In general, a Pulpstream group models an organization's department, smaller departmental subsection, or larger organizational division. In the Groups page, the groups and their subgroups are arranged in a hierarchy that reflects the organizational hierarchy.

 

When a new User is added to the system, the group they belong is specified. Indeed, that value is required in order to create a User record.

 

When a form is submitted, and a record is created, that record is "owned" by the group the form-submitter belongs to. (The exception is a form that has a Smart Object field of type Group. When that form is submitted, the record that is created belongs to the group that was selected in that field.)

 

A user can access all records owned by their group, and its subgroups. Additionally:

• Typical users cannot access any other record in the system--even if they have a link to it.
• A user who belongs to the "root" group (the highest-level group in the hierarchy), automatically has access to all records in the system, because that group contains all other groups within in.
• A user whose profile has Can View Records of All Groups permission also has access to all records in the system.  (That permission may be needed, for example, to produce comprehensive, company-wide reports.)

For designers, each role in a stream definition can be mapped to a group, in addition to the various other ways to specify which users who act in a given a role.