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Hi everyone and welcome to this SwiftFox Masterclass. In this session, we're going to look at one of the most useful additions to List Builder the ability to build lists based on roles and positions, rather than just people or organisations, and what that unlocks in your day to day work. If you work with associations, unions, chambers, or any organisation where the same person can hold several positions across different bodies, you'll know the limitation well.

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A traditional people list gives you one row per person, no matter how many roles they hold. That's fine when you only care about the individual, but it falls short the moment your work is really about the role they're playing – the delegate, the board member, the regional contact, or the committee chair. In SwiftFox, the Contacts and Roles tab is where the real picture of your relationships live.

00:00:50:08 - 00:01:12:16
A single contact can be linked to multiple organisations holding a different position in each one, a board member here, a delegate there, a treasurer somewhere else. The real meaning is the relationship, not just the person. Historically, list builder didn't quite reflect that it worked at the person level, anchored to a primary organisation, and surfaced their contacts other roles only as supporting columns.

00:01:12:16 - 00:01:38:06
You could see that someone had roles, but the list itself was still really about the individual. Role based lists shift the centre of gravity instead of one row per person, you get one row per role. If a contact holds five different positions across five organisations, they'll appear five times, once for each relationship. The important shift here is that the relationship itself becomes the record you're working with, not just an attribute of the person.

00:01:38:08 - 00:02:07:22
That opens up a different kind of list entirely, a list of positions held. When you create a new list, you'll now see roles available as a list category alongside the existing options. Choosing roles tells SwiftFox to build the list around relationships rather than profiles. From there, the experience is intentionally familiar. You can apply the same kinds of criteria used in any other list filtering by person details, organisation, category, industry, and any other custom fields you've configured.

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The difference is what each row in the result represents. Alongside your usual filters, you'll also find criteria specific to the relationship itself. The organisation the role is attached to, the current relationship type, the position, and the start and end dates. You can narrow down to a particular position across your whole database, or look at every active role within a specific organisation, or isolate roles that begin or ended within a given window.

00:02:34:02 - 00:03:05:18
A good rule of thumb when deciding between a people list and a role based list is to ask what the work is really about. If you're communicating with the person, sending an email, making a call, recording an interaction, a standard people list is usually the right tool. One row per person keeps things clean. If the work is about the role, like confirming who currently holds a position, reviewing delegates for an upcoming event, tracking turnover across multiple committees, or preparing outreach specific to someone's responsibilities in a particular organisation.

00:03:05:20 - 00:03:26:14
A role based list will give you a much truer picture. It's also worth thinking about role based lists as a way of keeping operational views honest, because the lists are live, any change in the contacts, relationships, or roles flows through automatically. New roles appear, ended roles drop off, and updates to positions or organisations are reflected the next time the list is used.

00:03:26:14 - 00:03:51:12
There's no manual rebuild and no quietly out of date spreadsheets sitting in the background. Role based lists also feed directly into action centres. When you create a new action centre and choose your list, your role based lists appear in the source selector alongside your existing people and organisation lists. The columns available to display will include the role specific fields organisation position, start date, and end date.

00:03:51:12 - 00:04:16:08
So the Action Center reflects the same relationship level view as the underlying list. This is particularly useful for workflows are inherently role based. Think of an action centre for managing delegates ahead of a conference, reviewing committee memberships at the start of a new term, or working through outreach to everyone holding a specific position across a region. In each case, the unit of work is the role, and the Action centre now matches that shape.

00:04:16:08 - 00:04:40:28
To bring this together, it's worth looking at a few practical examples. For an association managing delegates a role based list of everyone currently holding a delegate position gives you a single live view of who is acting in that capacity right now, along with the organisation they're representing and how long they've been in that role. Historically, you could pull a list of people who are delegates, but the position contacts lived in supporting columns.

00:04:40:30 - 00:05:01:08
Now the position is the record itself. For a chamber or peak body tracking board memberships A role based lists, filtered to board level positions across member organisations, gives you a clearer picture of governance across your network. You can see start and end date side by side, which makes it straightforward to spot upcoming turnover or recent appointments.

00:05:01:10 - 00:05:15:28
So to wrap things up, role based lists are about giving you a way to work with relationships at first class records, not just attributes attached to a person. When the work is really about the role someone holds, the list should reflect that. And now it can.

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If you're just getting started, pick one workflow where the role matters more than the person. Delegates, committee members, board positions, regional contacts, and build a single role based list around it. See how it changes the shape of your results and let that guide where you use this next.

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Thanks for watching this Swift Fox masterclass and we'll see you in the next one.