Rock U - Groups - Group Types v12.mp4

Transcribed Video Content

In this video, we'll cover how to plan for and configure group types in Rock. Now, we as humans inherently want to organize things. So when we have a mess this, it's it's in our nature to want to group similar things together to bring structure and order to it. , we inherently want to structure things and apply a taxonomy and help us make sense of how things are ordered. And it's just something that we were born with. And when it comes to group structures, it's important to get it right. And there's different types of group structures, different ways that you can structure your group types that we'll cover. You can have a fixed structure. And this would be where, , a group of type blue can have group types of green underneath it, and then green can have orange under them. But blue can't have an orange directly underneath it. Orange can't have a green beneath it. This is a very fixed structure. It only ever goes three levels deep, just those three levels. And this is good for things small groups. You can also have a fluid structure, where here you can see that, groups of type blue can have green or orange underneath them. And then green or orange in turn can have either green or orange beneath them. In this type of structure, you can keep going down, , below the three levels that we just show here because oranges can have greens under them and greens can have oranges under them, and you can just keep going. So this is good for specific types of ministry groups, , where you don't really know how many levels you'll need. And then there's a balanced structure, which is a little bit of both. So here, blue can have green group types underneath it, and green can have orange underneath it or other greens. And so this can go down a little bit further than the fluid structure, but, but it doesn't keep going on indefinitely because there's nothing below the orange levels. You might organize your small groups this way. And there are several, group types that are built into Rock. You have the serving team group type, which is for serving teams. You have small group sections. That was the green layer on on the previous slide we were looking at. We also have small groups, which would be the orange layer on the previous slides that we were looking at. We also have a general group type, and that's for sort of random groups that, don't warrant a type of their own. It's sort of a catch all for groups that don't fit into a particular type. We have an application group, and that's a system group. It's not typically used. It's it's used by Rock, but you probably won't use it. We have a security role type group, which is a special type of group that has special meaning for Rock. Rock uses these types of groups for security. They have a very specific purpose. We also have the family group type, because families are groups and they are groups of type family. You typically don't see these groups because they're hidden, but family is a group type. We also have some of the specialized group types known relationship. Rock uses that from a system perspective to organize and group your known relationships and your implied relationships. And last but not least, we have, an organizational unit. This is used to create a tree view or an org chart in Rock. How you use this group type is up to you. Some organizations use it as an org chart, some don't use it at all. Those who use it as an org chart, there's typically one of two types. There's sort of the official org chart for HR and then sort of the unofficial that you can use just to see, , who needs certain rights or who should be picked in certain pickers. So when do you create a new group type? The answer to that is, as the first bullet says, not often. You won't be creating new group types very often. You may be compelled to do so, but try to, resist that temptation because there are only certain circumstances where you'll need to create new ones. So when would you create one? Well, when you identify a series of groups that need different attributes. And again, the keyword there is need, , when you need separate attributes but not necessarily if you want separate attributes. Know, again only create a new group type if you really have to. You may create a new group type when you want to separate a series of groups from the rest of your group types. And, , for that, you'll you'll know, when a series of groups needs to be split off, to be their own separate group type. Last but not least, , when groups of that type have special meaning to your organization. So some examples of that might be, , serving teams or small groups where you need specific group types because they have special meaning to your organization. But really, you'll create new group types just when it makes sense to do so. And you have to go into it knowing that you might not get it right quite the first time. So you might need to make changes as you go. But, again, the the rule to use is only create new group types if you feel you have to. So let's go ahead and take a look at some group types in Rock. So to access a group type, we're gonna go to under general admin tools, general settings, and group types. And here's our list of group types, and we're going to add or look at, rather, the small group group type. And it starts off where we just have the name and the description, and then we get into the general settings, starting with purpose. Purpose is a defined value. There's a whole video on group purposes, so I won't go into it, but it just lets you, designate the purpose of a group. You can also choose to allow any child group type, or you can list specific allowed child group types. This goes back to the group type structures that we were talking about before. So this helps you determine what types of groups can or cannot be added as children to, in this case, small groups. Going down, we also have the inherited group type, which, there's a whole video on group type inheritance, so I won't spend a lot of time on that. But, in summation, it will let you inherit certain qualities of other group types. Group capacity rule, it's set to none by default, but you can set it to hard. If it's set to hard, then it won't let you add people beyond the group's capacity. If it's set to soft, then it'll give you a warning if you're adding beyond the group's capacity, but it'll still let you do it. You can indicate whether or not groups should require a campus. In some cases, you might want that. In some cases, it might not matter if you have