If this feature is enabled, home groups can be set up to divide larger groups into a number of areas, localities, or groups of homes covered by different senior managers. Note that for organisations not opting for this function, ‘Home Groups’ does not appear on the menu.

This screen shot shows an organisation with five homes grouped by county. The groups are set up first, then each home is allocated to one of the groups. Homes can be re-allocated to a different group at any time, and groups can be added to, changed or deleted.

User permissions to access homes in groups are as follows:

Super User - All groups and homes

Director -Non-MD - All groups and homes. MD – assigned homes only

Area Manager - Access to all homes in the group allocated to them

Home User - Access to a single home

Selecting ‘Home Groups’ from the menu accesses the following screen, which will be blank if no home groups have been added;

Clicking on ‘Add Home Group’ brings up this popup box:

Enter the Home Group Name, and press ‘Save’.

In the example here, ‘Somerset’ has been added as a new Home Group, with no homes currently allocated to it:

Then by selecting ‘edit home’ using the pencil icon in ‘All Homes’ view, the home can be allocated / reallocated to the new Group.

Users with ‘Area Manager’ permission will see just their homes when selecting ‘All Homes’, and the ‘Home Groups’ function does not appear in the menu. The Area Manager below has been allocated to the Wiltshire home group:

Users with Super User and Director-level permission can view homes in a single Home Group by selecting ‘Home Groups’ from the menu, which brings up the following view:

Clicking on one home group line selects that group; here Wiltshire has been selected;

Note the difference from the Area Manager view; the ‘Add Home’ button appears, as does a ‘Clear Filter’ button. Until the filter is cleared, only the homes in the selected area will be displayed, even when selecting ‘All Homes’. As soon as the filter is cleared by clicking this button, all the organisation’s homes will be displayed again.

Logging out and logging back in again also clears this filter.