CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I would define the most permanent entities like the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a Group and organize the sub-entities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as Tags.

In specificity, I would create smart-tags, so people can organize themselves when you launch the website by completing certain actions and automatically assigned. For example, fill our Form A (General Information) and be assigned to to Group "Ministry of Internal Affairs" and be Tagged with "Communication".

You should be able to set that up in a few hours and put the workload on the individuals (as opposed to yourself) signing up for the right Group and Tag. You can always setup a workflow, where you still have to verify, but don't have to do the heavy lifting.

You will be able to achieve the level of control you are searching for using CiviMail without really any additional work. When you first start creating a CiviMail Email it asks what group you want to send to. From my understanding, emailing the sub-entities is as easy as designating the Tag under the Group as the targeted email list using more refined CiviMail settings.

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I would setup Profiles for the different the parent Entities, like Ministry of Internal Affairs, and use a Profiles form to automatically assign people to the sub-entity, like Communications, with a checkbox asking them "In what department in the Ministry of Internal Affairs do you work in?

Unfortunately, I am not to familiar with the Joomla version, but you should be able to theoretically to add forms to the user registration process, so could complete all the tasks of user creation, automatic group/tag assignment and mailing list creation in one simple process.

I would be happy to make a screencast if you aren't able to figure it out. CiviCRM is a large system and sometimes things are hidden in little nooks and crannies.

Another option would be to use Relationships since they track start/end dates eg

Comms Person (is comms person for) Department

Department (is Dept of) Faculty

Faculty (is faculty of) University

and if necessary

Individual (is contact person for) Faculty/Department/University

in which case you can then use the Extended Relationships extension we created so that there is 'permission trickle down' ie if the above are all set up so the 'higher' level is permissioned over the 'lower level' so that a 'contact person for the university' can have permission to update details about contacts further down the chain and  a 'contact person for the faculty' can have permission to update details about contacts further down the chain but not further up

not sure how clear that was as an explanation but .... ;-)

Individual (is contact person for) Deparm

Department (is department of) general Staff

Do you have any more information on organizing people via the Extended Relationships. What's the overhead and fallbacks of relying on the Extended Relationships extension?

Thank you petednz for your prompt and insightful reply!

Another option would be to use Relationships since they track start/end dates eg

Comms Person (is comms person for) Department

Department (is Dept of) Faculty

Faculty (is faculty of) University

and if necessary

Individual (is contact person for) Faculty/Department/University

I think the approach with relationships, that you propose, is more suitable for my case. Tracking dates is an important aspect of the organization's log.

Yet, I have this problem with the proposed approach: suppose you have 'Faculty of human related studies' for two different universities. Then you would end up with:
- Faculty of human related studies (is dpt of) Uni1
- Faculty of human related studies (is dpt of) Uni2

You could differentiate between the two by appending the Uni name to the 'Organization name' (e.g. Faculty of human related studies - Uni1), but this is not very convenient. And if you go further down that road and try to also add the Comms department for the given faculty then it could really get too long! (e.g. Comms - Faculty of human related studies - Uni1).

And why would one need to add all this information to the 'Organization Name'?
Because when you create a new contact and want to choose the proper relation that defines this contact's involvement in the organization, e.g. Individual is (contact person for) Dptmnt/Faculty/Organization, you must have a way to distinguish between the entities, e.g. faculties, which otherwise have the same 'Organization Name' (e.g. Faculty of human related studies).

in which case you can then use the Extended Relationships extension we created so that there is 'permission trickle down' ie if the above are all set up so the 'higher' level is permissioned over the 'lower level' so that a 'contact person for the university' can have permission to update details about contacts further down the chain and  a 'contact person for the faculty' can have permission to update details about contacts further down the chain but not further up

not sure how clear that was as an explanation but .... ;-)

Individual (is contact person for) Deparm

Department (is department of) general Staff

Thanx for the tip! I will definitely check this out.

I guess the simplest solution would just be to amend the Department's title with some indicative keyword, e.g. Dpt. of Applied Siences (UCLA).

Much less trouble..