How to Better manage Parent Groups

[StacyWhetzell]

The User Membership of our working groups (where assignments, approvals, etc are made) is managed through our Catalog and Active Directory and works well - I'll call those "Assignment Groups (ASM)" for purposes of this discussion.

- All our ASM Groups have a "Parent" group.  Each Parent also has higher level Parent - all the way up to our CIO level.  The top level Parent Groups are considered "Level 1".  The Parent Group names are all the different Department Names.  

- Similarly, Parent Groups are "owned by" the Department Heads.   

- Currently we manage all Parent Groups and their associations manually.  This manual process is a BEAR when we start re-organizing.   I am searching for a way to automate. 

One approach I am considering (but open to suggestions) would be to (Step 1) find the Department Names/Managers who are direct reports to our CIO so as to create the top level (Level 1) of Parent Groups as per their Department Name and set the Owner field to be Dept Manager.

Repeat Step 1 until arriving at the first line supervisors

The First Line Supervisors will not be the Owners of any Parent Groups.  However, they will be the owners of all ASM groups

Hopefully the attached screen shot will help clarify?? 

Any Ideas are truly appreciated.

StacyLen

(my apologies that this is a partial overlap of an earlier post.  That earlier post got all discomboblated due to my updates being held for approval (something I had never seen before)

V/R

StacyLen 

[Its_Azar]

Hi there @StacyWhetzell 

Instead of trying to “derive” everything from sys_user_group alone, introduce a single source of truth for hierarchy. An existing hierarchy instead of hardcoding parents:

• Company / Department hierarchy (preferred if already maintained), or

• A small custom “Department Hierarchy” table if you need more control

Each department record should have:

• Department name

• Department head (manager)

• Parent department

This gives you your Level 1 → CIO → downwards structure without manual group edits.

u_department String / Reference Department name
u_manager Reference (sys_user) Dept head
u_parent_department Reference (same table) Hierarchy
u_level Integer Level (CIO = 1, etc.)
u_active True/False Re-org friendly

[StacyWhetzell]

This sounds very promising... I will look into this approach and circle back.  Thanks

[kaushal_snow]

@StacyWhetzell ,

check this out: https://snowunderground.com/blog/2022/11/30/servicenow-group-best-practices

If you found my response helpful, please mark it as ‘Accept as Solution’ and ‘Helpful’. This helps other community members find the right answer more easily and supports the community.

[StacyWhetzell]

That particular article says DO NOT USE PARENT GROUPS

hmmm...