Forums / Feature Requests / Structure of Groups
Structure of Groups
Submitted Apr 02 by Michael Biolsi
I am not sure if this is a good option. Looking for feedback. There are parent and child groups. I was wondering if anyone has been using this and how. I just worked with a ministry that has a lot of groups... a lot! So as I was setting it up it made sense to have parent and child groups. Here were some thoughts I had - wondering what other people think:
- What about making it so the parent group is a static group? In other words, you do not add PEOPLE to it. Instead, you add just sub groups.
- If that were the case, what about having the parent group display the number of child groups and the total number of people associated with all of the child groups? This information could appear in the group list as well as the details.
- Perhaps when you create a group you make it a "Parent" and that gives it these permissions and locks out the ability to add people so that it does not have a check box next to it when you try to assign people to a group.
- Each Parent group would still be able to have leaders (like other groups) who could have admin rights to their entire set of sub groups. (it is currently this way, I believe)
Comments
I've been wondering about some of this for a while...mainly the question of parent groups automatically assuming that members of their subgroups are members of it as well. Right now it doesn't work that way but I've always had a feeling that it maybe should. You idea of a people-less parent group is interesting though with regrds to this... I don't know if it would be easy to convey through the interface though...like you said, it could be grayed out for adding people to it directly, but it might be confusing - like "why can't I add people to this group but I can others" - I know the setting would have to be applied by them, but I'm just not sure the metaphor is an intuitive one.
What do you think about making it so members automatically get added to all the parent groups (either directly or virtually) and that way each group would have accurate counts of how many people are within it? Anybody else have opinions on this?
As for the drag and drop rearranging it's definitely possible (although the nesting would be kind of tough) but probably not *too* high on the priority list at this particular time. I'd love to have it eventually though.
I need to chew on this some more. What about a place in the info screen for a group where it shows the number of "child' groups and the total number of people? That would not require any change in the code and give the user a quick totals count for the parent? I am not sure that moving everyone to the parent is a good thing. This is where things can get crazy. The way you have it right now, I can add people to a Parent (like leaders) and then have sub groups. If I message the parent, everyone gets it. So really, there is no benefit of having everyone listed in the parent. And if I only want to have a message to the leaders, I have to create another sub-group for the leaders of that group. Perhaps I am taking groups to too many levels, but I have EDUCATION as a parent, then I have Youth, Sunday School, Childrens Church and Nursery under that.
What makes sense to ME, is that the parent group inherits the LEADERS of the sub groups, and if you message a parent group you have the option to send it to all the leaders or the entire group. I guess I am thinking from an administrative perspective. Is that confusing?
I would love it if members of child groups automatically got added to their parent groups. As it is right now parent groups are kind of confusing.
Hey Steve, cool thanks for the feedback. This has been bugging me too, and I agree that the parent groups should always include the members of the children groups. I'm going to experiment a bit to figure out the best way to go about this.