How to make a Smart Group dumb
Great tools like CiviCRM will let you do a lot of things "your way," often without bothering to tell you that you're making life harder for yourself.
Here's an example that came up for a client a while back:
Create a Smart Group with specfic criteria.
Rely on it to show you all the contacts who meet that criteria.
Manually remove one contact from the group. Move on with life.
Weeks later, agonize for hours over why that contact is not in the Smart Group, even though they meet the critera.
Ouch. What happened there?
In truth, manually removing that contact seemed right at the time. It was a "special case" shortcut that solved a short-term problem.
But by short-circuiting the predictable nature of the Smart Group, it created a big headache later. Live and learn, they say.
And what's to be learned here?
This isn't really about Smart Groups or how to manage them. That's the kind of technical detail that we're all learning more of as we move forward.
instead, this is about keeping life predictable -- and sane -- in the long term, by striving for consistency in the short term.
Your CRM and other tools are only valuable for you when you can rely upon them.
Continual attention to consistency will make all the difference there.
Here’s the thing:
It's true, avoiding "special case" shortcuts can make a little extra work for you today.
But "future you" will thank you for being consistent instead.
All the best,
A.