Groups 2.0 has arrived!
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| Features | Gallery | Prerequisites | Get Started |
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| Leveraging relationships with over 200 churches, everything about this new platform was designed from the ground up to provide a foundation in what is an industry-first group management tool. Without a doubt, Groups 2.0 is the best way to manage your many groups! |
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Span of Care |
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| Features | Gallery | Prerequisites | Get Started |
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With over 200 churches currently using Groups 2.0, we have plenty of example sites that will help you see what is possible with this new functionality... |
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 Bayside Community Church |
 Eagle Brook Church |
 Community Bible Church |
 Cornerstone Fellowship |
 City Church of San Francisco |
 Grace Community Church |
 Faith Promise Church |
 NorthRidge Church |
 Puyallup Foursquare |
 Grace Place Church |
 Heartland Community Church |
 Keystone Church |
 LifeChurch.tv |
 McLean Bible Church |
 Mission Community Church |
 Fellowship Bible Church |
 Every Nation Church Singapore |
 Stonegate Fellowship Church |
 Summit Church |
 The Ark Church |
 The Crossing |
 The Heights Church |
 Timberlake Church |
 Wave Church |
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| Features | Gallery | Prerequisites | Get Started |
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If you already have an edition that supports Fellowship One's congregational tools--WebLink-- and live in the United States*, you are ready to use Groups 2.0. Not sure what edition you are using and what is included? Simply sign in to Fellowship One, find your edition on the bottom of the screen, and use the chart below to clarify current capability.
Want to upgrade? Contact one of our sales representatives; we can have you up and running in minutes! * We will be expanding support for International churches in the near future. |
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| Features | Gallery | Prerequisites | Get Started |
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Before you jump into creating groups, spend some time thinking about and organizing the types of groups within your church. Figure out your Groups hierarchy, naming conventions and "laws" that govern your groups BEFORE setting up your Group Types. This Groups 2.0 Shortcuts Guide assumes you are ready to jump right in. If not, you'll want to check out the Groups 2.0 Getting Started Video. [Group Type Admin rights must be enabled at Admin>Security Setup>Portal Users] [Setup a Groups Contact recipient email at Admin>Church Setup>Groups Contact] |
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1. Create a Group Type A group type is a "container" for a collection of groups and is a method for organizing groups within the Fellowship One portal. A group type is the highest level of the group hierarchy and defines the rights, views and permissions for all groups created within a Group Type. 1. Navigate to Groups>Administration>Group Types.  3. Enter a Group Type name and description and determine if the Group Type is public/searchable via inFellowship (the web-facing side of Groups 2.0). |
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4. Determine leader and member rights, decide what information leaders and members can view and select portal users that have permission to create groups within this Group Type. |
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New group type to walk through the wizard workflow. |
2. Create a Group From this point forward, you will enter information about your group that will be visible to members and prospects via inFellowship. 1. Navigate to Groups>Groups by Group Type>View All. |
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3. Add Members to a Group There are multiple ways to add members to a group. To add members individually: 1. Navigate to Groups>Groups by Group Type>View All. |
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4. Setup a Search Category Search categories allow a user to find a group through inFellowship, the web-facing component of Groups 2.0. 1. Navigate to Groups>Administration>Search Categories. |
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5. Group Search Using inFellowship 1. To quickly access your inFellowship site, navigate to Groups> Administration>Branding and click View site. |
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Going Deeper
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Curtis HarrisF1 Staff
190 posts
Comments (81)
When will this be available in Canada?
Stumbled on this last night just as it was posted - the blog wasn't even working yet! Awesome product, thanks for all the hard work. We are just researching better management of our Small Groups so timing is fabulous.
Three concerns right off the bat:
1. Prospects: 14 days is a very short time limit. Please consider lengthening it or allowing some sort of option choices.
2. Meeting Times: more options please. Most of our groups meet 2 times/month and there is no way to list that. Perhaps under Monthly could be an option for generally 1st & 3rd or 2nd & fourth - or even "Contact Leader for Dates".
3. Information Security: This is the biggest concern by far. We do not want members or leaders to be able to change anyone's information (nor should they ever be able to see an actual, full birthdate). Please add the same options under Member as for Leader and remove the year from any visible birthdates.
Thank you! This tool is going to be GREAT. I can't wait to test it out and explore what the Beta groups have been doing.
Cathy C, Plano Texas
@asteingard soon...
@Cathy.Carey love the feedback! I know we are working on #2 and #3 will continue to evolve, but I can't say for certain how far it will go (birthday for example).
