Grouping Cases

CommCare Messaging allows you to group cases (contacts) to allow broadcast surveys or messages, similar to a mobile worker group.

When to Use a Case Group

Case groups are most useful in combination with Broadcast messages.

Often they can be used to communicate with cases in a specific region, or a subset of patients. 

For example,

1.  A case manager wants to easily communicate with the 20 participant cases under their supervision. 

2.  Notify all participants in a study of a particular side effect. 

3.  Alert all HIV+ participants that a new service is available.  

Creating a Case Group

1. Go to Messaging > Case Groups

2. Type in the name of your group (ex. Patients and click the "+ Create Group" button.

3. Click on the Group Name link to edit the cases within the group.

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Add cases to the Case Group manually with an identifier

This approach allows you to add individual cases to a case group.

Type in an identifier for the case (phone number, an external ID specified when creating case or the actual case ID).  

1. If specifying the phone number, you need to specify the full phone number (including country code with no spaces and no + symbol).  

2. The case ID can be found through the page for that case, or a case export. 

Then click on the + Add Case button.  If the case can't be found, an error will be displayed. 

Note: To link back to the case data page, select the case name. 

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Bulk upload cases to a case group

Select the link and download the excel template, named "cases_bulk_example.xlsx" file.  

Open the sheet, and you will find a column header name case_identifier.

In the file, type each case to add to the group as a separate row.  You can use the phone number, external ID or the actual case ID.  The case ID can be found in a case export or on the individual case_data page. 

Upload the new list to add contacts to the case group.

Note: If the case can't be found, an error will be displayed. 

Note: All cases in a Messaging Case Group must have a valid contact_phone_number, including the country code. 

Editing a Case Group

Use the Manage Cases button to open the Case Group.  

You can use the + Remove button to remove cases from the group and the + Add Case button to add additional cases.  

You can can also using the Excel import functionality to bulk add phone numbers.  

If you want to remove all cases from the group, its easiest to delete the group and create it again.