Contents...

• About Labels, Groups, and Connections
  • Groups
    • Self Sign-Up Groups
  • Limitations on Label Names
  • Privacy Override
  • Hierarchy
  • Restrictions
  • Club Main Contact and Use Club's Email Address for Official Correspondence
  • Standard Labels
• Administrator and Special Access
  • Organisation Context and Creating New Labels
• Getting Technical About Connectors and Labels

Online Croquet England Directory Help.

See also How to change Secretary or Data Administrator. Secretary and Data Administrator are by default special roles that allow the holder to administer their club details and their members.

About Labels, Groups, and Connections

A label is like a Post-It note - a bit of text (or a tag) that can be attached to a person or organisation. When a new person takes over a role, the tag is simply moved to the new person. Labels can be used to

• define roles (such as a club secretary or club handicapper)
• record qualifications (such as a Referee or Coach)
• control access privileges (such as an administrator)
• tag organisations (for example, to identify meeting venues)
• group people together (for example a committee, or those attending a BBQ - see also Self Sign-Up)

Club administrators can easily create new labels and groups (see below) to use however they wish.

• Each label is owned by an organisation
  • the secretary label in one club is not the same label as the secretary of another club - each club has its own secretary label
• A label is attached to a person (or club) using a connection
  • the connection is the glue in the Post-It analogy, or the string if thought of as a tag
• The connection has a start and end date (though the end date is often left open)
• A label can be connected to any number of people
• A label lists the people to whom it is attached

Croquet England and Federations can create shared labels whose connector additionally names the club that the label represents in that instance. Shared labels are used for defining a role that is common to many clubs, for example, the contact for a league. Viewing the label within the owner organisation lists all the holders and the associated club.

The owner organisation defines whether the club can manage a shared label's assignment:

• the club administrators can change who is assigned (used for league contacts, club handicappers, etc.)
• official appointments (e.g. club coach) - as with regular labels, only the owner's administrators may make appointments

In both cases, the shared label appears in an associated club's details.

Labels can be configured as managed by a committee or group within the owner's organisation; members of which group can manage the label and its assignments without individuals being full database administrators. This is an efficiency saving that allows, for example, Croquet England Tournaments Committee members to manage Inter-Club contacts without office staff being involved.

When a label is used (for example) for a club officer and that officer changes, a button allows the administrator to change the holder. The date of change-over can be specified, but the default is 'now' (i.e. as of midnight-past).

A label connection is expired by setting its end date to a date in the past, or by using the Delete button (which sets the expiry to midnight yesterday).

When entering a date, you can type today, yesterday and tomorrow. A connection that has no scheduled end date (yet) can take the string never, which displays as .

The start date of a connection (or, more commonly, a club membership) may have been lost in the mists of time and so the start date accepts the string unknown, which displays as .

When a connection to a label expires, it is not lost but becomes invisible (but can be seen when chosen) - thus "who was the secretary on July 1 2018" is an easy question to answer, even if the secretary is now a different person because when the secretary changed, a new connection was made between the secretary label and the new secretary; and the old secretary's connection was set to expire and so became invisible but was not deleted from the database. This mechanism can be exploited by defining a change-over date in the future by setting the start of the new and the expiry of the old secretary connections to be consecutive days - on the set day, the system will take care of it.

Connections activate at the start of their start date, and expire at the end of their end date. A connection that starts and ends on the same day is active for that one day.

Groups

Labels can be used to define a group of people, for example, a committee. Often, more information is wanted about the group so additional parameters like a group description are included. In other words, a group is a label with extra information associated with it. Everything that's true about a label is also true about a group.

People are made members of, and removed from, committees in exactly the same way as a club secretary or a coaching qualification is recorded - by establishing a (dated) connection between the person and the label (or group).

The chair of a group can be indicated with the connection's Annotation field.

Self Sign-Up Groups

A group can be set so that the organisation's members can add themselves via a simple tick to acknowledge having read the group's description. This might be used to sign up for a BBQ or club competition. Croquet England uses it to manage Voting Members.

