Groups are a great way to organize your people. Groups make sending out Broadcast messages easier and more effective because you can target the appropriate people with your messaging. There is no limit to the number of groups you can create in your Gloo account, and no limit to how many people you can add to each group.
All groups are created and managed by going to People -> Groups.
There are 2 ways to create groups in Gloo - either via an Integration, or creating directly in Gloo. There are some important distinctions between how these groups will function, so make sure to read up on how each works!
Creating groups via Integration
First, you can create groups through an Integration with your church management system (Planning Center, CCB, etc). If, for example, your Planning Center account has a "Prayer Team" group that you integrate with Gloo, that group will be created in Gloo. You can easily find groups created through your integration by looking for the icon under the "Type" column.
These groups will be pulled in from your church management system with all of the contacts they contain, as long as they qualify to come into Gloo. While you are able to follow the instructions later in this article to add and remove people from these groups, those changes will be overridden the next time you sync with your church management system. If you'd like to make permanent changes to these groups, you need to make them directly in your church management system.
If, for example, you remove someone from a PCO group in Gloo, but not in the corresponding List in PCO itself, that person may initially look like they've been removed. However, the next time PCO re-syncs with Gloo, since that person still exists in the List in PCO, they will be synced back into Gloo and reappear in the group you deleted them from.
Key Takeaway: Gloo does not have any two-way integrations. All integrations (with the exception of MailChimp) only have the ability to import into Gloo, not export out of Gloo. Changes made to Groups in your Gloo account will not impact the group/list in your ChMS.
To read more about how to set up different integrations, check out this section of our Help Center. Note that if you choose the "sync people" option to bring everyone over, groups will not be created in Gloo. In order to create groups, you'll need to use the "sync lists" option and choose the correct lists/groups.
Creating groups directly in Gloo
Second, you can create groups directly in Gloo. These groups are completely independent of any group in your church management system. This means if you create a "Volunteers" group in Gloo and add people to it, this group will not be affected the next time you sync with your church management system.
Under your People menu, navigate to Groups and click Create a Group.
Name your group. If you'd like, you can also add a helpful description for internal use that will not be visible to group members.
All groups are automatically set to "Public," which means people will be able to join them by activating a Workflow. However, if you'd like to make the group "Private" instead so that the only way someone can join is by you explicitly adding them, just check the "Make this group private" box.
When you're finished, click Create.
Adding people to a group
These instructions work for either groups created via integration or groups created directly in Gloo. But always remember that any changes you make directly in Gloo to a group created via an integration will be overridden the next time you sync. To make permanent changes, you must change the group/list in your church management system, not in Gloo.
Click on the name of the group you want to add people to.
Click Add people.
Type in names or search the drop down list to find the people you want to add and click Add X people.
Note that you can also create people directly from this window, if you realize you want to add someone to a group that doesn't exist yet in Gloo. Just click Create Person to add a new contact.
Removing people from a group
These instructions work for either groups created via integration or groups created directly in Gloo. But always remember that any changes you make directly in Gloo to a group created via an integration will be overridden the next time you sync. To make permanent changes, you must change the group/list in your church management system, not in Gloo.
Click on the name of the group you want to remove people from.
To remove a single contact from the group, click the trash icon on the right side. Note that this will not completely delete the contact from your Gloo account- it simply removes them from this group.
You can also bulk remove people by selecting multiple checkboxes and clicking
Note: You can also add or remove people from a group using Workflows as long as your group is public.
Editing a group name or description
Click on the name of the group you want to edit.
Click Edit Group.
Edit the details and click Save.
Note: You can also delete a group through this menu.
Deleting a group
From the list of groups, click the trash icon to the right of the group you want to delete. Remember that if you delete a group that was creating through an integration and then later re-sync your account, that group will reappear in Gloo.
Exporting a gorup
Click on the name of the group you want to export.
Click the Export icon.
Click Download.
