Characteristic Smart Groups

Smart Groups represent the most powerful way to use your Members360° database.  Using Smart Groups, you can define subsets of members based on almost any criteria you can imagine.  For example, you can define a group that consists of a specific member type, or of members that have joined within the last 60 days, or members that have a specific company size and state.  You can then use these groups as a basis for email lists, reports, advanced searches, and more.

Creating a new Smart Group

To create a new Smart Group, follow the instructions below.  You can also see some examples of Smart Groups underneath these instructions.

  1. Navigate to Members > Groups.

  2. Click add smart group in the upper right.  You will be taken to the page shown below.

  3. Give your new Smart Group a name.  (You can change the name later if you need to.)  Try to make the name indicate which members will belong to the group - for example, Affiliate Members or Members expiring in two months.

  4. If you wish for other administrators to be able to use this rule, check off allow other admins to view and modify this group.  If you do not check this option, then the rule will be private for your use only.

  5. You need to set up the Condition Group 1 so that it contains the conditions a member must match to be part of the rule.  For example, you can add conditions which state that a member must be active and must have a certain member type.  For very complex rules, you can use multiple condition groups, but you'll always start by setting up Condition Group 1.  To do so:

    1. Find the line with the in front.  In the first pulldown, choose what kind of field you wish to add to your condition.  The screen will refresh each time you choose a value from the list.

      1. Membership Details: Includes the member/affiliate status, member type, affiliate type, current period start and end dates, member since date, member thru date, paid thru date, and active status fields.  For explanations of all these fields, see Generic database fields.

      2. Profile Field: Person: Any generic individual field (such as First/Last Name) or any custom individual field you have created.

      3. Profile Field: Organization: Any generic organization field (such as Organization Name) or any custom organization field you have created.

      4. Address Field: Any address field, such as City or Zip Code, or the address type (such as Home or Work).

      5. Email Address, Phone Number, Web Address: Any email address, phone number, or web address field you have created, respectively (see Contact information fields).

      6. Manual Member Set: A group of individually chosen members, which can either be included or excluded from the rule.

      7. Group Membership: Members of groups, or members in certain group types or with certain participation types.

      8. Person Events: Allows you to exclude or include members based on their event/conference registration status.

    2. In the second pulldown, choose the specific field you wish to use in selecting members for this rule.  You will be able to pick from all the fields that correspond to the field type you chose in step 5a above.  If you don't see the field you were looking for, you can choose a different field type, or you can check your custom fields (see Creating custom fields) for the field in question.

    3. In the third pulldown, choose a comparison operator.  This will determine how the field you chose in step 5b will be compared to the value you enter in the next step.  You can use any of these eight comparison operators.

      • Is: The field must exactly match what you type in.

        Example:         "Last Name Is Smith" will return all members whose last name is Smith, but will not return last names such as Smitherman or Blacksmithe.

      • Is Not: The field must not match what you type in.

        Example:         "Member Type Is Not Affiliate" will return all members who are not Affiliate members.

      • Contains: The field must contain what you type in.  This can only be used with string fields.

        Example:         "Member Type Contains Hospital" would find members with member types of Hospital Member, Hospital, Sponsoring Hospital, and Lifetime Hospital Member.

      • Does Not Contain: The field must not contain what you type in.  This can only be used with string fields.

        Example:         "First Name Does Not ContainCH" would not return any members with last names such as Chamberlain, Acherson, and Branch.  However, a member with the last name of Cohart would be included, since the C and H in that name are not together, and therefore the name does not contain "CH" exactly.

      • Greater Than: The field's value must be greater than what you type in.  For number fields, the numbers' values are compared to see which is greater; for date fields, a later date is considered greater than an earlier date; for string fields, a word that's later in the alphabet is considered greater than a word that's earlier in the alphabet.

        Example 1:         "Number of Satellites Greater Than 50" will return all members with a value greater than, but not equal to, 50 in their "Number of Satellites" field (assuming it is a number field).

        Example 2:         "Certification Date Greater Than 5/1/2005" will return all members with a certification date later than 5/1/2005 - that is, on or after May 2, 2005.  This assumes that Certification Date is a date field.

        Example 3:         "Company Name Greater Than Cars" would return members such as "Carson Inc." and "Cars Unlimited" as well as anything later in the alphabet, but would not return a member with a company name of simply "Cars" or anything earlier in the alphabet.

      • Greater Than or Equal To: A combination of Is and Greater Than.

        Example:         "Rooms Greater Than or Equal To 400" will return all members who have at least 400 rooms, assuming Rooms is a number field.

      • Less Than: Opposite of Greater Than; the field's value must be less than the comparison value.  Just like with Greater Than, different field types (number, date, and text) yield different Less Than behaviors.

        Example 1:         "Number of Satellites Less Than 50" will return all members with a value less than, but not equal to, 50 in their "Number of Satellites" field (assuming it is a number field).

        Example 2:         "Certification Date Less Than 5/1/2005" will return all members with a certification date earlier than 5/1/2005 - that is, on or before April 30, 2005.  This assumes that Certification Date is a date field.

        Example 3:         "Company Name Less Than Cars" would return members such as "Carrington Enterprises" and "Car Dealers Inc." as well as anything earlier in the alphabet, but would not return a member with a company name of simply "Cars" or anything later in the alphabet.

      • Less Than or Equal To: A combination of Equals and Less Than.

