CRM: Circles
What is a Circle?
A Circle is the group permissioning & assignment structure for Clients and Prospects. Assigning resources like Dashboards, Portal Pages and Files to multiple Clients/Prospects is much easier using Circles because you can assign resources directly to a Circle, and the result will be that any users inside that Circle will automatically gain access to any of those resources.
IMPORTANT: Users within a Circle cannot see or interact with each other. It is only a method of organization for the admin side of the platform.
How do I create a Circle?
Navigate to CRM > Circles.
From here, you can create a new Circle by clicking the +Add Circle button.
This will bring up a window with several fields.
Circle Name: Give your Circle a name! This field is required.
Description: This is optional. You can use this to describe which Users belong in this Circle.
Assign Users: Use the dropdown to add Users to this Circle.
Custom Field Categories: Select the Categories you would like to be associated with this Circle.
Color: You can click on the colored square to make a selection or type in the hex color code.
You can specify that all newly-created Clients and/or Prospects are automatically added to this Circle.
Marketing: By checking the box you will also automatically create an Audience in the Marketing toolkit. When Contacts are added/removed to or from this Circle those changes will be automatically reflected in the Marketing Audience as well. If you set the Circle as Inactive the Marketing Audience will be removed. Keep in mind that the standard method of adding & removing Subscribers to & from an Audience will not be available on the Marketing side - the members of the Audience are automatically kept in sync with the members of the Circle. This is why you can't make manual changes to the Audience. If a Subscriber unsubscribes from the Audience, they will still remain in the Circle, but won't receive any further Messages sent to that Audience.
CLICK HERE to learn about Marketing Audiences
Circle Options
Use the Options (3 dots)menu button to make modifications to each Circle.
Manage Circle: This will bring you to an in-depth view of the Contacts included in the Circle. The column to the left is a list of all Clients and Prospects in your database. You can click and drag the Contact to the pane on the right to add them to the Circle. You can also filter the list by Clients or Prospects, sort the list by Name, Role or Status, and search for a name in the search bar.
Edit: Allows you to change all of the information you specified during creation, with the exception of the Contacts.
Auto-Templates: Click this option to reveal the Auto-Template window. From the window, click the dropdown and choose the pre-created Auto-Template you wish to apply to the Circle.
Unassign All: Allows you to remove all Users from the Circle.
Set Inactive: Will make the Circle unselectable during assignment.
Delete: Delete the Circle. Any changes made to a Circle will NOT affect each individual Contact.
To remove a Contact from the Circle, click the icon beside their name.
You can also Bulk Assign / Unassign Circles. Click this button to enter into a quick-select/deselect mode.
While on this screen, you can simply click the Contacts you would like to assign to the Circle to "highlight" them in green, or to "deselect" them in gray.
By default, the Contacts assigned to the Circle will appear at the top of the list. You can use the Sort by options to sort the Contacts by Name, Role, or Status.
While viewing the Circle you can Unassign All. This will remove all Users from the Circle.
This action cannot be undone so you will receive a warning asking for additional confirmation before proceeding.
Company Circles
In your Settings, you can specify that every Company you create will automatically create a Circle. Any time you update the users within the Company, the changes will also be reflected in the Circle.
IMPORTANT: Company Circles do NOT show up in the CRM > Circles list. Instead, they will appear on the Contact's CRM Dashboard as well as applicable dropdown menus.
To enable this, navigate to CRM > Settings, and click Company Settings in the side bar menu.
Click the toggle to ON to enable auto-creation of a Circle from a Company.
You can also retroactively apply this setting to your existing Companies. These Circles cannot be edited and managed in the same way as the Circles that appear under CRM > Circles.
Auto-Created Circles
Along with Company Circles, there are a few more Circles that are automatically created and do not show up in the CRM > Circles list.
Prospects, Clients, and All Prospects & Clients are automatically created Circles that cannot be deleted.
They will appear on the Contact's CRM Dashboard as well as applicable dropdown menus.