Only subscribers to (members of) the organisation that owns the group can sign up, and then only if their subscription type allows self-add (default is all do). If they have signed up and subsequently leave the organisation, their connection shows as invalid but they are not removed until the administrator forces it.

To get a CSV file of those who have joined the group, use the Context tab.

Limitations on Label Names

A club cannot create a label with the same name as a Croquet England or federation label shared with it (e.g. Club Handicapper).

If an organisation administrator names a label the same as an existing one, or one shared by Croquet England or its Federation, it is intercepted with a warning and the new label name will include Please Rename Me.

If Croquet England or a federation creates a shared label named the same as one already in use by its associated clubs, the database administrator will support moving across to the shared label on request.

Privacy Override

Organisations, such as Croquet England, must have a GDPR-conforming Data Privacy Notice specifying how stored personal information can be used.

Individuals may specify that they do not want to share their contact details with their fellow club members or Croquet England Subscribers (two separate settings). The Data Privacy Notice makes clear that certain officials may override those expressed privacy wishes if the individual holds a particular qualification, enters a tournament, etc.

Labels provide the mechanism of recording that an individual holds a qualification or is a member of a group, and such labels can specify another label (usually a Croquet England Committee) whose members may override the personal information privacy wish.

For example, members of Croquet England's Handicapping Committee can, after verifying that their access is legitimate, use the email addresses of all club handicappers. In other words, they can override the privacy settings of handicappers when acting as Croquet England Handicapping officials.

Each label or group has a Privacy Override label associated with it. Individuals assigned that label can access the contact details of holders of the first-mentioned label or group, regardless of their privacy settings.

When exercising a Privacy Override, the user is told that they are required to use BCC in emails and not to share the information with others.

Organisation administrators have automatic Privacy Override for their members irrespective of this mechanism.

Hierarchy

A label can be used to group other labels - for example, if there are several types of coaches, then a label Coach would make a useful heading to group them so they can be found easily.

The top level of a label hierarchy is used as tab headings in the organisation's details display to make finding the relevant label easier. For example Club Officers with sub-labels of Chairman, Secretary, etc. Further levels of hierarchy display as an indented list.

Restrictions

Labels are restricted so that a particular label can be applied only to a particular type of object - for example, people or organisations. Restricting their application helps to avoid mistakes: a club would never be awarded a referee qualification and a person should never be a meeting venue!

Any label that can be applied to something must have a parent label showing its category. Parent labels are usually just titles for grouping their sub-labels. If a parent label can be applied to an object, then all its children must apply to the same type, otherwise, a parent label (category) can have any mixture of applicable labels. Top-level labels are always headings and cannot be applied to anything.

Club Main Contact and Use Club's Email Address for Official Correspondence

Most clubs want their secretary used as the main contact (and this is the default) but they are free to set any label within their club as the club's main contact (change it in the club's settings).

Note that a club can have its own email address, which if set (in the club settings) is displayed in place of the main contact's email address as the club's contact email. Croquet England will use the current main contact's email address for all correspondence unless the club settings include an email address and Use Org's Email is ticked.

Standard Labels

Croquet England has as default a set of top-level labels for:

• Appointments and Qualifications (e.g. coaches, handicappers)
• Contacts (for inter-club national tournaments and key roles)
• Governance (Council and its committees)
• Organisation (types of organisations: meeting venues, overseas clubs)
• Privileges (administrators, etc.)

Each club by default has an Officers grouping that includes Secretary, Chairman, etc.

