Active members are people who have accepted an invitation to join the group. After joining, a bright yellow New Member badge appears above their name. This badge fades over time and completely disappears in 7 days.

Active members control their own Persona in the group (BeLooped lets people have a different profile, or persona, in each of the groups they’re in). Without effort, active members are able to view personas and easily contact any members in the group. It’s a good deal: they maintain just one profile (their own) and in return the rest of the group’s information becomes available to them.

If the active member has a subscription, then they may: create Aliases, Nominate people for group membership, suggest Resources to be added and submit News. Note that nominations, suggestions and submissions need approval from the GM before they are added to the group.

An Alias allows users with subscriptions to change the name and/or picture that is associated with groups and members. This can help differentiate one group or member from another in case of duplicate names. For example, there may be two or three Debbie Browns in a group, or you may have been invited to join two groups named “My Friends.” Or perhaps you have a picture of a member that you prefer over the one that they provided.

An alias can only be seen by the person who defines it. They are not shared with other people in the group.

Also see: Alias to Override Name/Picture

Groups, Members, Resources and News articles all have a picture associated with them. Depending on context, this picture may be called an avatar (usually for people), an image, an icon or a picture (usually a photograph). There is essentially no difference between these four terms.

Badges are colorful indicators of the current state of a Member, Resource or News story. They appear above the names of members and resources, and above the body of news stories.

Member badges are: Group Manager, Group Manager (You), Your Profile, Invited, Invitation Expired, Nominated, New Member, Private, and Visible.

Resource badges are: Suggested, New.

News badges are: Composing, Ready for Review, Ready to Publish, Published, Expired.

The generic name for the person who created the group, curates submitted members, resources and news stories and generally keeps the group organized is: Group Manager, or GM. But depending on the group, there may be a better term for this illustrious position, such as: Group Owner, Foreman, Supervisor, Chief, Team Leader, etc. The GM is able to choose a more suitable name via the group’s Details Tab.

The people in a group are all generically called “members.” However, sometimes we need to differentiate between the active members who can edit their own persona and those who cannot (Private and Visible members). Those who cannot edit their own persona are collectively called contacts.

Also see: Member.

On iOS, there is a small circle beside each name in Members List. For Android, see: Bulk Send Email/Messages. This allows selection of one or more members. As soon as the first check-circle is tapped, a tool bar appears near the bottom of the screen. This tool bar allows you to send a message or email to the selected member(s).

BeLooped includes some useful built-in icons. As well, there are in- App purchases for Faith and Activity icons. The icon sets include 3 styles for each icon in the set: black & white, teal and full color. Depending on your aesthetic style, you will likely prefer one of these styles over the others.

When adding new groups, members, resources or news stories, there is always a default image. The Default Icon Style can be found in Settings on Android and in the Details Tab of each group in iOS.

Groups, Members, Resources and News all have an image associated with them, and the image cannot be blank. We ensure this by always including a default image. For the Group, it’s a beehive. For Members, it’s a bee. For Resources, it’s a beehive with “connections,” and for News stories it’s an image of the local paper: The Buzz.

On iOS, the Details tab for a group appears at the bottom of the screen along with the Members tab, Resources tab and News tab. This is where the GM can edit the group’s name, picture, description and make certain settings such as whether or not the members can nominate people for membership, suggest new resources or submit News stories. It also displays how close the group is to the capacity limits.

Android does not have a Details tab; the group’s details are edited by first tapping the pencil at the top of the group’s list of members screen.

The GM of a group controls who in the group is a member. Only the GM can delete a member of the group. Occasionally, an existing member needs to be removed. On iOS, this can be done either by tapping “Delete this Member” (at the bottom of the member’s profile while editing it) or by sliding to the left on the member’s name in the Members List. On Android, this is done editing the member’s profile.

When a user allows their subscription to lapse, they become a Free user.

