Group

Get started with the RudderStack Group API call.

3 minute read

The group call lets you link an identified user with a group like a company, organization, or an account. You can also record any custom traits associated with that group like the company name, number of employees, etc.

An identified user can be linked to multiple groups.

Sample payload

Here is a sample payload for the group event after removing the Common fields:

{
  "type": "group",
  "groupId": "5e8a78ba9d32d3b1898a6247",
  "traits": {
    "name": "Hooli",
    "industry": "Technology",
    "employees": 4500,
    "plan": "basic"
  }
}

The corresponding event that generates the above payload via the JavaScript SDK is:

rudderanalytics.group("5e8a78ba9d32d3b1898a6247", {
  name: "Hooli",
  industry: "Technology",
  employees: 4500,
  plan: "basic"
})

Group fields

The group call has the following fields in addition to the Common fields:

Field	Type	Presence	Description
`groupId`	String	Required	Your group’s unique identifier which lets you identify the group in your database.
`traits`	Object	Optional	Includes the traits of the group such as `name`, `email`, `employees`, etc. For more more information, check the Traits section below.

The field names can change slightly depending on the SDK. However, the functionality remains the same.
See the SDK-specific documentation for the implementation specifics and details on the above fields.

Identity data (user traits) will be automatically added to group calls from the most recent identify call, so you do not need to add it manually. This information will be included in a traits object in the context fields of the payload. Note that group calls also automatically handle anonymousId values associated with the user.
See our Identify doc for more details.

Traits

Traits are additional information included in a group call that adds more context to the group. Some example of traits include the number of employees, name of the industry, or the website of the group.

RudderStack has some reserved traits that it handles in special ways. These are listed in the table below:

Trait	Type	Description
`id`	String	Fallback parameter used only for mapping data if `groupId` is not available in the event payload.
`name`	String	The group name
`email`	String	The group's email address
`phone`	String	Phone number associated with the group
`address`	Object	The group's street address. This can optionally contain any or all of the following fields: `city` `country` `postalCode` `state` `street`
`industry`	String	The name of the industry that the group is a part of
`createdAt`	Date	Date of the group's account creation. We recommend using the ISO-8601 date string format.
`description`	String	The group's description
`employees`	String	Number of the employees in the group. This is typically used for companies.
`plan`	String	The plan that the group is subscribed to
`website`	String	The group's website
`avatar`	String	URL of the group's avatar image

Different destinations recognize some of the above data points differently.
With RudderStack, you don’t have to worry about these inconsistencies across destinations. Our open source destination transformer code handles these destination-specific conversions automatically.

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