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Author Topic: Friends as Tag or Group  (Read 1672 times)

petednz

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Friends as Tag or Group
August 16, 2007, 05:47:52 pm
Hiya - what advice about setting up 'friends' of the party as Tag or Group
Key thing is that they are 'not' members (who pay) and are 'not' Supporters (who pay) and may or may not be 'volunteers'.
Friends are used for
- inviting to fundraisers, xmas parties etc
- asking for help with projects if volunteers don't suffice
- inviting to meet the candidate meetings
- sending more personal versions of letters too
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Kurund Jalmi

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Re: Friends as Tag or Group
August 17, 2007, 12:26:47 am
There has been lot of discussion on Tag / Group. You might want to check:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Group+vs+Tag
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Tags+vs.+Groups+vs.+Custom+Fields

HTH

kurund
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petednz

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Re: Friends as Tag or Group
August 17, 2007, 04:20:01 am
Yep been there read them plus lots of the user cases, some of which say use 'tags' for volunteers, some of which say use 'groups'. SO just trying to get some more reponses from users.
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Denver Dave

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Re: Friends as Tag or Group
November 24, 2007, 10:33:30 pm
I was wondering the same thing - Groups vs Tags vs Relationship

The key may be here, but I'm not sure:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Group+vs+Tag

On implementation level:

    * Tags are stored as a simple join table - entity_id to tag_id
    * Groups are modeled as:
          o join table - contact_id to group_id + status
          o subscription table - history of joining/leaving for each contact
          o optional link to a saved search (for 'smart' groups)
- - - -
Looks like both are possible in situations.   Are there rules of thumb about when to use groups vs tags?  It would seem that Groups take more resources and create an audit trail.

Are relationships best used when there are a limited number of participants?
« Last Edit: November 25, 2007, 01:21:13 pm by Denver Dave »

Dave Greenberg

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Re: Friends as Tag or Group
November 27, 2007, 10:53:09 am
Quote from: peterd on August 16, 2007, 05:47:52 pm
Hiya - what advice about setting up 'friends' of the party as Tag or Group
Key thing is that they are 'not' members (who pay) and are 'not' Supporters (who pay) and may or may not be 'volunteers'.
Friends are used for
- inviting to fundraisers, xmas parties etc
- asking for help with projects if volunteers don't suffice
- inviting to meet the candidate meetings
- sending more personal versions of letters too

Peter - Given that your use cases above all involve batched actions (primarily mailings) - using a static group seems like the most efficient. Since it sounds like these folks have a "special" connection with the party - you may also eventually use them for tasks which need permissioning via ACL's - and could then use "Friends of the Party" as a permissioned group as well.

Dave - The most common use cases for relationships are defining connections within your constituent network. Spouses, children, employees of... etc. They have the advantages of being able to include start and end dates as well as be extended via custom fields. Using them for "batch" actions like mailings is possible via Advanced Search but is more cumbersome than using a Group (and their are currently limitations / missing features in the relationship search area - including the fact that you can't currently search on relationship custom fields, and disabled relationships aren't excluded from searches).

 
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Using CiviCRM »
  • Using Core CiviCRM Functions (Moderator: Yashodha Chaku) »
  • Friends as Tag or Group

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.