Categories are a way of grouping People and Businesses in HQ. Any contact can be in any number of categories and contacts can be filtered based on their membership of a combination of categories. For example: contacts who are both “Plumbers” and “Drive a Van”.
Categories can be defined by you and have any text label e.g. “Baker”, “Degree”, “Good customer” and so on.
To View your contacts and select by category, go to Contacts>By Category on the menu. You will see a screen similar to the following:
To select contacts by category (or categories):
Single Category:
Click the checkbox next to a category to show the full list of contacts in that category.
Multiple Categories:
Click as many categories as are relevant.
- If the “Combine using” buttons are set to “OR” then a contacts will be selected if they are in any one of the categories you have selected (Category A or Category B or Category C and so on).
- If the “Combine using” buttons are set to “AND” then a contacts will be selected if they are in ALL of the categories you have selected (Category A and Category B and Category C and so on).
Expand Businesses:
If this is checked, then any business in the category will be expanded to show the people in those businesses rather than the businesses themselves.
View By Query (COMING SOON):
To use the view by query feature first of all you need to select “Query” as the “View By” option at the top of the page. Once you have done this the select box next to these two options will be enabled and the rest of the category options will be disabled.
Now you can select a query from the list much like you would when using the reports section, and once you have selected it, you will get the usual list of contacts like you would using normal categories except these contacts will be ones that match the query.
Once you have selected a query you can do everything that you would with the contacts from a category for example: send emails, write letter etc.
Several Operations can be performed on contacts selected by category
Labels:
To print labels for every contact select ‘by category’ click the LABELS button to see the following dialog box:
Choose you label sizes either by typing-in specific label sizes or by choosing from a set of predefined standard labels. These can be selectd from the drop down list and your own label sizes can be added to the list using the “Save As New Template” button.
Click the “Print Labels” button to create a PDF of labels of your chosen contacts. Please note that the PDF will use your page layout preferences set in Tools>Options on the HQ menu.
Print:
Click PRINT to create a PDF of the contacts selected.
Export:
Click EXPORT to create a text file containing the name and address details of all the contacts selected. This is a comma separated variables (CSV) fie that can be imported into most software packages (Word, Excel and so on).
SMS To:
Click SMS TO. A dialog box similar to the one below appears:
Check (or un-check) contacts in the list to select who to send to. Then write your message (up to 160 characters) and click “Send”. The SMS will be recorded in the history for each contact.
Email To:
Click “Email To”. The email composer window opened and the email address of every member of the selected contacts (for whom an email address exists) will be entered into the BCC field. You can then continue to compose and send your email as normal.
Write To:
Click “Write to”. This will start the document editor and you will need to select a document template. Here’s an example of a basic letter template. You’ll notice that the “Merge” menu has the “By Categories” item pre-selected and as soon as I click “Preview Merge” then a preview document containing the first five members of the selection are shown (with all HQ:Tags replaced by relevant information). Clicking “Print” will print all the letters for the selection.