Audiences

An audience is a set of rules about participant profile fields (for example, “Department = Sales”). Linked to a group, it automatically adds whoever matches that profile - without an administrator having to build the list by hand.

How it works

An audience is made of rules, one per profile field. A person belongs to the audience when their profile meets all the rules (AND across different fields); within a single rule, matching any one of the selected values is enough (OR across values of the same field).

Only profile fields that are locked for participants (the field’s “Admins Only” option, under Institution > Profile) can be used in rules - the twelve custom fields (custom1 through custom12), State and City. A field the participant can edit themselves cannot become an audience rule, because the person could join or leave the group on their own just by editing the field.

While an audience uses a field, that field cannot be unlocked - the institution must remove the rule first.

Creating an audience

On the Groups screen, click Audiences and then Create New Audience. Fill in:

Audience Name - a short name so administrators can identify the set of rules. Visible only to administrators; participants never see the audience name.
Description - an internal note, visible only to administrators.
Rules - the Rules section lists, one by one, ALL the profile fields that exist in the institution (the twelve custom fields, State and City). Each field already locked for participants appears with its own values field: if it has a predefined list, select one or more; if it is free text, type a value and click Add (repeat to add more than one) - leaving a field empty simply creates no rule for it. A field that is not yet locked appears only with a warning in place of the selector, with no values field.

Create Audience form, with Audience Name, Description, and the Rules section showing the locked Company field with the value Sales added

An audience needs at least one filled-in rule. If no profile field is locked for participants yet, every field in the Rules section appears only with the warning - lock at least one field under Institution > Profile first.

Linking to a group

On the group’s Configuration tab, the Audience field lists the audiences already created. When you choose one and save, two options appear:

Audience members only - unchecked by default. With the option unchecked, the audience only adds people to the group; anyone already in the group for another reason is never removed by it. When checked, whoever stops meeting the rules is removed from the group automatically, and the enrollments the group had made for that person in its classes are cancelled - direct enrollments or those made by another group continue.
Apply now - appears after the audience is saved on the group. It runs an immediate sweep of all the institution’s participants against the audience’s rules. Before applying, a confirmation window shows how many people currently meet the rules and how many will be added and removed; on confirming, the process runs in the background and an email lets you know when it finishes.

A group enabled for divisions cannot have an audience - they are two automations that do not combine. The special All Participants group, managed by the platform, does not accept an audience either.

When someone joins or leaves the group

Besides Apply now, the audience acts automatically at these moments:

The person is registered with a profile that already meets the rules.
The profile is saved (by the administrator or, if the field is not locked, by the participant themselves - but remember that only locked fields can become rules) and starts meeting, or stops meeting, the rules.
The person is reactivated. A deactivated account never joins a group through an audience, even if it meets the rules - joining only happens when it becomes active again.

In every case, joining the group also enrolls the person in its classes, exactly as joining manually does - see Managing groups.

Restricting a class to an audience

A public class can be linked to an audience. On the class’s Configuration tab, pick the audience in the Audience field and save. Right after you pick it, the text “People currently matching this audience:” appears, followed by a number.

Class Configuration tab with the Audience field filled in and the People currently matching this audience text

From then on:

Only people who match the rules see the class in the list of available classes and can enroll in it themselves.
Anyone already enrolled keeps normal access, whether or not they match.
Enrollments made by administrators, by groups or through the integration API do not change.
Someone who does not match and opens the class’s direct link sees the message “This class is restricted to a specific audience, and your profile does not match it. Contact your institution’s administrator if you think this is a mistake.” and no enrollment is created.

Leave the field as None for no restriction. Only institution administrators can link or change a class’s audience; an institution class administrator sees the field but cannot change it.

Certificate by audience

On a content’s Details tab, the Certificates by audience section links each audience to a certificate template (see Certificate templates). When a participant’s certificate is generated, the first item in the list whose audience they currently match applies; use the arrows to set the order. A participant who matches none gets the certificate configured normally for the content.

If the institution allows details on classes, the class’s Details tab has the same section, and the class’s items apply before the content’s items. Only institution administrators can add, remove or reorder these items. The step-by-step, and the full order in which the platform picks the certificate, are in Online customization and issuance of certificates.

Audience filter on the Dashboard

The Dashboard has an Audience filter next to the Group filter. With an audience selected, every number and chart counts only the people who match its rules. See Administrative Dashboard.

Administrative Dashboard filter bar, with the Audience dropdown next to Group

Mandatory trainings

An audience can also define the mandatory trainings of the people it gathers: contents that all of them must have completed. They feed the Compliance Matrix on the Dashboard.

On an audience that already exists, the Mandatory trainings section lists the required contents. Each one shows its validity (for example, “Validity: 365 days”, or “No validity - the certificate never expires”), and when the content has been updated, the text “Currently taken as:” shows the version the person takes today.

Required trainings section of an audience, with two required contents, the validity of each, the Remove buttons and the Content to require field

Add: click Add mandatory training, choose the content in the Content to require: search field and confirm.
Remove: click to remove and confirm in the dialog. If no other audience requires that content, its exemptions are revoked too.

These changes are saved immediately, not with the audience’s OK button.

If no profile field is locked for administrators, the section shows a notice: first configure a field in Institution > Registration with the “Administrators only” option, because audiences are built from those fields.

Expected annual workload

With mandatory trainings on, the audience page also has the Expected annual workload section: how many training hours each person in the audience is expected to complete per year.

Set: choose the Year (the previous, the current or the next one), type the hours in the Expected hours in the year (e.g. 40) field and click Set expected workload. Hours accept decimals with a comma (for example, 37,5) and must be between 1 and 8760. Setting it again for a year that already has a value replaces the previous value.
Remove: click to remove the year’s row and confirm in the dialog.

Expected annual workload section of an audience, with the “2026: 60 h” line and the Remove button, the year selector, the Expected hours in the year field and the Set workload button

Each year that is set appears as a row, for example “2026: 40 h”. Like the mandatory trainings, these changes are saved immediately, and only institution administrators can set or remove them.

What the person sees

In Tracking my development, people who match the audience’s rules see, when they pick a year, a line such as “12h of 40h expected in 2026 - Sales” (hours done, hours expected, year and audience) with a progress bar. The hours done are the registered workload of the content items completed in that year, and each content item counts once per year, even if it was completed again or in another class. If the person matches more than one audience with a workload in the same year, the highest one applies.

To follow everyone at once, use the Expected annual workload row on the institution’s Reports tab. See Generating reports.

Rules

The audience name is unique within the institution.
An audience in use by one or more groups, classes or certificates by audience cannot be deleted - remove it from those places first.
A profile field used in a rule cannot be unlocked for participants while the rule exists.
A group enabled for divisions cannot have an audience, and vice versa.
Turning off Allow Audiences on the institution hides the audience button and fields, but deletes nothing - the rules and links stay stored and reappear when the option is turned on again.

When to use

Departments, job titles or units that already exist as a profile field and change often - the enrollment follows on its own when someone changes area.
Onboarding: the person lands in the right class straight from registration, with no manual step.
Recertification by profile: with Audience members only checked, whoever stops meeting the criterion (for example, changed job title) leaves the group and has the enrollment in that class cancelled automatically.