Member Groups

This function gives you the ability to organize members into groups - such as 'Board of Directors', 'Volunteer Committee', etc. These groups are independent of membership levels - they can include members from different levels.

These groups can be used in a number of ways:

• Keep track of member participation in committees
• Quickly selecting a group of members - e.g. to email them. (This is done via Advanced search - Members)
• Create a website section restricted to a particular group (See: Website Pages with Restricted Access)

Creating groups

To create a group and manage its membership, go to Settings -> Membership -> Group Management.

The summary screen lists the groups and a count of participants.

To delete a group, click the "Remove" link next to it. This only removes the group; all of the members are untouched.

To add a new group, click on [Add new group]. This brings up the group details page.

Here you can enter name for the group and a brief description of the group (optional). To save the group, click on [Save] button at the top of the page. Clicking the [Cancel] button returns the administrator to the Group management page and does not save any information.

Editing a group

To manage a group, click on the name of the group in the summary screen. This brings up the Edit group screen, where you can also edit the group name and description.

The screen also displays a list of members of the group, with links to their profiles.

Click on [Manage Participants] at the bottom of the screen to add or remove members from that group. The Manage participants page can also be accessed by clicking [Manage Participants] at the top of the Group Management page. On the Manage participants page you can select the group you want to manage from the drop down list. Members can be added and removed from the group using the [Admit Selected] and [Dismiss Selected] buttons at the bottom of the page.

Group Participation

Defining whether members can view and change their group participation

Group participation details for each member are stored in a special system field - 'Group participation'
Settings for this field can be adjusted similarly to other fields via Member database customization:

Here are the main ways you can set up Group participation control:
1) Member access: No access. In this case only administrators will be able to see and change Group participation for each member.
2) Member access: View only. In this case members will see their groups via their profile - but can not change it. This is the most common setup in our experience.
3) Member access: Edit. In this case members can see AND freely change their group participation:

If they have been given the right to edit Group participation in their application, they can join a group when they apply for membership to your organization.

Group Participation Management by site administrators

At the top is a drop down box listing all the Groups that have been created. You can switch between groups by selecting a new one from the list.

Below that are two boxes. The one on the left contains a list of members that belong to the Group. To the right is a list of all members of the organization. To join a member to a group, select their name from the list of all members and click the "Admit selected" button. You can select multiple members by clicking on their names while holding down the "CTRL" key on your keyboard. There is no limit to the number of groups that a member can belong to.

To remove a member from a group, click on their name in the Participants box and click the [Dismiss selected] button.

Clicking on the [Save all changes] button at the top of the page will save the Group. Clicking [Cancel] will bring back the Group management page.

Administrator can also edit group participation for a particular member via that member profile (See View and edit memberships):

In each contact card there is a section called "Group participation" under the Membership tab. When viewing the profile, all the groups that member belongs to are shown as a link. Clicking on the link brings up the Edit groups screen. Clicking the [Edit] button lets you edit the Group participation for that member.

When editing the profile, a list of all groups is displayed with checkboxes next to them. Selecting a checkbox assigns the member to that group when the profile is published. Deselecting a checked checkbox dismisses the member from that Group.

A member can also be added to a group via their profile or by an import.

When bulk importing members via a spreadsheet, they can be assigned to a Group by entering the Group names in the column called "Group Participation".

(See: Import Guide)

Controlling access to web pages by group

Website pages can have their access restrictions applied to a Group instead of membership levels. This allows web pages to be created for the use of a specific set of members
regardless of their membership level. To set access level to a Restricted Access Section (RAS) page by group(s) go into Page Management and select the appropriate RAS page:

Click [Selected Groups] and then select all the groups that should have access to the RAS page.

NOTE You can only limit access based on either membership levels or groups, not both simultaneously. In above example only members in the "Board of directors" or "Elite" groups will have access to Member-only section page (and its sub-pages) irrespective of the member level. See also Website Pages with Restricted Access

Searching members by their group participation

Groups can be used for searching and filtering members (e.g. to select an email a particular group)

One of the criteria you can choose from is called "Group Participation" (or whatever the field name is defined as on the Database fields screen), and displays a list of Groups.

For more information see Advanced search - Members.