CRM & Tech for The Small Business

Continuing our conversation about groups in Act!, let’s chat a bit about groups and subgroups – and how they relate to each other – or not.

The first matter to clear up right away about Act! contact groups is this: 
They do NOT offer ‘set’ and ‘subset’ functionality.  In other words, members in a sub-group or child group do not automatically become members of the parent group.

Here is an example: 

In your Act! database, you create 2 groups – Group 1 and Group 2. 

Group 2 is a subgroup of Group 1 and has three member contacts – Joe, Jimmy and Jenny. 

 Joe, Jimmy and Jenny will not be members of Group1 simply because they happen to be members of Group 1 ‘s sub-group, namely Group 2.  Does that help?  There is no automatic ‘roll up’ of membership between nested groups.

I know, it seems odd, but there you have it.

If you want members to ‘roll up’ from child to parent (and don’t forget – Act! groups can be nested 15 levels deep!), then you must define the group membership for each group accordingly, altering it to add or ignore members as you move up or down your group heirarchy.

Again, example:  Let us add a third group to our illustration from before, Group 3, which will also be a sub-group of Group 1 (and thus a ‘peer’ if you will of Group 2). 

Our business rule for Group 2 is that it’s members are contacts with a first name starting with ‘J’ – hence the three contacts: Joe, Jimmy, and Jenny.

Group 3′s rule is that we want contacts with ‘S’ names, so we end up with Scott, Shelby, and Skeezix.

At this point we have three contacts in Group 2, 3 contacts in Group 3 and none in Group 1, the parent group.  Reason?  We haven’t set up the membership rules (see my previous posting about dynamic groups and rules).

If we want these groups to present as a classic ‘set’ and ‘subset’ scenario, we now need to add rules to Group 1 that will include BOTH the ‘J’ names and the ‘S’ names.  After we do this, Group 1 will now have 6 members.

So, when it comes to Act! groups, there is no implied relationship between them.  The ability to nest groups is an organizational structure only.  The upside is that this scheme provides the greatest level of flexibility for using contact groups.  The initial downside is that you may need to rethink how you will use groups, but once you are clear on how they work, it is no problem.

Have a great day!

 Send me comments and suggestions for discussions that you would like to read:  blogger@winnovative.com

 M Scott Schaffernoth, ACC, SLXCE
www.winnovative.com
Twitter: @InsideSMBCRM
LinkedIn:  MScott Schaffernoth