Smart Groups - cannot get smart groups to refresh

Question

I have read as much as I can about smart groups but I am having problems that I am not able to solve. I have a smart group which shows the same SQL as an Advanced Search but they produce different results.

If I refresh the smart group cache I get the same result.

Answer 1

Some clarification about 'getting smart groups to refresh'

I assume you are using the button 'update smartgroup counts' from the Manage groups screen. This could perhaps be better called 'calculate missing smartgroup counts' (although that wouldn't fit on the button.....) - that button causes the count to be calculated for all groups that the cache has not been built for.

Groups are only recalculated if they have aged out - by default the smart group timeout is 5 minutes. Pretty much whenever you save a contact it attempts to delete the cache for any smart groups that are more than those 5 minutes old (you can set the cache to less than 5 minutes or 0 for more caching). It will then re-fill the cache for that group next time you access it.

If you barely ever edit contacts I guess the cache might not get cleared as often as it 'should' - you can schedule a job (Job.group_cache_flush) to run however often you want - if you do this it makes sense to set the setting 'smart_group_cache_refresh_mode' to 'deterministic' to stop it from also clearing on contact edit (note that this is often good to do for performance reasons)

Answer 2

I think you have a participant/event item in there - so that means some of your Contacts would have participated in more than one event!

Try: Search Builder - it only returns the Contacts (unique)

Answer 3

This answer was a comment by Joanne which I think deserved to be an answer

I have tested this on 4.7.12 and found that Rebuild Smart Group Cache might not remove the contact whose criteria no longer comply with the smart group but Administer > System Settings > Cleanup Caches and Update Paths > Cleanup Caches does. So it seems to be a cache issue rather than a problem with the underlying smart group functionality

Answer 4

I think there is a bug : I could reproduce it on the demo site :

• Create a group : TEST
• Advance search Individuals whose name contains "Adam" > You get 12 instances > Create smart group G1 under TEST
• Advance search Individuals whose name contains "ck" > You get 8 instances > Create smart group G2 under TEST
• Advance search Individuals whose name contains "y" > You get 52 instances > Create smart group G3 under TEST
• Advance search Groups G1, G2, G3 > You get 70 (you could expect 72, but there are some common results) > Create smart group "Total" under TEST

Now,

• open G1 and modify search criteria : "Ad" instead of "Adam" > you get 18 instances (instead of 12), thus 6 more > Update the smart group
• Open group "Total" > you get 77 instead of 70, thus 7 more : why 7 and not 6 ?

Now again,

• open G1 again and modify search criteria : "d" instead of "Ad" > You get 71 instances (instead of 18, thus a lot more) > Update the smart Group
• Open group "Total" > you still get 77 (while it should contain much more than that)
• Open "test" > you get 104 while there is no reason why it should be different from "Total" result

I have just openned an issue : https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/issues/694