Groups where the GM is a Free user become read-only. Nobody can add/edit/delete data in such groups, with one exception: users with subscriptions may still edit their own persona.

Renewing the subscription makes the owner’s groups dynamic once again: Free users may edit their persona, users with subscriptions can do lots of things, and the GM who just renewed can once again actively manage the group.

According to dictionary.com, the forum was “the marketplace or public square of any ancient Roman city, the center of judicial and business affairs and a place of assembly for the people.”

In keeping with the tradition of the forum being public and open to all citizens, anything that a member adds to the Forum can be viewed by all members of the group. Forum entries automatically include everyone.

News is formal and under control of the group’s owner (although members can write and submit news stories). But the Forum is quick, informal and can be used by anyone in the group without needing the group’s owner to approve.
For example:

• use the Forum for communicating emergency information or short notice changes to a plan.
• after a visit with an older family member, make a note of things you’ve noticed such as: a change in condition, an item that needs repair or cleaning, groceries and other supplies that need to be brought during the next visit, etc.
• make a quick announcement or invitation to a gathering.
• if the GM is your teacher, ask a question – likely some of the other students in the class will also want to know the answer!
  

If you want to communicate with just one member, use their Quick Comms. In the Forum, tapping on a member’s icon will open their profile and display their Quick Comms. This makes it very easy to open up a side conversation!

If you want to communicate with a subset of the entire group, see Bulk Send Email/ Messages.

also see: Quick Comm, Bulk Send Email/Messages

A Free user does not have a subscription to BeLooped and is restricted to a read-only view of the groups they are in.

The only exceptions are that Free users may edit their own persona, and may create a small group or two with up to 6 members, 5 resources and 20 news stories.

Also known as the Group Manager or Group Owner, the GM “owns” the group. The GM is the person who created the group in the first place. They add members, resources and news to the group. They may allow, disallow, accept or reject member nominations, resource suggestions and news submissions from the group’s members. The GM may also expel disruptive people from the group.

In short: the GM is in charge of the group.

Note: what to call this person in a specific group can be changed via the Beekeeper Name option in the group’s Details tab.

With BeLooped you organize your contacts into groups instead of just having a long list of people. All of the groups you define are displayed in the List of Groups on the Groups tab. Since group members are able to define their own persona specific to the group they’re in, you may have the same person in multiple groups, but with different information showing (depending on what they feel is appropriate for each group/ situation).

The advantage of being group-oriented is that very often when you are contacting people, you want to contact multiple people who have something in common: setting up a group dinner, spreading some team or classroom news, etc.

The Groups tab is the “home screen” of BeLooped. This is where you dive into a group to communicate with its members.

On iOS the Groups tab appears at the bottom of the screen along with the Store tab and the Settings tab. Once you tap a group to see its list of members, the tab bar changes to display the group’s Details tab, Members tab, Resources tab and News tab. You return to the Groups tab and its list of groups by tapping the Groups button in the top left corner of the screen. This then displays the systems tabs: Groups tab, Store tab and Settings tab.

On Android, there is a menu bar at the top of the screen instead of tabs at the bottom, with Store and Settings being accessed by smaller buttons above the menu bar.

Groups, Members, Resources and News articles all have a picture associated with them. Depending on context, this picture my be called an avatar (usually for people), an image, an icon or a picture (usually a photograph). There is essentially no difference between these four terms.

Groups, Members, Resources and News articles all have a picture associated with them. Depending on context, this picture my be called an avatar (usually for people), an image, an icon or a picture (usually a photograph). There is essentially no difference between these four terms.

We believe that your personal information is too valuable to trade for free software. Being bombarded with ads, with “fake tweets and news” that chew up your data plan, that compel you to purchase things you don’t really need or influence your voting decisions is... a bad thing.

Instead, BeLooped relies on in-App purchases and subscriptions to keep the service working for you. These can be found by tapping the Store Tab in the iOS version or the Store button in the Android version.

