Action Network Groups – Parent and Child Groups

When using Action Network you may encounter the terms “parent group” and “child group”. These terms are used to explain how our national, regional, and local party groups are connected in Action Network.

In this guidance article we provide an overview which should aid your understanding of these terms and what they mean in practice.

We also give some further information regarding the flow of data between groups.

Understanding Parent and Child Groups

It may be easiest to think of “parent group” and “child group” as synonyms of “group” and “subgroup”.

Our Action Network setup is similar to a family tree.

The top group (or ultimate parent group) is the national Green Party group.
Sitting below this are our regional party groups and liberation groups.
Lastly, the local party groups sit under our regional party groups.

Given below is a snapshot of this structure. The example given shows the national group, our regional party groups, and most of the local party groups in the North East region.

No child groups should be created below the local party group level. Where these are created, they can impact our data maintenance processes and will ultimately be removed by our digital team.

For all local parties their parent group is their respective regional party.

For all regional parties (and liberation groups) their parent group is the national Green Party group.

The national Green Party group is the ultimate parent group of all the groups in our network.

Action Network administrators are only given access to the groups which are necessary for the fulfilment of their local or regional party roles, i.e. when using Action Network most administrators will only be able to view a maximum of a few of the groups in our network.

Data Sharing Between the Groups in Our Network

Parent groups have access to all the data contained in their child groups.
Data is not shared between local party groups.
Similarly, data is not shared between regional groups or liberation groups.
Some centrally maintained data is shared with all regional, liberation, and local party groups from the national party group.
You can find out more about this here: Which custom fields are synced to Activists on Action Network from the Green Party's national database?
The diagram below exemplifies the paths which data can be shared along. Data can travel in either direction, along each of the lines in this example.
Note that there are no horizontal lines in this diagram. Data can only be shared between parent and child groups. “Sibling groups” do not share data.
All data and information stored in a child group is visible to the parent group(s).

How Can Parent Groups (National, Regional) Share Data with Child Groups (Local)?

Only two types of data can be manually shared by parent groups with child groups (i.e. this data does not flow between groups automatically), these are Tags and Questions & Custom Fields.

To share this data with a child group from within Action Network, head to the Start Organizing menu, then click Details, then either Tags or Questions & Custom Fields.

Once you have located the tag, question or custom field you wish to share with the child groups, click Send to Children. This will take a couple of minutes and then all children of the parent group will be able to use the tag, question or custom field which has been sent.

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