You can directly remove a manually added user from a smart group by hovering over the user in the Members menu and then clicking Remove.
   
2. To remove a user added through smart conditions is only possible by modifying those conditions.
   

Handling Org-Level Changes