Is there attendance added? I thought this was going to be added before it went live, but I don't see where this would happen. Am I missing it?
Curtis,
I created a new group this morning for testing purposes, I then searched for the newly created group and selected it.
I entered my wife's contact information and it gave me an error page. Once i filled out the form it said, it would not submit. It refreshed the page after several attempts and cleared the form and now its telling me I did not fill the form out(obviously I did). Can you guys look into that.
thanks,
Edgar(Mariners Church)
@pvoisin we don't have attendance yet; quite a few of our churches have found good value in the solution without it so we didn't want to hold up the 'release' for something not everyone values. With that said, we do understand the importance of attendance and are working on it now; don't have a release date yet, but will communicate one when we have it.
@edgar please submit a support ticket with all of those details and they will look into it and get it resolved. Thanks!
@pvoisin Good news! I just spoke with the dev team and they assured me that the birthdate thing would be controlled through a feature they are working on now that will allow individuals to adjust public visibility.
Love you guys! Love what you've done with Small Group Management can't wait to see the impact of this ministry tool in our Small Group strategy launching this February.
your f1 fan,
Kim
None of the "Getting Started" video's seem to be working.
@rcurtiss The Getting Started video should be working now--thanks for the head's up!
Some twitter links appear broken. For example the twitter icon on this page:
https://pfseawa.infellowship.com/GroupSearch/ShowGroup/336550
leads to:
https://pfseawa.infellowship.com/GroupSearch/ShowGroup/www.twitter.com/Bryce_Evans
Curtis, you mention "we don't have attendance yet; quite a few of our churches have found good value in the solution without it "
What solution is recommended for the churches that find attendance information valuable?
Thanks - Love the potential this feature can add.
@afleming - I would suggest you submit a support ticket with the details; they can check it out and find out what is going on.
@rlee - If you need attendance, the solution we have now (Groups 1.0) is what we recommend.
Is Small Group Manager going to be discontinued or will we be able to use this until we are ready to fully switch over to the new Groups 2.0? Thanks!
Looks good. When will groups 2.0 reports be available?
So when will attendance for Groups 2.0 be available?
I'm super excited about this new tool! I do have a couple questions about how to best proceed. I was just in the process of setting up our new life groups system using small group manager. Does this make that unnecessary including setting up the Activity, the Activity Schedule, the Activity Groups and the RCL? I'm assuming that the people registering for groups would not then receive a participant assignment.
My main objective is to find the solution that will make it very simple for people to get connected to the church family and for us to keep some record of that connection.
I have the same question as MWILLIS. If I already have the small groups manager up and running should I toss it out and use GROUPS instead
@kfrye - Small Group Manager will eventually be phased out, but the clock wont start ticking until Groups 2.0 includes attendance. I cannot say how long we will give you for the transition once attendance is in, but we will work to make it as painless as possible.
@Todd - our current reporting solution (build a report for every request that comes in) doesn't scale for us and isn't valuable to our customers as a whole; this is why it is so hard to find a report today. Our reporting strategy is to put the data into the application where it will be found valuable and create reports that support an entire area of our app (we call this Core Reports). Today, many reports that focus on People Lists will provide Group details, in addition there is an export report specifically designed for Groups 2.0 (P9500E).
@kjell - don't have an exact date for attendance.
@mwillis @bbennett - Groups 2.0 is a much easier tool for engagement and overall usage. If you don't need attendance I would definitely push that direction.
Let me expand on the attendance question a bit...
I don't have a time frame for you, I can simply say that it is in the works; by works I mean they are identifying what it needs to be which is step #1. I am hopeful to have this functionality by the conference (mid May), but that may be a stretch.
@mwillis @bbennett - Check out the training videos in the "Getting Started" section above. It is much easier to create a Group and assign people to them now. Thanks!
Curtis: I am loving Groups 2.0!! Continually finding how smoothly this will work for our Life Group Leaders! Could you please answer the following question:
- How long will a PROSPECT stay in my leaders/groups page? I thought it was 14 days. However, is this 14 days PERIOD? Or 14 days of INACTIVITY by my Leader?
The reason I ask, is sometimes it takes more than 14 days of communication before a Prospect can be 'closed'.
Thanks!
Is F1 moving toward handling individual assignments to ministry areas (participants and staffing) using Groups 2.0 and away from managing assignments under ministries and using weblink/small group manager?
