CiviCRM/Contacts

Categorizing Contacts
CiviCRM has two different ways to categorize contacts: tags and groups. The general differences between them are outlined on the CiviCRM community page Tags vs. Groups vs. Custom Fields. In the OM context the differences are:


 * Tags: used for high-level or stable categories. Tags are displayed prominently on a contact's page and should be used when a person's characterization of status may affect the nature of their interaction. Currently used tags:
 * dScribe - students part of the dScribe program
 * Faculty - UM faculty working with Open.Michigan
 * UM Staff - University of Michigan staff members
 * Open.Michigan Team - Open.Michigan team members
 * External - Contacts external to the University of Michigan that work with Open.Michigan


 * Groups: used for flexible categories and to help with both long term and short term projects. For example, groups can be used for mailings or to easily locate everyone that RSVPed to an event. "Smart Groups" can also be used to automatically group people together based on certain characteristics. Because there may be a lot of groups and it may be difficult to search through them, categories that have a special, high-level meaning to Open.Michigan should also be tagged.