User Notes

The contact information held in your contact database is limited to common details such as name, address, telephone number etc. Most organisations have other pieces of information they wish to store, for example:

General information such as Nationality, martial status etc.
People relationships such as mentor or primary contact.
Dates such as CRB check date, graduation date, marriage date etc.
Notes such as allergies, comments etc.

These pieces of information vary from organisation to organisation and as a result it’s impossible to create a ‘one-size’ fits all database. This is where notes come in.

This article looks at how to create 'user notes' to store extra information about users. In a similar way though you can also create notes to store extra information about organisations, groups or articles across your site or on items in your shop/store.

What are Global Notes?

Global Notes are extra pieces of information you would like to store alongside the normal contact information fields, they are therefore information you would store for everyone across your site.

Global Notes and Permissions

You can create site notes for users either in the contact database or under Settings>General>Site Notes category

The permissions required to create and edit global fields can be found in the member info section of the permissions view in your contact database group. The permissions available are as follows:

Edit Members’ Details – this privilege allows you to edit a user’s details including the global fields you have created.
Database Manager – this privilege enables you to create, remove and change the properties of a global field.
Sensitive Group Notes – this privilege enables you to see and update the contents of global fields which are marked ‘Sensitive’. More on this later…

Adding a Global Field

In order to add a field to your database you must have the edit members’ details and database manager privileges listed above:

Login to the Web Office.
Select the contact database in the 'Site Manager' navigation pane.
Select the Group Members tab; the group members view will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Click the Change the structure of group notes and global fields task; if any group notes or global fields have been shared with the contact database then they will appear in a list as illustrated below:
At the bottom of the list click the 'Add another field to the organisation name group' task.
If custom fields have already been added to your site before you begin to add another field to the database, you will be asked to check that the field does not exist elsewhere already. Keeping the information in your database accurate and simple is very important; this step is designed to prevent duplication and so you should check carefully before proceeding. If you do find a field with the same purpose already in the list click the [show] link in the owners column to find out who has the necessary privileges to share the information with you. If you are confident that the field does not exist elsewhere click 'the data is not already present' option and select the OK button to proceed. The field properties window will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Enter the details of the new global field as illustrated below:
Field user type – Set to User to add a field that relates to people, and Organisation
if it relates to an organisation.
Field data type - Set to appropriate field type. e.g. Date . Cannot be changed once data has been added.
Sensitive field – Only visible in the Web Office to those with the Sensitive Group-Note permission.
Appears in 'My Profile' – Select this option if you would like the user to see and edit the details. If the field is set to appear in My Profile and also set to be a Global Field (see below), the field will also automatically appear on the Site Registration page.
Mandatory on user-side – Forces the user to fill in this field. Only available if the field is editable by the user (see My Profile option above).
Visible via address book – If selected this field will display in the user’s Address Book contact details.
Global field - this option should be selected.
Validation options – Depending on the field type selected different validation options will appear, which force the user to enter data in the required format.
Click the Add new note button to complete the process. The list of fields in the custom field listing will be updated shortly afterwards.

Editing a Global Field on a user record

At the bottom of the user details window, global fields are contained in a section called Other Information as illustrated below:

otherinformation

You can edit this field like standard user record fields.

Changing the properties of a Global Field

You can change the properties of an existing global field to alter the name or edit its settings as follows:

Click the contact database in the Site Manager area of the Web Office navigation pane.
Select the Group Members tab; the group members view will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Click the Change the structure of group notes and global fields stored for the organisation name site task; the field editor will be displayed shortly afterwards. The list of group notes and global fields in the contact database will appear in a list as illustrated below:
Click on the edit icon for the note you wish to edit; the field properties window will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Edit the properties as required.
Select the save and exit button. The properties of this global field have now been updated.

What are non-global Notes?

Non-global notes is an extension of the principle of global fields. Some of the information you might wish to keep is really only relevant because that person is a member of a particular group. For example, you may wish to record the graduation date of a student; this information is not data you need to store for the rest of your users but it’s very useful for a student leader to be able to store. Non-global notes are therefore elements of information which are pertinent to a person because the user belongs to a specific group.

