ABAC: Add audiences using audience rules

Overview

An audience rule creates audiences based on your integrated people data (e.g. Workday, Okta, Entra, etc.). When you create an audience rule, the system will generate audiences automatically according to specific conditions. 

The benefit of using audience rules is that you can create many audiences at the same time while leveraging an audience hierarchy when creating those rules. 

In this article, we provide step-by-step instructions on how you can create audiences using audience rules.

Who is this for: App managers, Audience managers

Jump to a section: 

• Creating an audience rule
• Update or delete your audience rules 
• Best practices  

When to use the audience rules method

There are multiple ways to create audiences. Audiences are customizable groups of users based on attributes like role, location, or specific individuals. 

We recommend using audience rules when:

• You want audiences to automatically update when new user profile data or attributes are added.
• You want hierarchical audience structures, such as Country > Department > Team.

Creating an audience using audience rules

To create an audience rule, follow these steps: 

Steps to create an audience rule 

1. Go to Manage > Audiences.
2. Click Audience rules > Create.
3. Select an unused existing category or create a new category from the dropdown menu.
4. Select the attribute type (e.g. Role, Location, Custom fields).
5. Add a condition (if applicable).
6. Click Next.
7. Review the audience, then click Create audiences. 
8. The system will create audiences for you. It may take a few moments to generate, during which time you’ll see a “Running” badge.
9. Your audience is successfully created when you see the audience folder in the Audiences main screen. 

You can have a single condition within your audience rule, or you can use multiple conditions. 

For example, you might create an audience rule with 2-3 conditions: 

• Division (Role) 
  • Department (Role)  
    • State (Location) 

Updating or deleting audience rules 

Note: Audience categories and rule-based audiences are system audiences, meaning they can’t be edited or deleted directly. To delete them, you must delete the audience rule first.

Delete an audience rule 

An audience rule can only be deleted. When an audience rule is deleted, audiences can be retained (then updated manually as needed) or deleted. If you need to update an audience rule, you have to delete the rule, then create a new one. Follow these steps to delete an audience rule: 

Steps to delete an audience rule:

1. From the left-hand navigation, go to Manage > Audiences.
2. Click Audience rules. 
3. Click on the ellipses (...) next to the audience rule you want to delete.
4. Select Delete, then Delete audiences or Keep audiences, depending on whether you want to keep the audience or not.  
5. Click Continue.

Best practices

1. Clean people data leads to clean audiences. We recommend syncing clean people data from your org’s HRIS. If the source people data is not accurate, it will lead to inaccurate audience hierarchies. 
2. Keep hierarchy levels simple and meaningful to avoid unnecessary audience duplication.
3. Use consistent names and categories for audiences to easily manage and locate them.