Introduction
What is a Group
Groups are an essential tool for segmenting different types of people and exhibitors involved in your event or community. This segmentation helps manage permissions and enables efficient communication with each group.
Practical Uses for Groups
Manage Permissions: Control access to features and visibility.
Exhibitor Permissions: Adjust what exhibitors can do.
Meeting Request Rules: Customize rules for meeting requests.
Targeted Communications: Send specific emails and notifications to different groups.
Session Registration: Allow or restrict session registrations.
Targeted Ads: Display home ads or banned ads to specific groups.
Default Groups
For each event and community, there are three default groups:
Attendees (or Members at Community level): All event attendees or community members.
Speakers: All individuals linked to a session as speakers.
Exhibitors: All individuals associated with an exhibitor as members.
Default groups cannot be renamed or deleted.
Why Effective Group Management is Crucial for Event Success
Customizing the event journey based on different criteria such as exhibitor sponsoring levels and attendee ticket types, like VIPs, is fundamental to crafting a personalized and effective event experience. Swapcard's group management feature provides organizers with the autonomy and control needed to tailor every aspect of the event. By setting up specific groups, organizers can create multiple networking rules, adjust access to lead generation features, and even generate comprehensive reports, all based on the unique needs of each group.
This flexibility is essential for maximizing engagement and ensuring that all participants, from exhibitors to attendees, have the resources they need to succeed. For example, higher-tier exhibitors can be granted enhanced capabilities for lead management and data access, directly correlating their investment level with their potential for ROI. Similarly, VIP attendees might receive exclusive networking opportunities, enhancing their event experience and satisfaction.
With flexible group management organizers can create dynamic event strategies and and foster attendee engagement that aligns with their creative vision.
How to create a group
Groups can be created and managed at both the community and event levels.
When creating a new group, you can initialise it:
with the same preferences (emails and some permissions) than an existing group.
without specifying an existing group, so emails will not be assigned and meeting rules will not be created for this new group.
Each event group has a parent Community group, which define permissions at Community level of event attendees.
How to create a group at the Event level
Open the desired event
Go to Event Builder
Navigate to Groups & permissions
Click on Add a group
How to create a group at Community level
Open the desired community
Go to Community Builder
Navigate to Groups & permissions
Click on Add a group
How to assign People to a group
You can assign people to groups in several ways:
Manually: Through the person’s profile in Studio: Content > People > Click on a person > Settings tab > Select group(s).
via an Excel: From Content > People, export the people list in a xlsx file, edit group name(s) in the column A "Groups". We recommend to use the tab "Groups (read-only) of the file to copy group name, to avoid typo. Then upload the xlsx file with your edits.
Integration: When importing people from a third-party service, in Event Builder > Integrations, you are able to assign a group for each third-party registration ticket type.
Developer API: Use Swapcard Content API to assign or edit groups. Group Ids can be found at the bottom of the group edition side panel.
💡 People can belong to multiple groups, but only the highest priority group will be considered. Learn more about group priority.
How to assign Exhibitor to a group
Exhibitors can be assigned to groups through:
Manually: From the exhibitor’s profile in Studio: Content > Exhibitors > Click on an exhibitor > Permissions tab > Select group).
Integration: When importing exhibitors from a third-party service, in Event Builder > Integrations, you are able to assign a group for each third-party exhibitors type.
Developer API: Use Swapcard Content API to assign or edit groups. Group Ids can be found at the bottom of the group edition side panel.
💡 Exhibitor can only belong to one group.
How to manage people in multiple groups
If a person is assigned to multiple groups, only the highest priority group will determine their permissions, accessible content, emails, and networking capabilities.
This logic also applies to people who are members of exhibitors: the person will be considered only in the highest priority group among the groups they directly belong to and the group of the exhibitor(s) they are member of.
To edit group priorities, change their order in Event Builder > Groups & Permissions. The first group in the list has the highest priority.
How to customize permissions of groups
Each group can have unique permissions. By default, most permissions are enabled.
Organization members can be assigned to groups, but their permissions won't follow group rules; organization members of always all permissions regardless the group they belong to.
How to display or hide people or content by group
You can control visibility based on your event strategy and privacy settings.
In Event Builder > Groups & permissions, you can define for each group (by clicking on edit icon) in the edition side panel Who and what they can see:
People: by default a group can see all people of the event. Keep selected only the groups of people that you want to be visible to the person assigned to the current group. This feature allows you to gate participant networking: by making a group not visible to another, they won't be able to connect or chat. Make sure that the Speakers group has a higher priority than a group that you decide to hide if it's also containing some speakers, to ensure that all speakers are always visible.
Exhibitors: by default a group can see all exhibitors of the event. Add a condition, by selecting a custom fields values of exhibitors that you want make visible to the current group. You can add multiple conditions. You can also create a dedicated hidden exhibitor custom field that will use only for this purpose: make some exhibitors not visible to some groups.
Sessions: by default a group can see all sessions (which are not private) of an event. Add a condition, by selecting a custom fields values of sessions that you want make visible to the current group. You can add multiple conditions.
Items: by default a group can see all items of an event. Add a condition, by selecting the types of items that you want make visible to the current group.
How to allow / disallow chat with exhibitors to a group
By default, people can chat with exhibitor directly from the exhibitor profile page. You are able to select the groups (among "Exhibitors" default group and any custom group that you have created which is containing at least one exhibitor) that you want the person assigned to the current group being able to chat with.
💎 Note: the Exhibitor Live Chat is a feature add-on that could not be enabled according to your contract. Please contact your sales representative if you want it.
How to allow / disallow a group to use Lead Capture
They will be able to scan participants' badges met on site in order to save their information, using the badge reader included in the mobile app.
While typically limited to exhibitors, you can enable it for any group in Event Builder > Groups & Permissions.
💎 Note: the Lead Capture is a feature add-on that could not be enabled according to your contract. Please contact your sales representative if you want it.
Other existing permissions
Exhibitors permissions: you can manage additional permissions to your exhibitors to give them access or not to some exhibitors features according to your monetization strategy. Some permissions exist at both group and exhibitor levels (like Lead Capture), the permission set on the exhibitor level takes the priority.
Pages' visibility: define for each pages of your menu which groups can see it. Even if 2 groups can see a page, they might not see the same content if your have defined some visibility conditions in group settings.
Registration for session: define which groups can register or unregister for each session.
Meeting requests: define which groups can send meeting requests.
How to delete a Group
It is not possible to delete the three Groups available by default (Attendees, Exhibitors, Speakers). However, you can delete any custom Group that you have created.
For this, click on the Edit "pencil" icon, and scroll all the way down in the right-hand-side modal and hit Delete.