Our church was very excited about Groups 2.0 until we saw all the information that a member of a group can see about all the other members in a group. This is a show stopper for our church. We are curious as to how other churches can allow members to see all this information(address, birthday,email,phone, marital status). This seems like a huge invasion of privacy for our church members. We have already received complaints that requiring a bday for Weblink was too much - very concerned about identity theft. I understand that you plan on releasing an update in the future that will allow each member to make changes to what others can see but will that allow us to turn off all the information except name (like it currently works in Small Group Manager), and allow the member to turn it on if they want? We also have huge concerns about allowing members to delete bdays, phone and address? Do other churches share our concern? We would love to hear how other churches are handling this sensitive issue.
Thanks
Yes, the sharing of information could be a deal-breaker for us as well. We are extremely cautious about access to personal information. Any input from other churches re: safeguarding would be welcome.
Michele
I absolutely agree with lobergfell and michelekrenzin, I am absolutely loving the functionality of 2.0 however the visibility of information and the fact that any leader can search for someone to invite to their group can be a recipe for disaster. We will have to limit what we do if we can not turn off visibility to members, and invitations leaders.
@lobergfell, @michelekrenzin, @kwatkins,
The next release of inFellowship (our member facing website) will include Privacy Settings that allow each of your members to establish what they want others to see about them. The solution has already been developed, but is waiting on some additional features we believe is needed as part of the next release 'package'.
Some churches, in a similar position as yours, have decided to begin setting up the structure and 'testing' the new system with a handful of small group leaders while waiting for the next release to launch it broadly.
To help you understand what is on the horizon, a picture may speak a thousand words:
https://experience.fellowshipone.com/images/blogs/groups2/privacy.png
Thank you Curtis...the picture speaks!! Lots of detailed questions come to mind...but I will hold off on those for now :) Thank you Thank you!
The other feature that would really be helpful for very sensitive subject groups would be an addition visibility option in the member view of "members can not view other members information". This is also important for teens to not be able to utilize our database as a place to obtain information.
Several of you have asked for more information re: the decision making process for converting and then how to convert. Please see the blog I just posted regarding both of those: http://bit.ly/gIKzWU
@dschaffer not at this time, but in the long term you will see the transition to this model.
@karriew - the 14 days is strictly on the invite sent to the member; they have 14 days to accept the invitation to join, otherwise the small group leader will have to initiate another invite.
Hi Curtis,
Up to this point we have not utilized Small groups at all. However, we are interested in looking into it. I was looking in the learning center for the video 'how to's', but couldn't find them.
Where can I find a step by step on how to set up?
Thanks,
Elena
@edavis - The "Get Started" section of this blog includes some step-by-step instructions and Step 1 includes a link to a video walk-thru as well. Please let me know if you're looking for something additional.
@edavis - You can also go to the Education Tab above, then click on the Learning Center. Scroll down to the People Management section for the videos on Groups 2.0
Thanks!
Curtis,
In the decision guide it shows that in groups 2.0 there is the ability to have group involvement be confidential...is this something for the future? I am not seeing how this currently works...
Karen
I agree with those above regarding privacy settings. We will not be able to use this until that is available. Do you have an expected release date?
Thanks
We expect the profile edit/privacy control will be released Q1.
@juanvallejo - to make a group private you need to create a Group Type where only the people who need to see the groups have permissions to it AND the 'Groups of this type are public' is not checked. Any group that is associated to that Group Type will inherit the 'laws' you just established.
Curtis,
Is there a reason that the household positions do not mirror one another from groups 2.0 to the main portal? In general I would make an assumption that any hardcoded areas would mirror one another...????
Two Questions:
1. Why do one time groups or groups with an end date still display even after the end date has passed. Is there a way for them to disappear once their time has passed?
2. We haven't rolled this out yet at our church, but I have several groups in their to test right now. I have one group that is for age 18-28 and another that is from age 16-100. When I search for ages 18-28, it only gives one group. Shouldn't both display because 18-28 falls within 16-100? Is there something I'm missing?
And we'll put in another vote for getting attendance in Groups 2.0!
@mstarner - To address part 2 of your question: If you search for 16-100 instead of 18-28, both groups would appear because 18-28 falls inside the 16-100 range as well. However, if you search for 18-28, the only group that would appear would be the 18-28 group as 16-100 falls outside of those parameters.
@mstarner - To address part 1 of your question: If you want a group to vanish from your site when it is finished, Edit the Schedule of the Group, Choose "This repeats weekly" or This repeats monthly" then you can add a "Stops Repeating" (End Date), when that date hits, I will not appear on the public facing site (InFellowship). Hope this helps.
