What are Distribution Groups?
When you need to send notifications or bulletins to the same group of people, on your project, or throughout your company on a regular basis, it can be tiresome to manually add each individual recipient every single time you need to send them something.
Distribution Groups allow you to create a single group, containing multiple recipients, to save you having to manually select recipients every single time, and ensure that no-one is mistakenly left out or forgotten.
Distribution Groups can be company wide (for example Senior Company Leadership), or project specific (for example a Site Safety Team).
Using Distribution Groups
You will initially be able to use these groups within Email Bulletins, as well as Inspection Recipients.
For more information on sending bulletins see here Bulletins > Creating A New Bulletin
Configuring and Setting up Distribution Groups
This article will show you how to set up Project level groups. To see how to create Company level groups, read Company > Setting Up Company Distribution Groups
There are two types of distribution groups you can configure at a project level:
Customizable Per Project - The recipients for the group are individually customized per project, with a common Name and Description assigned at Company Overview. This is useful for groups that exist on every project, but have different recipients on each project, for example a Site Safety Committee. They will show up in the project with the type of 'Customizable'.
Project Groups - These groups are added and used only for the project that they are created in, and will not appear elsewhere.
To create Distribution Groups within your project:
- Log into HammerTech (if you are not already logged in), ensure you are in the correct project and then using the left hand menu navigate to > PROJECT SETTINGS > Distribution Groups.
- Select the plus sign in the top right corner, or select a group from the list.
- If you select a group from the list and the type is listed as Customizable that means it was originally created within Company Overview and the Name and Description panel can only be edited from there by a company admin, so it will appear greyed out. You can continue to add any users and workers from the project. as well as custom email addresses.
- If you are creating a new Distribution Group in the project, enter a Name and Description.
- If you would like other users (main contractor only) to be able to join the group themselves by navigating to My Account > Notification Preferences, tick the 'Allow Users to Join' box.
- Depending on who you want to be part of the group, you can select from Predefined Groups, select Individual Users, or add Custom Email Addresses (for people who may not be users in the system).
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In the Predefined Groups section, you will have the option of All Employer Users, All Main Contractor Users, All Nominated Reps, All Primary Contacts, and All Workers. Tick the checkbox for those that apply or leave empty (Note: remember that this is referring to a company wide group of those users).'
- To add a Custom Email Address, enter the full name of the person in the first text box, and then their email address in the next box, and select +Add Email. As you add them, they will appear above in the Selected Email Addresses panel. To remove an email that was added in error simply click on the red X and you will receive a message to confirm if you want to delete.
- If you want to add individual users, navigate to the Users panel, select a category of Main Contractor or Subcontractor and start typing the user's name. Once they appear in the list, select them and then +Add User. Use the red Trash Can icon to remove any that were added in error.
- The last panel is for Workers, and allows you to search and add any approved workers from the project, to the group.
- First select their Employer, start typing their name and then select them from the list and +Add Worker. The workers will appear above and you can use the red Trash Can icon to delete any that were added.
- Once completed, select +Create at the bottom of the page. You can navigate back and edit these groups at any time.