A new target group can be created by clicking the Add Group button in the operation bar. A three-step wizard is displayed which will guide you through the process of defining a target group.
Figure 15: Defining a new target group step 1: Select Database and choose a Name and Description
In the first step you must indicate the database or directory you want to use for creating a target group. You can do this by selecting one from the dropdown menu. All connected databases and directories are listed in this menu. In the first step you can give the target group you are about to create a Name and a Description. The Name should be relatively short. The Description offers somewhat more space to indicate what the characteristics of the target group will be.
Figure 16: Defining a new target group step 2: Defining rules
The actual work of defining a target group is done in step two. In this step you define the rules that apply to the target group. The system presents a window in which you can make multiple rules. For example "all employees older than 40 and male". This is an example of a rule set.
Each row in this window consists of four fields:
| 1. | Attribute: the attribute that is the subject of the rule.
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| 2. | Inverse operand: this field only has two possible values: empty and 'not'. With this operator it is simple to select an opposite selection.
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| 3. | Operand: field that states the operation you can perform. The different operations you can perform are listed in a dropdown menu. These choices depend on the data type of the attribute.
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| 4. | Value: here you select or enter a value for the rule
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Rule based on dates
If the attribute is a date type, you can make rules based on dates. This can be done in an relative or absolute manner. The absolute manner is to define a target rule that defines that the date be prior to or after a fixed date. The user interface will show a calendar to select this fixed date.
The relative manner is to define that the date must be younger or older than a certain amount of days, weeks or years. The software will take the actual date to calculate the target group. This makes it relative easy to select recent records from a database. If, for example, I have a database where help desk calls are logged, I could easily define a project where I would continuously (every month) ask 100 persons who have had a problem over the last 14 days if these problems are solved. Every month, the system selects a new group of people in the database that fit this description.