Benefits of marking a person as Inactive
Before you remove a person from a Group, consider these common reasons why changing them to inactive may be helpful.
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Don't lose Attendance History! Removing a person from a Group will delete all their Group attendance history. Permanently.
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Retain their Join Date. This could be helpful for future trend reports or other needs.
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Call in the Reserves! In service or volunteer groups, it's sometimes helpful to see former participants if a need arises to enlist further volunteers - even on a temporary basis.
- Leadership Sabbaticals: Some organizations require time off to avoid ministry burnout (an excellent idea for your volunteer leaders, too!) Make your leaders inactive in their Groups to provide a reprieve from Mass Communication to those Groups.
What happens when you make a Group Member Inactive?
When you choose to Inactivate People from a Group within your database, a few things will happen:
- First, that person will no longer receive Mass Contacts (Email, SMS, etc.) that are sent to that particular group.
- Secondly, when taking attendance for that Group, this Individual will not appear as a member of the group.
Pro-Tip: If a future need arises to include inactive individuals in a mass message, you can select Include Inactive when composing your communication.
Note: Making someone inactive within a group does not remove that person from your database.
After deactivating a member, that member will no longer be visible in the group unless you filter by inactive individuals.
How to Filter for Inactive Group Members
After selecting a Group, click the Tri-Dot Icon in the top right corner, then select Filter from the dropdown menu.
Select Show Inactive Individuals, and then click the Filter button.
Distinguish between Active & Inactive Group Members
After selecting a group, select the Fields drop-down menu, then select Active? as one of the columns to display. When the Show All People filter is selected, the Active? column will display Y or N for active or inactive individuals.
Pro-Tip: You can also view a log of when individuals were made Inactive under the Group Activity Tab or on their Timeline!
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