@kwatkins - In regards to your confidential group involvment question: This is already a feature available to you. It is located in the "Edit Leader/Member View Rights" section of Group Types. You can designate if you want your Leaders to be able to view other Groups their group members are a part of.
in regards to the confidential groups, do these have to be managed by the leader through the portal? Though not public, I am unable to have one show up on the dashboard for the leader. Am I missing something?
@kwatkins - about 3 years ago we modified the view of the 'household position' choices for your members to help our churches get cleaner data. People creating the accounts didn't always interpret the household positions the same way a church staff might. For example, we saw many people selecting 'Visitor' because they were visiting the church, meanwhile the context of this was relative to the family so we changed it to say 'Fried of Family'; this choice will place them in the 'Visitor' position from the portal view.
Is there a table of sorts that explains what feeds to where and which household positions can be held with which marital status, from what I am experiencing I cannot be a "divorced"(marital status) single adult (household position) in groups it kicks the marital status to single and if saved changes it in the portal???
Is it possible to leave Deceased people out of the Groups 2.0 profiles? We have a member that asked that this morning, after she was checking out her small group info. It shows her as "Single Adult" when we have her marital status as "Widow" and then lists her deceased husband right under her as Other (Extended Family)...
@Karen - I found the documented list in the Feb 2008 release notes: http://experience.fellowshipone.com/downloads/releasenotice/FellowshipOne_ReleaseNotice_20Feb08.pdf
Thank you Curtis, this helps some however there is definitely an issue in how the position and member type are working together in groups. If I go to my infellowship account and "update profile" even if I change nothing, if I "save changes" as a divorced marital status, it automatically changes me to "single" marital status.
@Karen, if you think there is a bug, I would suggest opening a support ticket to get it looked at.
@Alyssa - there is no way to leave deceased people out of Groups 2.0
So adding members to a group would not add them to a Activity, Activity Schedule, Activity Groups or the RCL? We would have to enter them in two places if we want them to be able to use checkins for the groups? Or is there a way to tie groups into "Activities"?
@hroese - you are correct, this is an entirely new structure and does not allow for check-in at this time.
@Alyssa - just got word that the dev team will be changing the functionality of Groups 2.0 to be considerate of deceased.
We are currently using the Groups manager to post attendance... would we be able to continue to use that in conjunction with Groups 2.0 until the attendance module kicks in?
After letting G2 capabilities sit for a while, it occurred to me yesterday that maybe we are working too hard on the congregant facing side for small groups or life groups.
While we wait on some of the security issues to be resolved as noted in this blog, G2 will be a fabulous connecting tool for our volunteers. We have many and connecting them via email and people lists has become a chore. Even Facebook is not working as expected.
I plan on looking at our 1,200+ guest services volunteers and using G2 as a more efficient connection tool.
Thanks for a great capability!
@jfletcher - Groups 1.0 will remain available until we are able to replace attendance and you are welcome to use both at the same time. I would be interested to know the results of this practice... it would seem that may cause some confusion.
A couple of thoughts.....
1.) Could the wording be altered with the Zip Code to make sure the user realizes this is an optional field and not mandatory? From a user's perspective, when given an input, the first reaction is I must fill this out. What if they are moving to the area and don't know a zip code but are checking out churches? We want to make sure they realize they do not HAVE to input a value to move on.
2.) Can the panel that now contains the YouVersion app be opened up to customization? However cool it is, it is something we could actually use to tie into our small groups and connecting with our church. YouVersion doesn't really go along with that theme. It's kind of like an 'add on' or filler versus something applicable to connecting with our church and/or getting involved in a small group. Don't get me wrong, I love YouVersion and am a frequent user of it! I'm just not sure it holds much meaning where it is in inFellowship; at least for us! The option to customize that box OR have it available would be great!
3.) We REALLY need more control over the amount of information a member of a group can see; especially with this being an online tool. If someone asks to join a group and one of leaders approve them, they can be someone who is from 'who knows where' and now has access to emails, phone numbers, etc. of people in our church. This may stop us from implementing; and that would be a shame.
A correction to my comment regarding 'A couple of thoughts...' made on January 14.
After reading more in-depth, I see that my #3 thought has already been addressed via the the update of a profile manager giving each member the ability to hide this information. Please ignore this point. My bad.
@revkev - we snuck that in just for you ;)
PS - re: YouVersion, we will be removing that in an upcoming release, but due to a slight design change it will simply not be replaced. You can see the new look in this image: https://experience.fellowshipone.com/images/blogs/RoadMap/inFellowship/branding.jpg
Hey there,
I've been following this update from Canada eagerly anticipating it's arrival up here. Any idea when it may become available?
