What is the difference between Tag or Group

Question

Liebes Civi-Team,

was ist der Unterschied zwischen den Tags und den Gruppen? Wie wäre es ratsam, diese einzusetzen?

Viele Grüße

Kerstin Krupp

Dear Civi-Team,

what is the differencer between tags and groups?

Best, Kerstin Krupp

Answer 1

both tags and groups are ways to segment contacts. There are a few differences:

Tags - can be used for contacts, activities, cases and attachments - quick to add, easy to use and find - you can not extends tags with custom fields AFAIK - easy to spot on the contact summary (if you do not use too many) - can not be used to create a segment of contacts for a bulk mailing

Groups

• can be used to segment contacts only
• can be extended with custom fields
• can be used for Bulk Mailing and ACL's (fine grained permissions), scheduled reminders and subscribe/unsubscribe
• you can also create smart groups (check https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/organising-your-data/smart-groups/)

You can read a little more on https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/organising-your-data/groups-and-tags/ and I would recommend you play a little with both to discover what would be the best alternative for your specific need.

And a little remark at the end: although there is a CiviCRM Core Team most of the posts on this forum are answered by community members :-) I get the impression from the "Civi-Team" you are expecting a big team of people employed by CiviCRM answering these questions :-)

Answer 2

TAGS:

• You can not create Tags for use with specific types of contacts (i.e. you can't create tags that are ONLY for use with Individual contacts)
• When you export Tags, all Tags assigned to a record are exported in a single "cell" as a list (e.g. "Teacher, Volunteer")
• Tags allow multiple selections - so they may not be appropriate for mutually exclusive characteristics (e.g. "Democrat", "Republican", "Green Party")
• You cannot selectively hide or permission Tags on built-in or Profile create and edit forms (you get ALL Tags ALL THE TIME on edit forms)

GROUPS:

• All existing Groups are listed under Manage Groups and in the search forms. - This may cause group "overload" if your organization winds up with "too many" Groups.
• Groups used for short-term projects should be "purged" when they're no longer needed
• When exporting contact records, all the Groups a contact belongs to are exported as a single comma-separate list (e.g. "Administrators,Newsletter Subscribers")