The concept of creating static Groups is a carry-over from much older ACT! versions. However, the ability to add dynamic Groups didn't come along until ACT! 2005. You might think of the name dynamic as having somewhat of a double meaning when it comes to ACT! These Groups are dynamic because they are constantly updating as the information in your database itself changes, but they are also dynamic in the sense that they can really help you take charge of your database!
It's a good idea to identify a need that a dynamic Group can help you with before actually creating it. For example, you might find that various users are adding new contacts to your database and not bothering to include key pieces of information such as their email address, ID/Status, and mailing preference. You can create a dynamic Group to include only those contacts that are missing that information.
When you create a dynamic group you are actually combining two ACT! skills: creating a Group and combining it with an Advanced Query.
- Click Groups on the ACT! Navbar to open the Group Detail view.
- Select the Group you want to populate or create a new Group following the instructions in the Creating a Group section above.
- Click the Contacts tab and then click the Add/Remove Contacts button to open the Add/Remove Contacts dialog window.
- Click the Edit Criteria button. Right on target the Group Criteria dialog window that you see opens, which looks amazingly like what you see in the following figure:
- Fill in the criteria that you need to add a Contact to the Group:
- Type: Choose either Contact or Opportunity as the field type you are searching for.
- Field Name: Select a field from the drop-down list. If you had specified Contact as the field type you'll see a list of all your Contact fields, and if you chose Opportunity you'll see all your Opportunity fields.
- Operator: Select an operator from the drop-down list. The choices are fairly self-explanatory with options like Equals, Contains, and Ends With.
- Value: Type in the field value that you're looking to match. If you select the State field name, for example, the value might be "NY".
- Click the Add to list button. Your entry will now appear in the bottom portion of the Group Criteria dialog box.
- Add additional criteria (optional).
- Change the And/Or indicator as needed (optional). The And/Or indicator is actually a drop-down list with two choices: And and Or. By default, ACT! inserts an And in the And/Or column. That means a Contact must match both criteria in order to become a member of the Group. Or means that a Contact need only match one of the criteria.
- Click the Preview button to view a list of the contacts that match your criteria.
- Click OK to close the Group Criteria dialog window.
- Click OK to close the Add/Remove Contacts dialog window.
If you took advantage of the Preview button in step 9 then you already had a pretty good idea of whether or not your query was going to work. However, if you're not happy with the results of the dynamic Group, feel free to go back in and change it at any time.
There might be times when you want to add both static and dynamic members to a Group. For example, you might be planning a holiday Open House and want to invite all of your customers using a dynamic query. However, you also want to "hand pick" a select number of prospects and vendors and extend an invitation to them as well by adding them to the Group manually.
Because dynamic Groups automatically populate based on a query, you cannot manually remove a contact from a dynamic Group. You can, however, modify the query used to populate the Group so that it creates a Group that more closely matches your desired results.