An advantage of using non-global notes is that information which is relevant to just one group can be stored in the area where it is most useful, without cluttering the main contact information.

Non-global notes and permissions

As with global fields, in order to create, edit and delete non-global notes you must have certain
privileges as follows:

Notes Editor – the ability to edit group notes for the currently selected group. Don’t forget that privileges ‘cascade’ – i.e. if you have the group notes editor privilege on the

contact database you will be able to edit group notes in every group below that.

Sensitive Notes – like with global fields this privilege allows you to see and edit the group notes which have been marked as ‘sensitive’ but only for notes that are shared with the groups you have permissions on (more on this later).

Database Manager – this privilege allows you to create new group notes fields and modify the properties of existing ones. If you have this permission you are automatically granted the other group-note permissions above.

You’ll notice that many of these privileges are the same as those required for global fields – the important difference being that you should ensure that those people who are going to be group note editors have those permissions only at the

user group folders they are responsible for.

What group notes will I see?

Group notes information is displayed in a separate tab of the member details window:

groupnotetab

The group notes that you see when you open the notes tab on the user's record is a combination of the involvement (group membership) that the person has and your permissions.

To understand how this works we’ll use an example; Bill is a member of the ‘PA team’ and the ‘PA team’ group is a sub-group of ‘conferences’.

Three group notes fields have been created:

In the ‘conferences’ group we have a Yes/No field to record who is a keyholder to the building.

In the 'PA group folder' we have two Yes/No fields to indicate which people in the group have been trained on mixing or lighting.

groupnotesvisible1

Because Bill is a member of the ‘PA team’ he will have a note in his records which indicate whether he has been trained on 'mixing' and 'lighting'. Since the ‘PA group’ is a sub-group of ‘conferences’ Bill will belong to the conferences group too* - and he will therefore have a note in his records to indicate if he is a keyholder.

*The principle of membership is that if you are a member of a group you are also a member of the parent group, the only exception being independent groups.

So far we’ve defined which group notes Bill will have – but your ability to see them all depends on your permissions.

If you have the group notes editor privileges on just the ‘PA team’ the only fields you will see in the group notes view will be mixer trained and lights trained. Since you don’t have permissions to see group notes for ‘conferences’ the keyholder field won’t be visible.

If, on the other hand, you have group notes editor privileges for the ‘conferences’ group you will also automatically have this privilege for the 'PA group'* and as a result when you display group notes for Bill you will now see all three group notes fields.

*The principle of permissions is that if you have a permission in one group you also have that permission on any of its sub-groups.

Note: It doesn’t matter which group you launch the member info window from – you will always see group notes based on what groups the user belongs to and the privileges you have.

We now know which groups notes we will see when the member info window is displayed for Bill. Supposing we now extend this example so that Bill is also a part of another group that contains a group note called allergies i.e.

groupnotesvisible2

The group notes that Bill now has are: keyholder, mixer trained, lights trained, and allergies. If you have group notes editor privileges for ‘PA team’ and for the ‘partners’ group you will now see the mixer trained, lights trained, and allergies group notes for Bill, but not the keyholder group because that group note is located in a group you don't have the group notes editor permission on.

To summarise therefore – your ability to see group notes for a person depends on:

Group membership – Bill must be a member of the PA group to have mixer trained and lights trained records in his notes.
Permissions – You must have Notes Editor privileges for the 'PA group' in order to see Bill’s records on ‘mixer trained’ and ‘lights trained’.

Don’t worry if this seems a little complicated – in practice all it will mean is that those with a higher level of permission will see a broad range of group notes across many groups (to save the trouble of locating the right person in the right group!) and those with permissions on just one or two groups will only see the group notes pertinent to them.

Adding a group note

In order to add a new group note field to your group you must have the database manager privilege.

