Organising data¶
Tags vs. groups¶
A quick summary of the differences between tags and groups. Remember:
- There is quite a lot of overlap between tags and groups
- You'll learn from experience when to use one and not the other.
- You can reasonably easily change from a group to a tag and visa versa (select all contacts with a tag, and add them to a group)
| Tags | Groups | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Can be added to contacts, activities and cases | Can only be added to contacts |
| History | No history (unless you have logging turned on) | Includes a history of when a contact was added and removed |
| Mailings | Limited integration with CiviMail | Basic building block for CiviMail |
| Profiles | Can be displayed in profiles | Can be displayed in profiles. Can also limit profile listings to a group and add contacts to a group on submission of profiles. |
| Permissions | Don't interact with permissions | Can be used for CiviCRM ACLs (a type of permissioning |
Exercises¶
Creating a custom data set¶
You'd like to collect more detailed information on potential funders of your organisation.
You want to to collect 'free text' under the following headings...
- Background and history
- Funders priorities
- Strategic fit with our organisation
...and a multiple choice question 'Likelihood of funding' which allows users to select **one of the following**
- Certain
- Very likely
- Moderate
- Unlikely
- Impossible
Since we only want to collect this information for certain organisations, it makes sense to create a new contact type based on organisations called Funders.
1) Create a new contact type that extends Organisations called funder.
2) Create a custom data set that is attached to Funders. There are quite a few options when it comes to creating custom data sets.
3) Add custom data fields as above to this group
4) Create a couple of new funders. Feel free to use your own information or the details below.
| Field | Walter Foundation | Cadence Trust |
|---|---|---|
| Background and history | Founded in 1995 by private individual | Established 1950 |
| Funders priorities | Improve access to education | Promoting sustainable agriculture |
| Strategic fit with our organisation | Fits with our education projects | Potentially fits with our city farms project. |
| Likelihood of funding | Very likely | Moderate |
Searching for custom data¶
Now that we have some data in CiviCRM, use the Advanced search for all organisations that are very likely to fund your organisation (hopefully you will find one!)
Note: if you are having trouble finding the Likelihood of funding field in advanced search, make sure that you have set it to searchable.
Custom data settings¶
Using the custom data set you created above, explore how the following four options effect the display of data.
- Display Style
- Collapse this set on initial display
- Collapse this set in Advanced Search
- Is this Custom Data Set active?