Why doesn't group show all sub-group members

[zesty]

Hi. I've been searching in vain for an answer to what I assume is a very simple question ...

I've just set up my group hierarchy in ACT! 2010, and I'm frustrated that the members in my sub-groups aren't listed when I look at their parent group.

So, for instance, if I'd set up a group of people who wear ties (Ties), and subdivided it into sub-groups of people who wear red ties (6 members in Red Ties) and people who wear blue ties (2 members in Blue Ties), I'd like to see all 8 contacts listed when I click on Ties so that I could bulk-email them all about the benefits of wearing green ties!!!

But Ties just looks empty. I assume there's a box somewhere that needs ticking, but I just can't find it ...

Thanks for your help.

[Roy_Laude…]

Not an option to have the sub group members automatically added to the parent group. I can think of several situations where that would not be desired.

[gleo]

What would be helpful in ACT! is to allow Advanced Query in ACT! to operate across Groups and Contacts. That would allow you to setup dynamic group membership that would allow for cascading groups where the primary groups contained the content of all sub groups under them. However I don't know if that is planned in future releases. Other useful and powerful queries could be run if that facility existed.

[GrahamS]

I'm with Zesty on this, I have previously asked the same question, would really work for me the way I set up groups. Only option is to do a lookup of the subgroups and add them to the parent group periodically, or before doing the mail out etc.

Cheers,

Graham.

[zesty]

Argh - how frustrating! Thanks for your answers, guys. I'm new to ACT, but I find this incredibly counter-intuitive ... Glad to hear I'm not alone, Graham

So *is* there any way to get ACT (preferably automatically and continuously ... but I'd settle for semi-automatically and periodically!) to check all the sub-groups and add their members to the primary group???

[gleo]

If we take the sample of ties and use dynamic group membership. You have  check fields in Contact records as 'Blue Tie and 'Red Tie'  which when checked indictates that Contact has a tie of a particular colour. Create a group called All Ties as the parent. Create a dynamic rule for that group that populates the group with all contacts that have either one or more of the Ties field checked (true). Sub groups of All Ties would be Blue Ties and another would be Red Ties. Dynamic group membership would be applied to these as well, based on the appropriate Contact record check box. So the Parent would contain all the members of the two sub groups.[The total in the parent will not be equal to the sum total of the other two groups if a person(s) has two ties, red and blue, but the parent will contain all the contacts in both groups.]  

[zesty]

Thanks, Graeme. I'll give it a go ....