Click the user group in the Site Manager area of the Web Office that the group note is relevant to.
Select the group's Members tab; the group members view will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Click the task link; Change the structure of group notes stored for the groupname group; any existing group notes for this group will be listed in a table.
Select the Add another field to the groupname group task; before you begin to add another field to the database you will be asked to check that the field does not exist elsewhere already. If you do find a field with the same purpose already in the list click the [show] link in the owners column to find out who has the necessary privileges to share the information with you.
If you are confident that the field does not exist elsewhere click the data is not present option and select the OK button to proceed. The field properties window will be displayed shortly afterwards. The field properties are the same as described in the adding a Global Field instructions.
Once you have edited the field's properties appropriately click the Add new note button to complete the process. The list of fields in the group note field listing will be updated shortly afterwards.

Sharing a group note field

Supposing a group leader wants to record some information about his members. Before he adds a new group note he notices that a field already exists and that you are one of the owners of this field. When you share this group note with him he will be able to see the information you stored for the people in his group who also belong to your group where the group note was created. He will also then be able to update the information for all people in his group including those who are not in your group.

To share a group note field:

Select the Change the structure of group notes stored for the groupname group as described previously.
Select the Add another field to the groupname group task; shortly afterwards any existing group notes on your site will be listed in a table.
Click the [select] option in the sharing column of the field that you wish to share
The group structure of your organisation will be displayed in a new window shortly afterwards.
Use the + and - buttons to show or hide any sub-folders to locate the group you wish to share the field with and check the box next to it.
Click the Save button to commit your changes.

Note: If you are not a database manager for the group you have shared the group note with then you will no longer be able to edit the properties of the field once you have shared it. This is because once another group is relying on the data you have shared, it would be inconvenient for them if you were to change the structure of the information in it (you can of course still edit the contents of the fields). You must therefore be a database manager on all the groups where a field exists in order to be able to change its properties.

The Group leader you have shared the field with will now be able to see the data you've recorded in the field for the members of his group that are also members of yours.
To see which groups are sharing a field click the button next to any entry in the group notes view of the member info window.

Updating the group notes ‘en masse’

It might be useful to go through each member of a group reviewing and updating particular group notes. You could of course click on each person in the group members tab, show the group notes view and update their details accordingly but the following is a much faster method:

Select the appropriate group from the Site manager area of the Web Office navigation pane.
Click on the group members tab; the group members view will be displayed shortly afterwards.
Select the task titled Edit group notes stored for the groupname group; a list of fields you can update will be displayed shortly afterwards. The list may be divided into two groups:
- Those group notes which belong to the selected group.
- Those group notes which belong to a parent group which you have the
  permission to edit. These fields are included because every member of your
  current group will also be a member of the parent group.
Tick the fields you would like to update and click next.
The members of your group will be displayed in a list alongside the fields you have elected to update. Enter the information you wish to add into the relevant fields for the appropraite users.
Click the Finish Editing button, located at the bottom of the page to commit your changes.

A final note about ‘sensitive’ fields

Some of the information you may wish to store in your group could be considered ‘sensitive’ material – for example leaders notes, medical conditions etc. The sensitive field property therefore provides you with an extra layer of security to keep this information private. Fields that have been marked as sensitive can only be seen by those people with the group notes editor privilege and the sensitive group notes privilege. You can create both sensitive global fields and sensitive group notes.

For example, supposing as the leader of your group you wish to create a group note called police checked to record who has been submitted for child protection checks. The sensitive field option allows you to store this information without making it available for other group notes editors in your group to see.

You should of course remember that anyone with the sensitive group notes privilege for one folder will be able to see sensitive fields for any sub-folder. This means that a person with a high level of privilege may have access to any sensitive information you are holding. If you are unsure who can see the fields marked as ‘sensitive’ for your group, display the permissions view for your group and check which names have the sensitive group notes permission checked.

Tip

Before creating a group note check that the information wouldn't be better stored as a new group. For example if you are recording who came on a particular course, rather than create a yes/no group-note field, why not create a group for that course and make the attendees the members of that group. This enables you to email the group without first having to run a query. Also if you ever need to publish information on the web site you have already created an area for that group that you can publish within.