Groups are used to logically organize users with similar rights requirements. Groups simplify administration because you can manage a few groups rather than many user accounts. For the same reason, groups simplify troubleshooting. Users can belong to as many groups as needed, so it's not difficult to put users into groups that make sense for your organization.

You can create new groups for your users, and you can use the Windows 7 default local built-in groups. In both cases, your planning should include checking to see if an existing local group meets your requirements before you decide to create a new group.

For example, if all the users need to access a particular application, it makes sense to use the default Users group rather than creating a new group and adding all the users to that group. To work with groups, you can use the Local Users and Groups utility.

• Creating New Groups

  To create a group, you must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group. The Administrators group has full permissions to manage users and groups.

  As you do in your choices for usernames, keep your naming conventions in mind when assigning names to groups. When you create a local group, consider the following guidelines:

  • The group name should be descriptive (for example, Accounting Data Users).
  • The group name must be unique to the computer, different from all other group names and usernames that exist on that computer.
  • Group names can be up to 256 characters. It is best to use alphanumeric characters for ease of administration. Most special characters- for example, backslash (\)-are not allowed.

• Managing Group Membership

  After you've created a group, you can add members to it. You can put the same user in multiple groups. You can easily add and remove users through a group's Properties dialog box,

• Renaming Groups

  Windows 7 provides an easy mechanism for changing a group's name. For example, you might want to rename a group because its current name does not conform to existing naming conventions, or you may need to rename a group because the group's task or location may change.

• Deleting Groups

  If you are sure that you will never again want to use a particular group, you can delete it. Once a group is deleted, you lose all permissions assignments that have been specified for the group.