The release of InphoniteVoice is coming soon. Many new features have been added. Over the next few weeks I will be highlighting these new features. The first feature I would like to talk about is Hierarchical Groups.

Groups support the use of hierarchy, allowing you to create sub-groups of groups (and sub-sub-groups of sub-groups and so on.) Consider, for example, an organization that has multiple locations, multiple job roles and multiple departments. You might want to create three different hierarchies based on these factors.

Creating the Sample Group

To create the sample Groups in the diagram above, create the root level groups first (Location, Department, and Role) and then create the second level Groups assigning the appropriate parent for each of these groups.

Assigning the Group Membership

Once the Groups are created you can assign membership by modifying the Contact and setting the Group Membership section. Remember you can assign a Contact to more than one group at a time.

Sample Uses for Hierarchical Groups

• Emergency Notifications
  • Suppose you had a need to notify everyone in the Support department at the East location. You could open up the Contacts list, select the  button next to the Groups filter, and:
    • Select the Support and East location groups.
    • Set Member of to All Groups.
  • This would filter the Contact list to only Support personnel at the East location. You could then use the  Enqueue Now button to send messages to all of those personnel. 
• Sending Inclement Weather Notifications
  • If all of the Contacts imported have a Group that indicated which office they were visiting, you could quickly notify all members of that group that the office is closed.