Cheers!
@jnauta - I've spoken with Product Management about this and they have indicated the next release should address the final international issues. With that said, it sounds like a number of churches outside the US have been using it as is... not sure as to the success of those implementations.
Hi, likewise we're waiting for the International release - I was so excited by the new release only to find we can't use it yet as we're in the UK!
You say it should be in the next release, do you have a timeframe for the International release, the likely month?
And what are the issues with implementing it ahead of the international release? As I too was tempted to make a start with it as is, but have so far resisted!
Thanks!
@JWhite - I'm expecting the release to be sometime before the end of March, but a hard date hasn't been set yet. The typical issues with International include address fields (we ask for city/state/zip) and date display (we show MM/DD/YYYY).
Question about Search Categories:
It seems that this function has changed from the Beta version I used in the Fall. Now it functions as wsteed mentioned below:
@mstarner - To address part 2 of your question: If you search for 16-100 instead of 18-28, both groups would appear because 18-28 falls inside the 16-100 range as well. However, if you search for 18-28, the only group that would appear would be the 18-28 group as 16-100 falls outside of those parameters.
However, in the Fall I don't think it functioned like this. It would be much more helpful if the above mentioned search for 18-28 found both groups the 18-28 and the 16-100 because both groups do contain people in the 18-28 age range. The current function seems to exclude multigenerational groups that people from many ages. Is it possible to change this back to how it functioned in the beta version?
@Matt - I have passed this to Product Management.
@wsteed - Thanks for addressing my questions a while ago - I missed the responses until just now. I still have a concern regarding one-time events being automatically removed after the date of the event.
If for a one-time event to disappear after the event has passed (thus saving on maintenance time) it has to be listed as a repeating event with just one occurrence, then why is there an option for a one-time event at all? Also, by making the event repeating, even if it's just for one time, it lists the event in the search results as "Meets: Tu Each Week" when this is not true - it only meets once. Why can't a selecting "This is a one-time event" make it disappear when the event is over?
Don't get me wrong - I'm LOVING all of the new additions to F1. We have a lot of one-time events that happen at different locations, so being able to have them be removed automatically saves time on the upkeep.
Thanks @CurtisHarris . I did find a work-around, but it was extremely tedious. This issue and attendance are my only issues with Groups 2.0. Otherwise, I completely LOVE the direction this is heading in. More and more of my leaders are beginning to embrace and use this new system.
PingBack from http://jackfisher.me/2011/02/02/our-social-media-challenge/
Think of inFellowship as a congregational portal; a way for your membership and the community at large
I'm curious, when will the actual church member be able to add/submit their own group? Then that group submission gets sent to a queue for a staff memeber to approve and publish. Currently all groups are having to be inputted by a staff member or someone with F1 access, which is a huge time demand.
Thanks
Rachel
Rachel, the current project priority for Groups 2.0 is attendance and then 'Group Notes' (which will allow a group to submit a note about their group, member or meeting). Beyond that, I'm not sure what will be done. Probably not the answer you are looking for, but didn't want to keep you in the dark on it.
Hey Curtis,
Appreciate all you guys are doing re Groups 2.0 and Infellowship. Looks great!
I know you've not "released" it internationally per se, but I've been having a bit of a play to see if we can start using the functionality early.
Here are my early observations.
- Dates are in the "correct" format
- When setting up a group location (initially) it give a drop-down list of (US only) states. When going back to edit the location it's free text
- "Zip" code? 'Nuff said.
- Mapping kinda works. Correctly locates groups, but put's me (searching via post code. Eg. 3151) in SWEDEN!!!!! (if I put it in as state and post code, it gets it right. Eg. VIC 3151)
- The blue map pins are almost the same colour as route markers and tend to blend in
- https vs http. When doing a map search the "unsecured content" message impacts the UX
- I understand why not, but a greater degree of customising/themeing would be nice (but not essential)
Do you have an updated release date for international features?
The staging site looks very different, is this how the product may end up looking?
Cheers,
Neil
Head bar(code)keep
Neil, look for an announcement in the next 24-48 hours on this.
Is there a schedule/calendar that members can view where they can manage their own time slots for each sunday? I.E. Jr Acolytes can go sign up for the sundays that they can participate. I was hoping for something like a google calendar that the group could access, plus have the abilities of the Group 2.0. Thanks, Ceci