Introduction
A group, no matter the size, usually has a variety of people involved helping get everything running smoothly. This can be your singers, your managers, office managers, your musical director, accompanist, volunteers, and more - so how do you keep them all organized within Choir Genius?
The most important thing is to ensure each person has the level fo access to the site they need in order to perform their job. Roles offer the foundation of each account's access - so choosing the correct role is the best place to begin.
Roles
It's best to think of roles as the broad stroke for giving access to your site.
Every account added to your site will have this designation: authenticated user - this allows them basic login access as an account holder. When adding an account you can then assign any of the following roles:
No role account - can make purchase sin the store.
Community - log in and view "public" information such as the public dashboard, and public events, can manage their own profile.
Applicant - view and manage their own information, can login and view most content, but this role is for aspiring members. can assign them specific music, separate from main membership.
Member - view and manage their own information, can see most content areas, and assigned content items (documents, bulletins, music) (blue menu items).
Parent - view and manage info for their kids' accounts
Assistant - help with taking attendance and other safe tasks
Coordinator - view member information and manage normal content
Manager - view and manage member and financial information, and content
Admin - view and manage everything, and configure the site
Access to various areas of the site generally increases as you move down this list, with Admins having full control of all settings and options for the site.
Admin is often assigned to an administrator, operations manager, or team leader for a group. This person is often called a "webmaster".
Manager is the next level down, and is assigned to financial coordinators, or those who perform administrative tasks within the site but don't need access to the admin settings of your CG site. This might be some board members, or office managers.
Coordinator is often assigned to people who perform particular tasks within your group with a more narrow scope. This might be your leadership team within various choirs, or your musical directors. They need full access to members details, but do not need access to any of the financial details available to those with the Manager role.
Assistant is a role designed to give a little boost of access where an account holder might perform a few tasks to help out, like with taking attendance for an event.
The next four roles are for your general membership and community. They provide varying levels of access to content within the site.
Members should be assigned to your group members, this is usually your singers, but might also include accompanists, volunteers, or other auxiliary people that interact with your group on a regular basis. Members can see the "Member" home dashboard, Member list, and content areas such as documents, music and bulletins, and events
Parents is a role that is specifically designed to be assigned to Parents of members. This role gives users similar access to the member dashboard, member list, and content areas such as documents, music, bulletins and events.
The Applicant role give minor access to the site, and is used to designate users who are on the path to becoming members. they can login to the site and see the calendar and assigned materials, such as a Form which might be assigned to collect important information from them during their audition processes. The applicant role can be assigned manually, but it is also auto-assigned to a user if they purchase a Membership product via the store that requires approval.
The final role is the Community role. this role can be assigned to those within your contacts list/community that need to be able to login to the site, but are not members or regular attendees to your rehearsals. These might be volunteers, or they might be audience members who have purchases tickets more than once from the store. Community members can the see Public home dashboard, calendar events that are open to the public, or where the community role is invited, and the store.
If an account has no role, they cannot login to your site to see anything, and are strictly a "contact" account that can be used to send email.
A user's status must be "active" in order to receive email and interact with the site. If they are "blocked" they cannot login and will not receive any emails or notifications.
Editing or deleting roles: you can edit or delete roles from an account on their profile, or make quick mass changes using the "Organize Accounts" option under "Accounts" in the menu. Roles themselves cannot be edited nor renamed.
Subgroups
As we move on to subgroups, we can now be more detailed as we organize out users. Subgroups are fully customizable vocabulary terms to help identify the various categories of people you have within your organization. Some common examples are:
- Board
- Staff
- Choir 1
- Choir 2
- Costume Committee
- Volunteers
Subgroups are visible to those assigned, and this highlights where they should be used. If a person knows they belong to a group, committee, or team, then it should be used as a subgroup. Users within a subgroup should be aware of each other.
The main purpose of subgroups it to allow more detailed and refined content assignment. A great example of this is assigning music.
All users with the role "Member" will see a menu item to access their assigned music - but depending on your group structure, you may not want to just assign your music to all members.
With subgroups, you can refine your music assignments to particular ensembles, so only those who should have access to certain songs can see them. This is similar for events. You can invite roles to view or RSVP to an event, but in some cases, you may want to invite a specific ensemble to RSVP, or perhaps the members are invited to RSVP, but the Staff subgroup is invited as "must attend".
You can also use subgroups to help identify currently active members from alumni who may still be involved, but aren't actively singing. With subgroups, you can leave them all with the role of Member but can add and change their subgroups each season so you know who is singing with you that particular term.
Editing or deleting subgroups: You can edit or delete subgroups from an account on their profile, or make quick mass changes using the "Organize Accounts" option under "Accounts" in the menu.
Admins can also edit/rename, add and delete the available subgroup options by going to Admin Settings & Tools > Vocabularies, and then clicking "manage terms".
Labels
Labels are very similar to subgroups, but their main difference is that they are only visible to the higher level roles: Admins, Managers, and Coordinators. Even a user assigned a particular label cannot see it.
Labels are sometimes used to note certain contact types, such a donors, patrons, advertisers, etc. Labels might be specific, like they donated during a specific time period, or during a certain event, or they donated a specific threshold about at one time (silver, gold, platinum, etc). Some groups note volunteers as a label rather than a subgroup because the volunteers are individuals and not aware of the other people who are also volunteering. Labels may also be used to mark users as accompanists, or in some cases, they may note users who are in a financial aid program.
Editing or deleting labels: You can edit or delete labels from an account on their profile, or make quick mass changes using the "Organize Accounts" option under "Accounts" in the menu.
Admins can also edit/rename, add and delete the available label options by going to Admin Settings & Tools > Vocabularies, and then clicking "manage terms".
Designing your subgroups and labels before hand is useful for ensuring you have people organized in the best possible way for later outreach. If you're unsure of what subgroups or labels to add, think about:
- Who will you want to contact?
- Who will you want to assign specific content, such as music and events?
- What pre-defined teams do you already have within your organization?
- What labels might be useful to organize your contacts and non-members for more targeted outreach? Or, should they all just have a label like "Mailing list"?
If you're unsure, we're happy to help! Just reach out to Support via email at support@groupanizer.com
