Changing the group observers for multiple groups

Question 

On the groups page, the Observers field requires manually checking or unchecking roles to make changes. This can take up a lot of time (especially on setting up a new user with numerous groups). Is there an easier way to do this?

Environment

All versions of xMatters

Answer

Currently, the only way to make changes to a group's observers in the web UI is either by checking Observed By All on a group's page, or by unchecking it and manually selecting individual roles.

Another way to update a group's observers is via a POST request using the xMatters REST API through an application like Postman, Insomnia, cURL, or programmatically if you prefer.

To update a group's observers using the REST API:

1. Use GET /groups/{groupId} to retrieve the ID of the group you want to update. For more information on how to do this, see Get a group in our xMatters REST API documentation.
   
   In this example, the group's name is Recursively:
   ​​
2. Complete a POST request to update the Observers field with the desired roles. Make sure to set observedByAll to false, and specify an array with the roles you want as Observers. The roles you specify must be valid roles in your system. For more details on the parameters, see Create a group.
   
   
   Note: We strongly recommend testing this on your Non-Prod environment first. Once you are confident with the results, then update it on your Production instance.