Ensembles, Committees/Teams and Member Groupings
It is often necessary to create subsets of members from your member database. Examples may include...
- All the tenors
- The Music Team
- A youth chorus
- Former members
- etc
In HarmonySite, there are several ways to achieve this. The following three concepts exist for this purpose:
- Member Groupings: Select members based on criteria, such as their membership status, section, financial dues/fees they pay, etc. Examples include "prospective members", "All the tenors", "Members that pay dues annually", etc
- Committees and Teams: Select members by name (e.g. the "Show Team" consists of Fred, Mary, Tom and Jane).
- Ensembles: Similar to Committees and Teams (above), in that members are selected by name, but the set of members selected will likely be some sort of performance group.
When it's time to create a new subset of members, it's important to choose the right approach. To this end, we will examine each of these in more detail...
Member Groupings
A member grouping is a subset of your member database defined by criteria. Member grouping criteria are usually based on a member's membership details and/or their ensemble participation.
For example, the following "groupings" of members could be created...
- All active full members of the club/chapter
- All active singers within the ensemble (note that is subtly different from the previous grouping)
- All prospective members
- All the tenors
- All former members
- All people who help out but are not actually members
- All spouses and partners
...using criteria such as...
- Membership Type/role
- Membership Level
- Membership Status
- Dues/fees structure
- Section/voice part
These criteria usually fall into two categories:
- Membership criteria - For when you need to select a subset of members based on their membership with your club/chapter, such as their membership level, membership status, dues schedule, their registration or expiry date, etc.
- Participation criteria - For when you need to select a subset of members based on their participation with one of your ensembles (typically your primary ensemble - your choir, chorus, band, etc). These criteria include their section/voice part, their status, etc.
It's easy to confuse these two categories. For example, if you want to specify criteria to select former members, you may be confused by the Status field in the membership criteria, which is separate from the Status field in the participation criteria. A good rule of thumb is to specify the minimum criteria necessary to correctly produce the subset of members you're interested in. If selecting a Status of Former for the membership criteria correctly selects all your former members, you should not also select a Status of Inactive for the participation criteria.
Member groupings are "automatic", meaning that if you change a member's details so that they match the criteria of a given member grouping, that member will instantly and automatically appear in that member grouping's list of members.
Most website pages in HarmonySite that deal with members will usually deal with just a single subset of the member database, and typically this subset will be defined by a member grouping. For example, the page that sends text messages is typically configured to send to the predefined member grouping called "Members and Helpers".
Administrators can change the names or criteria of the predefined member groupings that come with HarmonySite, as well as add new member groupings or remove ones that are not needed. In addition, the member grouping used for a specific website page can be easily nominated by administrators.
Specific examples of member groupings are detailed further down this page.
Committees & Teams
A committee/team is a subset of members that have been selected individually, by name (as opposed to by criteria). For example, the following Committee/Teams of members could be created...
- Executive/Leadership Committee
- Show team
- Website team
- A "team" of people involved in a special event, for example a club weekend trip.
When a set of members is grouped together into a committee/team, it becomes possible to upload documents to the website that are visible only to members of the committee/team. If necessary, these documents can be kept private to the members of the team.
Ensembles
In HarmonySite, an ensemble is similar to a committee/team (above), in that the people that make up the ensemble are selected individually, by name. Differences between an ensemble and a committee/team include...
- Ensembles are generally considered "performance" groups, such as a quartet, youth chorus, etc
- Each person that's part of an ensemble can have extra details stored in the system about their participation in the ensemble, such as their section/voice part, their first rehearsal date or the conventions they've attended with the ensemble.
Examples of ensembles include:
- Your main choir/chorus/band/etc
- A competition chorus
- A youth choir
- A quartet
- Any other performance group affiliated with your organisation
Your members may participate in one, none or several ensembles.
Mailing Lists
One benefit of creating a subset of members in HarmonySite is that you can then creating a mailing list based on that subset, allowing you to send an email to all the members of that subset by simply addressing your email to one email address, such as tenors@mygroup.com.
In HarmonySite, it's a simple, one-step process to create a mailing list based on either a member grouping or a committee/team. If you want to create a mailing list based on an ensemble, there's an extra step involved: You need to first create a member grouping based on the ensemble, and then you can create a mailing list based on that member grouping.
Examples of Member Groupings
In order to better understand how member groupings work, and the use of criteria, we can look at the criteria in some specific examples. HarmonySite comes with three default member groupings; "Regular Members", "Active Singers", and "Members and Helpers". The criteria specified for these member groupings are shown below.
These screenshots come from the page you see when you update each member grouping.
Regular Members | Active Singers | Members and Helpers |
| All active, full members of the club/chapter. | All active participants of the organisation's primary ensemble | All regular members, plus other people (non-members) that help out |
  |  |   |
 |  |  |
The "Regular Member" and "Members and Helpers" criteria above show that the definition of a regular member (or helper) is based solely on their membership of the club/chapter irrespective of whether they actually participate in any of the group's ensembles. And the definition of an active singer is based solely on their participation in an ensemble, regardless of their club membership. In other words, an active singer may not be a member of the club/chapter, and a regular member may not be an active singer.