Categorising organisations using labels

Introduction to organisation labels

In the Network module, Labels offer an effective way of categorising or grouping organisations that share certain attributes in common, such as the organisation type, region or size. Once added, labels can be used as filters in reports and in smart tag conditions to communicate to a specific audience. If you're new to Labels, you may find it helpful to first understand labels in action by reading the sections later in this article, which will help you decide what labels and label options you might need in your context for managing Network organisations.

Adding labels

To add a label, select Labels from the menu bar and click Add label.

On the Add label pop-up, enter a suitable label Name and choose a label Colour, which is seen when viewing assigned labels on an organisation’s profile page. Add Responses representing each of the label options - a label must have at least one response option. You can drag and reorder response options within the list. Deleting a response option will remove that response option from any organisations previously assigned that response - delete with caution! Next, choose the label Type which determines whether organisations can be assigned a Single response or Multiple responses for the label, and whether a response is Required. For example, the example label below would suit a single response since an organisation can only be assigned to one region. However, a label with options representing the various services an organisation might provide would better suit multiple responses, meaning you'll be able to select multiple label responses to be assigned to an organisation. Click Save to add the label.

Continue adding other Labels as desired. Note that you can change the Order of labels, and also the label Actions to Edit and make label changes, Delete, which removes the label from all organisations, and View changes. Later, as you begin assigning labels to organisations, you'll see a count of organisations assigned with each label response. Clicking on a label option or count pill will open a filtered list of those organisations.

Assigning labels to an organisation

When adding or editing an organisation, Label responses can be selected or deselected. Selected labels change colour from white to the chosen label colour. How the label responses behave in the pop-up will depend on the response Type.

• Single response labels function like a 'radio' field, where clicking on one response de-selects any previously selected response. Only one response can be selected, but no response is also permitted unless the label is set as required
• Multiple response labels function more like a 'checkbox' field where clicking on a response option turns that value on and off independently of the other options

In the example below, editing an Organisation, ‘Region' is a single response label - distinguished by the 'select one' helper text - and ‘Policies’ is a multiple response label.

In addition to assigning labels on an organisation-by-organisation basis, you can also bulk-assign one or more label responses to multiple organisations using the batch Edit actions in the Organisations section of the module.

In the Edit pop-up, tick the label/s to be changed and choose the appropriate response/s to be assigned to all the selected organisations. Note that any previously-selected label responses will be overwritten and the newly-selected values will be assigned.

Assigned labels are shown on the organisation profile page on the Details tab, with responses sporting the chosen label colour.

Clicking on a label response opens a filtered list of all organisations with that same response - the list is created using the Advanced Search, which can be further filtered if you wish - see the next section in this article.

Having assigned labels, the remainder of this article explores labels in action and some of the different ways labels will help you as you manage the various organisations in your network.

Advanced search for labels

The Organisations section of the module lists all organisations in your network. The Search bar and Advanced Search option enable you to drill down and further filter the organisation list. The list filters as you type in the search - ideal for finding a particular organisation in a long list. However, the advanced search can be used to filter using criteria.

Clicking the Advanced Search icon reveals the available search options - you can choose criteria based on your custom field Settings and Labels. Each additional search criteria applies "AND" logic to further narrow the results, rather than "OR" logic, which would widen the results. However, for Labels, 'OR' logic is used when choosing multiple responses for the same label e.g. for the Region label, if ‘Midlands' and ‘South’ responses were selected, all organisations matching either the 'Midlands' OR 'South' regions would be filtered.

Labels in smart tags

Smart tags enable you to dynamically group people based on conditions; those contacts whose details match the tag's condition are tagged and those whose details no longer match the tag's conditions are untagged. Smart tags remain up to date as your organisation member contact details change over time, meaning that when viewing a smart tag you are always seeing the latest tagged grouping of people at that time. Smart Tags enable you to communicate with specific groupings of matching people and when you wish to filter a report to see results for just a certain grouping of people. See our related support article for further information about Smart Tags.

There is a wide range of supported Network module conditions, giving you lots of granular control over the contact members of organisations the tag matches, including Label related conditions. In the example below, the tag has a condition to match contacts who are organisation members that hold a specified role in organisations that are assigned with a particular "Region" Label response value for "Midlands". In this example, 'Region' is stored as an organisation Label. Notice that there are smart tag conditions available to Members, Organisations, Meeting Addresses, Office Addresses, Labels and Custom Fields.

In this way, you can easily create highly elaborate smart tags to drill down into your Organisation member data, and then Communicate with those tagged contacts directly from a tag's View page, or use the Tag as a filter in one of the Address Book module's reports.

Labels in reports

Reports can be optionally filtered by Label responses. Here's an example of the Network Location report filtered using selected Label responses.

Where multiple label responses are selected, 'OR' logic is used where multiple responses for the same label are selected and 'AND' logic is used when more than one label is filtered. In the example above, the Location report is filtered to show organisations assigned with Region label responses for North OR Midlands, AND whose assigned Policies label response is Safeguarding.

Labels in embed

The Network module includes powerful embed functionality that enables you to easily embed organisation maps and lists into your website. When customising each embed configuration you have the option to show one or more Label filters on the page to help your website visitors filter a map or list to find just the organisation of interest in your network. In the map embed example below, the embed has been configured to include a "Region" Label filter at the top. As website visitors choose label response filter options, the map updates to show matching organisations plotted and clickable.

And here's the organisation List embed, again, with a Region Label filter enabled in the embed configuration so that website visitors can filter a long list by selected label responses to find organisations of interest.

We've produced a separate support article called Embed organisation lists and maps in your website that explains the module's embed functionality and label filtering in greater detail.