Administrator and Special Access

Holders of some labels (e.g. Secretary) have privileged access to, and control of, the club's and its members' data. This is controlled by a set of properties for the label that can be configured by the club administrator. The properties of the labels constrain their use and are conferred on their holders as follows:

• is Club Officer - permits holders to access club-privileged data, such as reports, workflows and forms, but holders do not have administrator rights over members nor some other club data.
  • By default, this applies to the Chairman and Treasurer labels but can be changed and extended
  • Any number of club labels can have this property set
• is Club Data Administrator - permits holders full administrator rights over the club and all its members.
  • By default, this applies to the Secretary and Data Administrator labels but can be changed
  • The following constraints are (for data protection reasons) to limit the number of people who have full administration rights:
    • No more than three club labels may use this setting
    • Any label so configured must have a Max. Holders of three or fewer
• is Contact - controls whether the holder (and label) is displayed with the organisation's details in the clubs section of the Croquet England website - it's generally set for Secretary, Inter-Club contacts, etc. but not for Data Administrators.
  • Contacts are only revealed to logged-in users, except for the club's Main Contact (Secretary), which is always shown
  • If the club has its own email address, this is shown in the club information display, otherwise the Main Contact's (Secretary's) email address is shown
• Max. (number of) Holders - restricts the number of simultaneous holders of the label - e.g. only one Secretary at a time. A value of zero means the number of holders is not limited. For a self-sign-up group, this would be set to the number of places available
  • To avoid confusion, any attempt to set it to a large value forces it to zero (no limit)
  • If an attempt is made to add too many holders, the latest addition attempt is refused - use swap holder instead
  • If automatic time-based changes cause too many holders, the earliest expiring are expired immediately until the maximum-holders constraint is satisfied
• Warning - indicates a misconfiguration, such as too many holders or someone marked as a contact who does not allow their details to be viewed - hold the mouse cursor over the warning symbol to read the reason for the warning

Organisation Context and Creating New Labels

Labels (and groups) are owned by the relevant organisation: a club's Secretary label is owned by that club; whereas Croquet England's Treasurer label is owned by Croquet England.

Only the owner-club administrator can manipulate connections to labels, and those connections are owned by the organisation that owns the label.

Getting Technical About Connectors and Labels

This section is for the very technically-minded and it is not necessary to read it otherwise!

Labels are restricted so that a particular label can be applied only to a particular type of object (and its descendants).

Any label that can be applied must have a parent label showing its category (top-level parents appear as tabs when viewing a database item). Parent labels need not be applied to objects; they can be just titles for grouping their sub-labels.

If a parent label can be applied to an object, then all its children must be applicable to the same type, otherwise, a parent label (category) can have any mixture of applicable labels.

The target type is extensible: if a label can be attached to a connector, it can be attached to any type that is a connector (e.g. including subscription), but if it can be attached to a subscription, it cannot be attached to any other type of connector (unless it is a child of the subscription type).

Entities and their Relationships - Connectors (click for full size)

The diagram shows most of the object types represented in the database and the interconnections between them that represent memberships, qualifications and roles amongst other things.

The different usages of connectors are numbered and labels (and groups) are assigned a letter as follows:

a Qualification or appointment (e.g. "Referee", "Club Handicapper") - many people can be linked to one.

d, e Committee (or sub-committee) of an organisation (its owner) (e.g. "Publishing Committee").

c Role of a member in a group (e.g. "Chairman") - An organisation would own one and apply it to a multitude of the organisation's groups' memberships. (see also g, h)

g, h Officer or role (e.g. "Secretary", "Inter-Club Contact") for an organisation. (see also c). Typically only one person would hold each label at one time.

f Categorisation (e.g. "Meeting Venue") - each organisation owns a set of labels that it can apply to any object.

b, e, i Parent to other labels and groups, facilitating a hierarchy to aid understanding (e.g. "Qualifications") - each organisation that has one, has only one with that name but a particular one may be replicated in many organisations - e.g. "Club Committee". It need not be assigned to anything itself (typically a committee and its sub-committees would all have members but form a parent/child hierarchy).

The Connector usages are as follows:

1. Person who is a direct Croquet England Associate (it's a subscription-type connector)

2. Person who is a club member (subscription type connector)

3. Club membership of the governing body (Croquet England or Federation) - also a subscription

4, 5. Labelling a person as an officer of an organisation

6. Annotating a connection - deprecated

7. Federation membership of governing body - also a subscription, though unmanaged as no fee is paid and it does not expire automatically by date

8. Group (committee) membership