Groups are one of the central tools by which FlowJo automates sample analysis.  Groups are "sample surrogates" -- i.e., everything that you do to a group is automatically applied to every sample in the group.  By making a group "live" (via its attributes), and specifying analyses for the group, then you have completed the generation of automated sample analysis:  every time samples are read into the workspace, they will be added to the group (if applicable), and the gates and statistics (and other platforms) are automatically added and computed when needed.

The following pages are a short tutorial on using groups to automate sample analysis.