Rock U - Groups - Group Finder

Transcribed Video Content

When somebody visits your site looking for a group, the group finder is the whole experience. So we've created it keeping in mind that taking the next step is very important. So we try to make it easy by allowing people to filter on schedules, locations, even things distance, including driving time and more, and being able to find any group on a map. So let's get into how to set up these filters, maps, and get the group finder ready so that people can get connected. If someone's using your group finder, this is what it's gonna look . Right now I'm on the external site on our group finder page. And the first thing you'll notice is this great filter bar up here. So if you click in, you'll notice it's really beautifully put together. It's super fast. It's easy to get specific about what you're looking for even using your current location. You can do things picking days that are available and even searching for a group name and then you get back results. So in this case, we've over narrowed, but we have a list of all these different groups here. And once you find one that you , all you need to do is click register and you'll be taken to whichever page you configure. But some really, really nice things to point out here are first of all, we can see what kind of group we're looking at here. We've specifically picked the group type of small group, but you can do anything here. Anything that is a group that people would want to sign up for here, whether it's serving teams or whether it is small groups or something else, you can configure it. Now, you can also see there are these great images of the groups, which make it easier for people as they're picking to just see what they're getting into and it makes them immediately more comfortable with the group cause they know what the group looks . And we can see things drive time, how far away the group is, the name, the schedule they're meeting on and a little description as well. So some important things on this, some of these will show up for you out of the box, some of these will not. I'll show you what shows up when in the block settings. So if we go to the block configuration, click settings, you'll see that for group types, we've only picked small group, but you can have multiple set here and you can have just many different groups pop up. You can pick whether certain filters are hidden such as the campus filter. So I'll show you what that's . We can pick support and meeting styles and this is simply a defined list we have. And we can also pick distance calculation. So this one is important. I'm gonna spend a second talking about this. There's none, meaning you won't be told anything on the cards or the list of groups that you see about the distance you have from the location, or you can use straight line distance from your current location. You don't need to do any setup for that. It will just use the browser's location. You can do straight line distance from an address or zip code. To do this, you will need to have a Google Maps API key set up or driving distance. And this one, you will need a different API key for it. You'll need the server side Google Maps API key. I'll show you what those are in a minute. And, something else to note here, this, my current location is free as it's done in browser, straight line distance. You will be paying for the Google Maps API key, but it's pretty cheap and we do a lot to make sure that there are less requests used so that there is a smaller charge. With driving distance, it is a bit more expensive than the address or zip code version, but it's the most accurate, especially when people are looking to see how distant they are from a group. I have driving distance set up, so you were able to see my driving distance from those different groups. Then you can pick whether we want the day of week filter showing up or even time of day filter. That's great for things serving teams. Then we can pick whether text search shows up live. So as you're typing different groups show up. We can also add additional filters based on attributes such as topics, small group label. So you can make it so easy for the people that are using this to find the group they need. Now, something awesome is how flexible this setup is. So we can show an image, which you saw, we have those images showing up. If there's no image for a group, then a placeholder will come up, but I think it's a really nice touch to add an image. So I do suggest doing that if you can. You can pick to show the average age. You can also pick to show attribute on the cards and then a group card template. So you can get really specific and customize what that card looks that you saw earlier. Those just different groups that show up in a grid. Then I'm gonna show you what it looks when we show a map. And this is something that you'll need the Google Maps API key for. So you'll wanna make sure that shows up. You'll get an alert if you don't have the API key set up. Then we have the group markers and the current location markers. You can just pick a color that makes sense for you there, but these have good contrast. So I'm gonna leave it that. You can pick a map style if you want to style the map, in a way that looks your organization. We can also pick the registration page. So let's save and you can immediately see our view here is different. First of all, we removed the campus filter. Second of all, we have this map here. And what's really great about this is you can see the exact location of these groups as you click it scrolls through this sidebar here to the specific groups we're looking at. And as there's many in one location, it will start to merge those circles together. And something we do here for privacy is we use a random calculation essentially to make sure that these circles that are added aren't centering on one specific address or showing off one specific address instead it's showing this radius of where the home falls or the location falls so that no one has a privacy concern with putting their address online here. And you can also search the area, just a super great way to look for a group. As you can tell, there are many ways to do it. Now, earlier I mentioned those API keys, the places you would set those are actually you'd go to admin tools settings, then look up global attributes and search for Google API. You'll see these two different options here and you can just enter the key as a value and Rock will start using it. Then if you wanna know more about the setup and the cost for those keys, please read our documentation in the global attributes article. You can see things about how to set up the Google Maps API. That's the group finder. Make sure to point it at the group types that you're actually using and tune the filters to things that actually matter for your ministry. Then once you set this up, it will be super easy for people to find their place in your groups.