Who is actually in this group?

Finding the members, writing to them, and sorting out the two that come up most - an empty list, and somebody in twice.

Step 1 of 7

The Members tab holds three lists

Open the group from Services and go to Members. Current is who is in it, Waiting is who has applied and not been placed, and Alumni is who has been. If somebody swears they registered and is not in Current, look at Waiting before anything else.

Add Member and End Memberships sit above the list. End Memberships is the bulk one - it finishes several at a time rather than one by one.

Use the arrow keys to move between steps.

1. The Members tab holds three lists

   Open the group from Services and go to Members. Current is who is in it, Waiting is who has applied and not been placed, and Alumni is who has been. If somebody swears they registered and is not in Current, look at Waiting before anything else.

   Add Member and End Memberships sit above the list. End Memberships is the bulk one - it finishes several at a time rather than one by one.

2. Empty? It is the Academic Year box

   Memberships belong to an academic year, and the list is filtered to the current one. A group that has run for years can show nothing at all. Untick Academic Year and everybody appears, with the year they joined in beside them.

   This is the single commonest group question we get, and it reads as lost data when it is a tick box.

3. Tick people and the buttons wake up

   Select whoever you want and Send Email, Send SMS, Send Secure Message and Add Journal Entry all come alive, along with Invite to Audition. This is the quick way to write to one group - no query needed.

   For anything wider than one group - every parent, every teacher - go to Query instead. See emailing a lot of people at once.

4. A group's year is its plan

   The Activity tab carries a plan for each academic year, with Previous and Next to move between them. If this year's plan says the schedule is not defined, the group has no sessions this year - so there are no registers, nothing in the diary, and nobody to show as current.

   Worth checking at the start of a year. A group that ran last year does not automatically have a timetable this year.

5. Somebody is in twice

   Almost always the same cause: they were rolled over into this year's group automatically, and then their parent also applied online, which made a second membership. One pupil, one contact, two memberships. Keep the one from the parent's application and remove the rolled-over one.

   If you find one, look for others - it tends to come in batches from the same roll-over.

6. Removing a membership emails the parent

   It does, even when you leave the date blank and tick that it was entered in error - neither of those stops it. If you are tidying up duplicates and do not want a batch of withdrawal notices going out, turn Send Withdrawal Email off on the service type the group runs under first, do the removals, then turn it back on.

   We know this is wrong and are changing it. Until then, ask us if there are more than a handful - we can remove them without anything being sent.

7. A list across every group

   For one group, Export to Excel on the Members tab is enough. For a list spanning groups, use Query and search for group members - the query takes the academic year as a parameter, so you choose which year you want rather than being given the current one.

   That same query is the one to use when you want to email several groups at once.

Why this one is worth knowing

Two questions account for most of the group tickets, and neither is really about groups.

"Everybody has vanished." The Academic Year tick box, almost every time. A group is not a standing list of people - it is a list per year, sitting on a plan per year, and both of those can be empty while the group itself looks fine.

"They are in twice." A roll-over and an online application, meeting. Worth recognising on sight, because the tidy-up has a trap in it: removing a membership tells the parent, whatever you tick.

The same ground, as reference

• Groups — the screen in full
• Emailing a lot of people at once — when one group is not enough
• Finishing and withdrawing — ending a membership properly rather than removing it