When and How to Create a Dynamic Group in ACT!

Lately, we have received numerous questions about when and how to use Dynamic Groups to better manage certain contact lists. Dynamic Groups are great for automatically capturing newsletter subscribers, event registrants, or grouping contacts by industry, state, ID status, and more!

Instead of continually performing the same Lookups (or Advanced Queries for multiple field searches), consider creating a Dynamic Group that will automatically pull and list all contacts that meet the group's criteria. Dynamic Groups, once set up, are always easy to access and always contain up-to-date information from your database. To create a dynamic group, follow the steps below...

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1. Go to 'Groups' in ACT! and create a 'New Group' with the title of your choosing.
2. On the Contact tab of the new group, click on the 'Add/Remove Contacts' button. The Add/Remove Contacts window will open.
3. To the right of the Dynamic Group heading, click on the 'Edit Criteria' button. The Group Criteria window will open.
4. Begin building your group criteria by:

• Selecting the Group Type (Contact or Opportunity). 
• Select the Field name that you would like to use for group membership criteria.
• Select the Operator for the group membership criteria.
• Select the Value that the field should contain for group membership criteria.
• Click 'Add to List'.
• Continue to follow these steps to add each criteria your contacts/opportunitiesmust possess to be included in the group.
• Click on the 'Preview' button to see a list of the contacts that would be included in the group based on the criteria you had selected.
• Remember to pay special attention to the 'And/Or' filter and adjust as needed if the results showing in the Preview are not what you expected. The And/Or filter is the most common reason for unexpected or missing data.

Here is an example. Let's say you are wanting to create a Dynamic Group that consists of all your primary contacts within a company that live in the Northeastern states for a monthly e-newsletter you will be sending, your criteria list would resemble the following:

Click on image to view larger

5. Once your group is complete, click 'OK'. You will see your 
      criteria listed in the 'Group Definition' section of the 
      Add/Remove Contacts window.  
6. Click 'OK' in the Add/Remove Contacts window to save the
      Dynamic Group member criteria and the contacts will be
      automatically added to the group. In addition, any future
      contacts added to your database that meet these criteria will
      also automatically be added to this group.

If you'd like additional help setting up Dynamic Groups - or working with Groups in general, please contact us or call us at (847) 520-0860 today!

Furthermore, if there are ACT! tools you'd like us to feature, please tell us in the Comment section below!