ENEWS > SPRING 2007 > YOUR ACT! GURU

YOUR ACT! GURU
CREATING AND MANAGING GROUPS

Groups are one of the most useful features in ACT! 2007.  The Groups feature lets you associate otherwise unrelated contacts, and you can then perform a lookup of the group members at any point in the future. 

Need to send a quick message to all of your top prospects?  If you have them in a group, you won’t have to spend time searching for them.

Creating a Group or Subgroup
You can create a virtually unlimited number of groups and subgroups in your ACT! database.  There may be a physical limit to the number of groups that you can actually enter into a database, but your fingers will get tired long before you hit that limit! 

In addition to groups, you can also add subgroups to any group.  You can add up to 15 levels of subgroups for any main parent group.  So, you could have a subgroup of a subgroup of a subgroup – and so on.

Before adding any subgroups, it’s important to note that there is no association between the group membership of a group and a subgroup.  In other words, if you add a contact to a subgroup, that contact is not necessarily going to also be a member of the parent group.  The ability to add subgroups is provided to give you a way to organize your groups within the tree-structured list in the Groups view.

Here are the steps to create a group:

1. Click the Groups button on the left navigation bar.
2. Click Groups | New Group on the menu.
3. In the Group field, type the name of the group.
4. Click the Save button on the toolbar.  (ACT! will automatically save once you leave the Groups view, but this forces a refresh of the list of groups and allows you to start working with the group immediately.)

Adding Static Members to a Group
Once you’ve created a group in the database, you’ll need to add contacts to this group.  Adding a static member to this group ensures that the contact will always be a member of the group.  (Unless, of course, you manually remove it from the group.)

Here are the steps to add static members to a group:

1. If necessary, perform a lookup to narrow down your list of contacts to those who will qualify for membership in the group. 
2. Click View | Contact List to bring up your Contact List view. 
3. Check the Enable Tag Mode button above the Contact List view. 
4. Click once on each contact that should be included in your group.  Doing so will tag the contact.
5. Once all contacts are tagged, click Groups | Group Membership | Add Selected to Group.
6. Highlight a group on the left and click the [ > ] button to add the contacts to the highlighted group.
7. Click OK.

Adding Dynamic Members to a Group
Static members are in a group because you put them in the group.  In some instances, it might be helpful to create a dynamic membership rule for a group.  With dynamic membership, the always-updating query defines who will be added or removed from the group.

Let’s say you have a group in the database called Texans.  You could add a dynamic membership rule for the group that would dictate that any contact with TX in the State field should automatically be added to the Texans group.  If you change the value in the State field from TX to some other state, the contact would automatically be removed from the group.

Here are the steps to add a dynamic membership rule for a group:

1. In the Groups view, right-click the group or subgroup.  Hover over the Group Membership option and click Add/Remove Contacts. 
2. Under the header Dynamic members, click the Edit Criteria button.
3. Configure your query and click OK.
4. Click OK to return to the Groups view.

Adding a Single Contact to a Group
So far, we’ve added multiple contacts to a group.  In certain circumstances, it might be easier to add a single contact to a Group from within the Contacts view.  For example, let’s say you have a holiday card group.  After adding a new contact to the database, you might want to make sure this single contact is a member of the holiday card group.

Here are the steps to add a single contact to a group:

1. In the Contacts view, click the Groups/Companies tab.  (This tab will show group membership information for the current contact.)
2. At the top of the tab, click the Add Contact to Group button. 
3. Highlight a group from the list on the left and click the [ > ] button. 
4. Click OK.

With these simple instructions, you can now comfortably create groups and add members. For more on practical applications for using groups, please click here.

Edward Kachinske
Innovative Solutions
ACT! Certified Consultant