        Example:         "Join Date Less Than or Equal To 12/31/1999" will find all members who joined in 1999 or earlier.

    4. In the text box or pulldown that follows, type in or choose a comparison value.  This represents what you are comparing your property to.

    5. If you chose a date field, then you'll have some special options:

      1. The comparison values will consist of is, is after, is on or after, etc.  Whatever date you choose, this comparison determines whether only people on that date are returned, or after that date, and so on.

      2. You will have a date or range pulldown.  By default, this is set to a specific date.  This allows you to choose a specific calendar date, such as August 15, 2007, and only members that are on, after, before, etc. that date (depending on the comparison you chose) will be included.  This date will not change over time.

      3. If you want to use a relative date or date range that will change depending on when you run the report, choose the appropriate option under date or range.  For example, if you want to return members with an End Date that's in the next month, you can choose next month.  Then, if you run the report any time in May, it will return all members with an end date any time in June.  There are lots of options, including flexible ones such as a specific number of days/months/years from now or ago.

      4. You can check off ignore year if you want to match a specific date, but don't want it to worry about the year.  For example, if you want a rule that returns active members that expire on June 15, you can choose 6/15/2007 as the date and then check ignore year, so that you won't have to change it to get it to work in 2008 and beyond.

    6. If you wish to add another condition to this condition group, click the underneath the condition you just added.  This will add a new blank condition to your condition group.  Repeat steps 5a-5d to create the new condition.  You can add as many conditions as you need to accurately define this condition group.  See the examples at the bottom for examples of adding multiple conditions.

    7. You need to make a choice from the Any/All pulldown under the Condition Group 1 heading, depending on how you want the condition group to work:

      1. Any: A member can match one or more of the conditions in this group to match the condition group.  If a member matches even one of the conditions, he/she will match the group.  (He/she still may have to match other condition groups if you create them.)

      2. All: A member must match all the conditions in this group to match the condition group.  If a member fails to match even one of the conditions, he/she will fail to match the group, and thus will fail to match the rule.

  6. Once you create a condition group, you can be finished, or you can add another condition group using the add condition group link at the bottom.  You can add as many condition groups as you need to accurately define this rule.

    Note: You need to add condition groups only if you have a complicated rule combining AND's and OR's.  Most simple conditions need only one condition group (possibly with more than one condition).  See the examples at the bottom for an example of using multiple condition groups.

  7. If you add multiple condition groups, you need to make a choice from the Any/All pulldown under the Rule Name field, depending on how you want the rule to work:

  8. Choose the proper setting under the Use Relationships in Results section, which will determine whether your rule returns the members that fit the criteria, or members related to the members that fit the criteria.  The options are explained below.

When finished defining the rule, click at the bottom.  To abandon your rule without saving, click .

Smart groups will be listed on the Groups page with a icon to their left, so you can distinguish them from participation groups (which are listed with a icon).

Using and editing Smart Groups

From the main Smart Groups page, you can click the name of any group to view and perform actions on the members of that group.  See Viewing Smart Group members for more information.

Also, you can perform several different actions for any of your groups by clicking the appropriate button next to the group:

Any time you look at the main Smart Groups page, you'll see each rule along with the current number of database members that match the rule.  This number will be updated each time you visit this page, representing an up-to-date number of matching members from your database at the moment you load the page.

For more ideas of what to do with Smart Groups, see the main Smart Groups help page.

Editing a Smart Group

At any time, you can edit an existing Smart Group by clicking the button to the right of the rule.  This will bring you to the screen shown above under creating a rule; you can make any changes you wish, including adding, removing, and changing conditions and groups, or changing the name of the rule.  Remember to click when finished so that your changes are remembered, or click if you change your mind and want to abandon your changes.

Deleting a rule

To delete a rule, simply click the button to the right of the group.  This will permanently delete the selected group, so be careful.  This will also remove the group from any saved report or email that is currently using it, which means that you'll have to modify those reports and/or emails (assuming you have some that are using a deleted group) and set them to use a different group.

Examples of Smart Groups

Example of a Smart Group that includes all members of a specific member type:

Let's say you want to be able to run reports or send emails to only your Associate members (assuming you have a member type of Associate).  You would create a rule like the one you see below:


 

Example of a Smart Group that includes members (excluding affiliates) that joined in the last 60 days:

Let's say you want a report of new members who have joined in the last 60 days.  Also, you want to exclude Staff Members from the report, even if they been added within the last 60 days.  You can create a rule with two conditions and that uses a relative date comparison to find members who joined in the last 60 days, and who do not have an Administrator member type.  Notice in the screen shot below that All is chosen within Condition Group 1, meaning that a member must satisfy both criteria to be included in the group.

Example of a Smart Group that includes members that either have a specific member type or a number of employees in a specific range:

Let's say you want a single report that includes anyone who is either an Affiliate or has a company size from 51 to 200 employees.  You have a Company Size field already.  You will need two condition groups - one to match all Affiliates, and one to match based on company size.  You are combining an AND and an OR in this rule - that is, you want anyone who is an associate OR has a company size greater than 50 AND at most 200.  Therefore, you need two condition groups, and the rule can match Any of the groups.  The resulting rule is shown below.



Note that, if you chose Any for the second condition group, it would match every single member in your database, since every member has either 50 or more or 200 or less employees.  It's important to choose between All and Any carefully!