multiple campuses. We also have the group status defined type. So, this would be a defined type that you would set up to indicate the group's status, if you want to track that. You can show administrator, which the administrator is somebody who's sort of responsible for the group. This doesn't necessarily give the person any special security permissions or things that, but it's a way to track who's responsible for the group in general. So, if you check this, you'll be able to add an administrator to the groups. Coming up here, have the location selection modes. And this is we have a whole video. If you watch the group details video, then there's a video on this and the location types. This is the options that you have for selecting a location. You can use a named location, or an address, or an address of one of the group members in this case. You can choose to allow multiple locations for a group, and you can also choose to enable location schedules, which just enables schedules based on locations. And down here, have the location types. Know, you can keep adding location types to this group type. It's just a way of describing what the location means to the group. Going down, we have Don't Inactivate Members. When you inactivate a person, they're inactivated in the group. If you select this, then that sort of overrides that and keeps them active in the group. You can choose to allow specific group member attributes. So, this lets you define group member attributes at the group level rather than here at the group type level. So the attributes for group members can vary from group to group within a group type. The same sort of concept applies to enabling specific group requirements. So you can set a group requirement here at the group type level, and it applies to all groups of that type. Or, you can choose a group requirement for individual groups of this type, if this is enabled. You can choose to enable group history, which will show you changes to the group and to the group membership over time. You can enable an inactive reason, which will become relevant if you make the group inactive. It'll prompt you for, the reason why it was made inactive. And you can also choose to require an inactive reason, if that's if you have an inactive reason enabled. You can choose to allow group sync, which basically takes a data view, that returns people, and you can sync up your group, based on the data view. You can allow specific group member workflows. So, again, this just lets you define group member workflows at the individual group level rather than, at the group type level. You can also enable group tag, which lets you tag the group in the same way that you can tag people from the person profile. You can add a tag to a group, and it's just a way to further identify or maybe even report on groups. And that's it for the general settings of the group. So let's go ahead and take a look at the next list of settings, is for group RSVP. In this case, it's enabled, and so you can choose the RSVP system communication and the offset days, which is just the number of days before the occurrence that the RSVP reminder gets sent out. We have multiple videos on group RSVP, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time here other than to note this is, this is where you enable it for groups of this type. Next, we'll take a look at attendance and check-in. Here, you can designate whether or not the group, groups of this type take attendance. And if they do, then that enables you to, record attendance for each time the group meets. You can designate whether or not, attendance in the group counts as a weekend service, and that gets used in different parts of the system ERA, for example. And it's a way to designate that attendance in this group is should count as a weekend service. You can choose to send an attendance reminder. So that's basically, an email to the group leaders reminding them to take attendance for their group. You can designate whether or not group attendance requires a location. In some cases, you might want that. In some cases, you don't. You can choose the group schedule options. And so these are the options that are available for group scheduling. In this case, we just have it, set to weekly, but you could also do, a custom schedule if you need something a little bit more robust, or you can create a named schedule and have the group, use that. You can also indicate whether or not a group attendance requires a schedule. If you for the schedule, whether it's weekly or even for custom or or a named schedule, you might have exclusions. So for instance, you might have a weekly schedule, but the group doesn't meet over summers. And so you can add exclusions to those schedules here. You can also define the check-in rule, which defaults to none, but, you can also change it to add on check-in, in which case when a person checks in to a group of this type, they get added to, the particular group. Or you can make it already belongs where a person can't check-in unless they are already a member of the group. They need to be a member of the group in order to check-in to that group. Last but not least, under attendance and check-in, you have the print using. And there's a lot of logic that goes into, , where to print, and you can choose either the device printer or the location printer. This is documented in our manuals, and so I won't spend a lot of time going into that. But, but check out the checking out, check-in manuals for more information on printing. And that's all for attendance and check-in. Let's take a look at scheduling. Here you can indicate whether or not scheduling is enabled. This is for group scheduling, and so you might use this for your serving teams, or things that. If scheduling is enabled, you can choose the schedule confirmation communication, which is the scheduling confirmation email by default, but you could choose a different one. And that is the email that gets sent to a person once they've been scheduled or if their schedule has changed. So this is the email that would go out to volunteers saying, hey. You're supposed to show up, at this time, and at this place. If the person declines the schedule, so they get that email and they say, no, I can't come, you can choose to require a reason for why they're declining, if you want to. You can also set the, offset days for the schedule confirmation. So just the help desk said the help text here says that's the number of days prior to the schedule that you wanna send communication. You can set a schedule cancellation