{"id":501,"date":"2012-12-11T18:26:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T18:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/collaboriscom.wpengine.com\/?p=501"},"modified":"2023-03-09T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T12:41:35","slug":"what-is-the-difference-between-a-sharepoint-group-and-a-sharepoint-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.collaboris.com\/what-is-the-difference-between-a-sharepoint-group-and-a-sharepoint-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the difference between a SharePoint Group and a SharePoint Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

What is the difference between a SharePoint Group and a SharePoint Audience<\/h1>\n

What is a SharePoint Group?<\/h2>\n

A SharePoint group can be created by a user from within SharePoint and requires that user to manually add or remove users. A SharePoint group can also contain many Active Directory groups (which themselves can contain child AD groups).<\/p>\n

SharePoint groups are often used to make securing “things” in SharePoint easier. For example, if you want to secure 10 documents so that 300 users can see them, it’s easier to put the 300 users into a group and give the group permissions to the 10 documents. This way new users can be added to the group, without having to worry about the 10 documents. They will immediately gain access by being a member of the group.<\/p>\n

Want to know more?<\/h4>\n

You may find these posts helpful:<\/p>\n

How to create a SharePoint group<\/a>How to add users to the group<\/a><\/p>\n

What is a SharePoint Audience?<\/h2>\n

SharePoint Audiences are dynamically created based on a set of rules. If users meet the audience criteria they will automatically become a member of the audience. Audiences can be compiled regularly using a background SharePoint job. Every time the schedule ‘kicks off’ the Active Directory will be searched for users who meet the criteria and will be included in (or excluded from) the audience.<\/p>\n

This means that the audience membership can change over time, however each time the audience is compiled, only users who meet the specified criteria will be included. By using rules or criteria (assuming that your base information is kept up to date) it means that you can be assured that the right users are contained in the audience and that manual maintenance of audience members is not required.<\/p>\n

What are the differences?<\/h2>\n