Whether restructuring event groups, cleaning up old user groups or you just don’t want your event and user groups around anymore, deleting those groups should NEVER be your first choice if they contain (or have ever contained) data.
You can check for past events in an event group by filtering for events starting on 1/1/2000 (or a date that pre-dates your use of VolunteerHub).
Below are the top five reasons you should never delete a user group or event group from your site.
Reason 1: You will lose all registration data associated with those groups.
Removing data from your VolunteerHub site is never a good option. Once you remove data from your site, you will no longer be able to report on that data, which means comparisons of volunteer hours and registrations year-over-year will no longer be an option. In addition, you will no longer be able to provide an accurate history of your users’ volunteer histories and hours.
The amount of data you could potentially lose depends on the type of group you’re removing:
- User Groups: If you’re trying to delete a user group, you will lose all subgroups as well as registration data associated with that user group. That means if you ever reserved event slots for that group, all user hours and registrations associated with that reservation, along with the reservation itself, will be irreversibly lost.
- Event Groups: If you’re attempting to delete an event group, on the other hand, you stand to lose much more. Deleting an event group will permanently delete all past and future events (recurring or otherwise) within that group, along with any associated user hours, registrations and user group reservations.
Note that removing an individual user from a user group will not have any negative impact on that volunteer’s hours or registration details, even if they’ve registered under reservations for that group in the past.
Reason 2: Deleting groups cannot be undone.
When managing a volunteer effort, you should always think ahead. What if you change your mind? What if you quit tomorrow and your successor wants to view historical data? Nothing can be done to reinstate those groups you’ve deleted.
Reason 3: There’s no data storage limit in VolunteerHub.
There is no cap on the number of events, event groups or user groups you can have in your site. So, rather than deleting your event groups and user groups, we recommend archiving them. You can do this by placing one or more “zArchive” user or event groups in your site.
For example, if you have a “Corporate Groups” user group with several sub-groups you no longer use, you can add a “zArchive” sub-group inside your “Corporate Groups” parent user group. The “z” will make that sub-group appear at the bottom of the list so you don’t have to scroll through all your archived groups each time you open the page, and making it a sub-group of “Corporate Groups” will keep it so that mass emails and reporting can still be done for all corporate groups, including archived groups. You can also change your settings for archived user groups so that users may no longer be added to them in the Membership Control section of the Edit page for that group.
Another example would be if you have a “Construction” event group, in which you create sub-groups for each location where construction events are held. To maintain historical data for those events, simply place them inside a “zArchive” sub-group inside the “Construction” parent event group. This will allow you to continue reporting on all construction events without losing your older data.
Reason 4: Reports can be run for a specific date range.
Finished with this year’s events and ready to tackle next year’s? That doesn’t mean you need to create all new event groups and user groups. Keep in mind that your reports can be generated for a specific date range, so viewing data for last year is as simple as selecting 1/1/2019 through 12/31/2019 for the date range when running the report.
Reason 5: Users won’t see your old data.
You should never delete events just because they’re in the past – your users will not be able to see past events, so you won’t need to worry about them accidentally signing up for events that have already occurred. In addition, if you no longer want users to be added to a group, just change the Membership Control option for the user group to “None (Users may not be added to this group).”
For more details on editing user group Membership Control options, please refer to Part 4: Creating and Managing User Groups in the Getting Started Guide.