This article walks you through the benefits of using Smart Groups, as well as instructions on how to enable Smart Groups and manage Smart Groups settings for your company. Smart Groups are groups that contain all direct reports for a specific reviewer. As teams change, Smart Groups automatically update to reflect current group membership.
Note
The naming convention for Smart Groups is [First and Last Name]'s Team. These names are automatically generated and, like group membership, cannot be changed.
Why use Smart Groups?
Benefits for admins
Enabling Smart Groups decreases the manual work of managing team-specific groups in a company by automating the process. As teams change, these groups will automatically update- so admins don't have to worry about assigning someone to or un-assigning them from a group.
Additionally, the existence of Smart Groups means that account admins can filter data by Smart Groups to show information for everyone who reports to a specific reviewer. This data can be helpful in driving adoption and increasing engagement.
Benefits for reviewers
Smart Groups allow reviewers to easily pull information on, change settings for, and manage questions for their direct reports. With Smart Groups enabled, all reviewers in 15Five will have a group that contains their direct reports. That means that they can...
- Filter by their own Smart Group to pull reports that are specific to their teams.
- Ask Smart Group-specific questions to their direct reports.
- Filter the High Five feed to show only high fives given by or received by their direct reports.
- Edit group settings (including visibility settings and enabling/disabling priorities and company-wide questions) for all their direct reports at once.
Enable/disable Smart Groups
1. Click on the Settings menu at the upper right corner of your 15Five account.
2. Select 'Features' from the dropdown menu.
3. Click on 'Feature overview'.
4. In the 'Check-in' section, scroll down to 'Smart Groups' and toggle the button to "on" or "off".

Note
If Smart Groups were previously on, we suggest notifying all admins and reviewers prior to turning off Smart Groups. To avoid ghost questions appearing, Smart Group-specific questions should be removed before turning the feature off. These questions can be accessed through 'Manage questions'. Additionally, any groups that need to be manually created should be created before turning off Smart Groups. Forewarning other admins and reviewers gives them time to create questions and groups that need to continue to exist.
Configure Smart Group settings
1. Click 'Configure' next to 'Smart Groups'.
- 'Show all Smart Groups to admins' allows any 15Five account administrator to see and manage Smart Groups, even if the admin is not the reviewer of the group. We suggest that this is toggled on if the Smart Groups feature is on. If this setting is on, admins can see and manage all Smart Groups from the 'Manage groups' page, like they can with any other group.
Remember to click 'Save' after changing the settings.
- '@mentioning Smart Groups in High Fives' allows anyone in the company to @mention a Smart Group in their High Fives. This @mention feature works the same as mentioning a manual group does.
Remember to click 'Save' after changing the settings.
- The 'Disable Smart Groups' option has the same effect as toggling the 'Smart Group' feature completely off does. This essentially removes Smart Groups from appearing.
Remember to click 'Save' after changing the settings.
Check out these additional resources ⬇️:
Success Center article 🗒: 15Fives Dashboard: Submitted & Reviewed Reports
Success Center article 🗒: Create a smart group question queue
Webinar 👩🏾💻: Fine tune your 15Five set up using groups
Webinar 👩🏾💻: Transforming Managers into Effective Coaches