IAFF SMART Support

IAFF SMART – How to Create a Distribution List 

Within IAFF SMART, you have the ability to create a “Distribution List”.  In brief, a “Distribution List” is a filtered list of your member roster which you can save for recurring use.  For example, you can use a “Distribution List” to send targeted communications to the members that it contains.  A “Distribution List” is dynamic; it will always contain all members that meet the criteria that you configure for the list.  Therefore, whenever you wish to communicate to members that meet the criteria, you do not have to re‐query for them for each communication you send; you simply need to choose the saved “Distribution List”.

As an example, say you wish to send a regular email notification to your inactive retired members.  You can configure a “Distribution List” that contains the members that meet these criteria and simply use it each time you wish to send the email notification.  To configure such a “Distribution List’, please follow the below steps:

After logging into the IAFF SMART Portal, expand the “My Toolbox” link on the left‐hand side of the page and then click on the “Distribution Lists” link:

This will take you to the “Distribution Lists” page.  On the bottom half of the page will be your “Member Roster”; the full list of all members within your local.  You will specify criteria to filter the list so that it only contains the members that you want included in your new “Distribution List”.  To get started, enter a name for your new “Distribution List” in the “Add a New Distribution List” field.  You should enter a descriptive name to make it easy to recognize which members the list includes.  We will enter the name “Inactive Retired Members” for the new list we are configuring:

Next, we need to filter the member roster so that it just shows the “Inactive” members.  To do so, click the “Settings” icon to the right of the “Status” column (the three dots icon) which will display the settings menu.  Put your mouse pointer on the “Filter” option which will display the filter menu………the menu will list all the values that currently appear in the “Status” column.  Check the box for “Inactive” and then click the “Filter” button:

Next, we need to further filter the list for “Retired” members.  Click the “Settings” icon to the right of the “Type” column, put your mouse pointer on the “Filter” option, check the box for “Retired” and then click the “Filter” button:

The filters that you apply to the list will be displayed in the “Filters Applied” section in the lower left‐hand corner.  By applying the two filters in our example, we have filtered the complete member roster of 2,689 individuals down to a list of 407.  Now that we have the criteria (filters) set for our list, we need to click the “Add” button on the right to complete the process of creating the new “Distribution List”:

As stated earlier, a “Distribution List” is dynamic so, it will always contain any members that match the criteria (filters) that you specified.  So, for our example, if any member is subsequently set to a status of “Inactive” and a type of “Retired”, they will automatically be added to this list.  Conversely, if there is a member on the list whose status changes from “Inactive” to “Active”, they will automatically be removed from the list.

Once you have created a “Distribution List”, you can always edit it (make changes to the criteria) via the “Distribution Lists” page.  To do so, click the dash line under the field labeled “Select a Distribution List to Edit”.  This will display a menu of all the lists that you have previously configured…choose the list you wish to edit from the menu.  You can then change any of the filters that you have set for any of the columns on the roster:

You could now use your new “Distribution List” to send communications to the members that it contains.  For example, go to the “Communications” module by choosing it under the “Communicate” option on the left‐hand side of the screen and, once there, click the “Create” button:

This will open the “New Communication” window via which you can configure the email, text message or survey you wish to send.  Under the “Distribution List” field, you can choose from any of your previously configured distribution lists….the members on the list you choose will be the recipients for the communication that you wish to send:

If you need any further assistance with either configuring or using Distribution Lists on the SMART platform, please contact the UnionTrack Help Desk at 301‐685‐6199 or support@uniontrack.com.