workflow. So, if the person is not going to be, participating, if they if they get the schedule confirmation email and they decline, you can launch a workflow based off of that. You can also send out a schedule reminder, reminding people, that that they're that they've been scheduled. And, again, that has its own offset days that you can choose. So this is the number of days, again, before the the the scheduled date to send a reminder to the person letting them know, that they need to be there. And that's it for scheduling. Next up, we'll take a look at roles. In this case, we only have, two roles configured for the small group. We have leader and member. The leader role is tagged as is leader. So you can have multiple different leaders, with different names if you need to. More than one role can be designated as the leader. We do have a group security video that goes into things , can view and can edit. So, I won't spend a lot of time on that. And last but not least, you can choose which role is just the default role for when someone gets added into the group. In in a structure this, we would want it to be member because we only have leaders and members. Member attributes. So, you can set attributes to be applied to each member of each group of this type. Setting it up at the group type level means that every group of this type, all of their members will have this attribute available for you to set a value on. And it is possible if you go up to the general settings, you can allow specific group member attributes That would let you set it up at the group level rather than at the group type level. Again, you can also set group attributes at the group type level. So, again, they apply to all groups of this type. So each group, in this case, is gonna have a topic attribute, and you'll be able to select group by group, what the topic is based off of this attribute. In this particular case, this is a defined value attribute, so, you can go group by group and say what it is that, the group's topic is. Group type attributes, aren't commonly used outside of check-in, but but you can apply attributes at the group type level. So these would be attributes that are specific to the group type. And just it says, each group is gonna have the same value, as to the, what's set as the default here. Again, you're probably not gonna use this. It's it's mostly used for check-in. Group requirements, we have a whole video on this, so I won't spend a lot of time on it. But, but you can set, your group requirements here at the group type level, and then they will apply to each group of this type they filter down. Again, you can set up group requirements at the group type level, or, back in the general settings, you can also choose to enable specific group requirements, which lets you put group requirements on, at the individual group level. So some groups might have them and some groups might not. So that's the alternative to, setting up a group requirement here at the group type level. Group member workflows, are very powerful. And, again, you can set them up at the group type level. So, again, when you do that, it it'll be the workflows will be launched when changes are made to group membership in in any group of this type. And if we were to add one, so we can give it a name. In this case, I'm just gonna use an out of the box workflow. So we can name it photo request. And we can choose to start this workflow. You can pick which workflow you wanna launch, and you can choose when that workflow gets launched. So you could do it when a member is added to the group, when they're removed from the group, when their status is changed, if their role gets changed, if they've attended the group, which is quite powerful, or if they've been placed elsewhere, which, which you might use in certain scenarios, but that's pretty specific. So for instance, if we leave it here as the member added to the group, we can choose a status and a role to have that apply to. So, , we can say, alright, only if they're added to the group with a status of active would we want this workflow to run. Or only if leaders are added to the group with a status of active would we want this workflow to run. And, , this items can change depending on the on the when selection that you pick here. So so, again, you could choose that their member status. Maybe when they switch from pending to active, we wanna launch a workflow for that when their status changes. So there's a lot that you can do using these options. And last but not least, we have the display options. And this lets you kind of customize how and when groups of this type are displayed. So for instance, you can change the group term. By default, it's just group because it is a group. But maybe you might want to change this to team, , something that. Similarly, for a group member, by default, they're just called group members, but you might change it to, , team member. If you're using an administrator, you could change the administrator term to something else. By default, it's just administrator, but you could change it to whatever sort of label you give the person who's sort of responsible for administrating the group, whatever term that might be. This is also where you associate, an icon. Just remember that this icon appears in many places. In this case, it's just the home icon. You can also give the group a color. Up here, you can choose whether or not to show groups of this type in lists of groups. So, , when you're selecting a group from a list, whether or not this group type should show. And you can also choose whether or not to show it in navigation, which is basically, , if you're looking at the group viewer and, , you're you're using that tree to navigate through groups, should you be able to see groups of this type, in that tree. You can choose to show the connection status of group members in the list of group members, and you can choose to show the marital status, again, of of group members in in the list of group members when you're looking at that list, maybe from the group viewer. And last but not least, you have the group view lava template. This gets used by the group details block to determine how the group is displayed. This is an advanced setting that we won't really go into. You probably won't need to make any changes here. And that's all there is about group types. So, for more information and additional details on these settings and what you can do with group types, be sure to check out our Rock Your Groups manual posted to the community website. Thanks for watching.