Creating Groups & Identifiers

Contact Groups and Contact Identifiers (collectively "groups") are managed from the Group Management area of the Administration Console. Groups are used to organize the site's Contacts for use by the various features of ShoutCMS; Identifier Groups are used to classify the Contacts. You can define as many groups as you need; however, a large number of groups increases the complexity of your site and Contact management processes.

Among other things, Contact Groups can be used for:

• Organizing customers on their status, type of relationship or method of signup.
• Organizing employees based on their role or access level.
• Limiting access to certain areas of the site.
• Creating mailing lists.
• Targetting sales & promotions to certain groups.
• Performing bulk actions.

Identifier Groups work in much the same way as Contact Groups but are intended to be used as a method of categorizing your Contacts. For example, you may want to keep track of which customers agreed to share their personal information, or apply a member ranking (Bronze, Silver, Gold). Groups and Identifier Groups are used as separate search terms in a searchable directory.

What's in this article

• The Group Management Screen
• Creating a Contact Group
• Creating an Identifier Group
  

The Group Management Screen

Groups are managed through the Group Management screen. From the Administration Console, click the top navigation icon titled "Contacts":

1. Toggle between Groups and Identifier Groups.
2. Add or add a new Group or Import Contacts.
3. Basic Contact search options.
4. Advanced Contact search options.
5. Existing Groups. Click each Group to display it's members.
6. Perform bulk actions, send a mass email, or delete the Group.

Creating a Contact Group

1. Click the top navigation icon titled "Contacts", then click "Add Group" (#5 above).
2. Enter a name for the Group along with a meaningful description.
3. Configure member search security, or leave the area blank to allow searching by Administrators only.
4. Configure Group management security, or leave the area blank to allow all Administrators to manage the Group.
5. Click "Save".

Creating an Identifier Group

To create an Identifier Group instead of a Contact Group:

1. Click the top navigation icon titled "Contacts".
2. Click on the "Identifier Groups" tab, then click "Add Identifier Group".
3. See above for more information on configuring the Group.