Audiences (User Groups) Overview
From a business perspective, audiences are subsets or segments of all your users. These groups are typically based on attributes such as registration status, department, role, or location.
From a technical perspective, an audience is a container for a set of users defined either manually or programmatically with associated metadata. In Creator Studio, audiences may appear dynamic when defined by filters, but not all audience types behave this way in the API context.
Audience Types
| Audience Type | Created In | Behavior | API Support | UI Editable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Static (snapshot) | Creator Studio | Manual, non-updating | Yes | No |
| Static (Manual IDs) | API | Manual, non-updating | Yes | No |
| SCIM (IPD Groups) | External Provider | Dynamic, auto-updating | Yes | No |
Audiences API
The Audiences (User Groups) API supports the provisioning and management of user groups using SCIM standard. These can be:
- Synchronized with external systems.
- Maintained directly through API operations.
- Referenced in Creator Studio to combine dynamic and static audiences.
The Audiences API only supports static SCIM-compliant audiences. These include:
- Audiences created via snapshot in Creator Studio.
- Audiences created by manually selecting or pasting user lists.
Although you may define an audience using criteria in Creator Studio, once saved as a snapshot or static list, it is not dynamic and will not update automatically. Any changes to membership must be made via the API.
In contrast, ID Provider audiences (created through the SCIM Groups API) are dynamic and managed outside Creator Studio. These can update automatically based on external identity provider changes and are editable via API—but not through the Creator Studio UI.
API Limitations
- Dynamic audiences cannot be created directly by the Audience API.
- You cannot create audiences based on user attributes (example role, location, etc.) You can only create an audience by passing a user ID. However, we explain a way of creating user attribute based audiences with an API flow in our use case example.
SCIM
What is SCIM?
SCIM is used by Single Sign-On (SSO) services and identity providers to manage people across a variety of tools and platforms, including Firstup. This means SCIM allows the users you have created in Studio to be recognised by other integrated systems and platforms.
For example, if your member experience is integrated in a platform shell, which also allows them to access their HR timesheet app, SCIM will recognise the same user for each of these applications.
Our SCIM implementation targets protocol SCIM 2.0.