You can associate an activity or opportunity with a group. You can also create notes for a group or subgroup or for each contact within a group. You can use groups and subgroups to do the following:
Display all activities scheduled with all contacts in the group in one location.
By default, all contact information for members of a group, such as activities, notes, and so on, appear in the group. However, you can associate a single item, like an activity, to a group even if the contact(s) that activity belongs to is not a member of the group.
Create notes and histories for the group.
You can create notes for a group or subgroup as well as for each contact in the group. You can view all notes and histories in one location. For example, if you create a group for a professional organization, you can add a group note containing driving directions to the meeting location.
Send e-mail to or create documents for members of the group.
If you have valid e-mail addresses in the contacts' records, you can send one e-mail message to all contacts in a group.
If you create a document for all members of the group, you can perform a mail merge and fax, e-mail, or print the documents for all members of the group.
About groups and subgroups
Groups and subgroups let you organize large lists of records into useful subsets, for example, you might want a group of all of your contacts that live in Arizona.
A group can include an unlimited number of subgroups and a maximum of 15 sub-subgroups. A subgroup is a subset of a group. A sub-subgroup is a subgroup of a subgroup. For example, a group may include individuals who live in the same state; within that group, you might have subgroups for towns and cities; within that subgroup, you may have a nested subgroup of street names. In addition, you can view the hierarchy of each group and subgroup.
You create and manage groups in the Group Detail window. The Group Detail window has many of the same features as the Contact window, including tabs for inserting or viewing notes, histories, activities, and opportunities of the contacts that are group members or items that are associated with the group.
The Group Detail window displays a Hierarchy box with drop-down list, an Up button, and a Subgroups box. The Hierarchy box shows the levels of a group's hierarchy. The list lets you view the position of the current group in its hierarchy and to move a group up in the hierarchy. You can also use the Up button to move a group up one level in the group hierarchy and to display the detail view for the selected group level. When you select the top group in the hierarchy, the Up button is disabled. The Subgroups box lists the names of all the subgroups contained in each level of a group's hierarchy. Click a subgroup name link to display its detail view.
You can also use the Groups/Companies tab in the Contact Detail window to see which groups/companies the contact is a static member of. You can add contacts to groups from this tab as well.
Groups can be created by saving a lookup as a group.
The Group Detail window also contains the View Groups/Companies navigator button. Click this button to easily select a group or company for viewing.
Tell me the advantages of using groups
How Do I…?
Schedule an activity with a group or company