The only way to join someone else’s group is to receive and accept an invitation and to then enter the Invitation code you are given. You may receive this code via an email, a text message, or even orally. Rumor has it that smoke signals could be used in a pinch.

To enter the invitation code, go to the list of groups and press + to add a new group. Next, select the Invitation Code option and enter the provided code – it’s that easy!

Invitation codes are 12-digit codes that grant membership to a specific group. The code may be sent and received in numerous ways, from email to spoken conversation. If not used within 72 hours, it will become invalid.

The GM of a group generates and sends invitation codes when they invite people. This can be done when people are added to the group, when Private or Visible contacts are invited later, or when nominations are accepted.

To enter the invitation code, go to the list of groups and press + to add a new group. Next, select the Invitation Code option and enter the provided code. The group will be downloaded and you will be a New Member.

Also see: Invite People to Join, Join a Group

When the Groups Tab has been selected, a list of all of the groups that you are in is displayed. This list includes the group’s name and picture, both of which you are able to override even if you are not the group’s GM. Simply tap on the group’s row in the list to see the members of the group.

Most of the pictures will have a gold star in the corner; this indicates that the owner (GM) of that group has a subscription. If they are a Free user, there is no star.

In the list of groups, if the background of the group’s row is white then somebody else is the GM of that group (their name is also listed). If the background is lightly shaded then you are the group’s GM.

A member is someone who is part of a group. Note that this may be either an Active Member or a Contact.

There are several types of members, and you can tell what kind a person is by the member badge (or lack thereof) above their name in the members list.

In the Members List, some of the names might have colorful badges above their names. These indicate their state. The possible badges are:

• Group Manager - this is the person in charge of the group. They are always the first person in a group’s list of members.
• Group Manager (You) - if you happen to be the group’s manager, then (You) is appended to the badge.
• Your Profile - if you are not the group’s manager, then you will be the second person in the group’s list of members, and with this badge above your name.
• Invited - this indicates that the GM has sent an invitation to this person. If the person was previously a Private member, then only the GM will see them in the list. But if the person was previously a Visible contact then all active members will see them in the list of members, even before they accept the invitation.
• Invitation Expired - people who are invited have 3 days before the invitation code becomes invalid. If it does expire, the badge changes to Invitation Expired (it’s bright red). The GM may then turn them back to Private or Visible, or they can try re-inviting that member.
• Nominated - this badge appears to the GM above the name of a potential member that has been nominated by one of the active members. The GM can either accept the nomination or can reject it. If accepted, the GM can then decide whether to send them an invitation or make them a Visible contact.
• New Member - when a person accepts an invitation from a GM, they become a New Member in the group. New members are identical to active members, except that they are highlighted by a bright yellow New Member badge. This badge fades out over the period of 7 days. The badge is displayed simply so that the rest of the group notices that somebody new has been added.
• Private - a dark blue badge appears above the name of anyone that you have added to the group. Active members and the GM may both add private contacts, which only they see. As owners of this private contact, they need to maintain that person’s persona in the group.
• Visible - a blue badge containing the word Visible appears over the name of people whose persona is maintained by the GM. With most groups, there will be a few people who do not have a smartphone and therefore cannot keep their own persona up-to-date. The GM has to enter and maintain the name, picture and contact information on behalf of these people. In a member’s profile, the GM may switch a member’s state between Private and Visible.
• < no badge displayed > - active members who have been with the group for more than 7 days have no banner above their name in the members list. The majority of group members are usually in this state.

A group’s active members are able to nominate any of their Private members for admission to the group. The GM must approve the nomination before an Invitation is sent, and the nominated member must accept it before they become a New Member.

A GM may directly invite Private and Visible members that they own (it would make no sense for the GM to send themselves a nomination!).

Nominated Members can only be seen by the active member who made the submission, and by the group’s GM.

This is the list of people displayed in the Members Tab. Strictly speaking, some of the people in the list might be Private members or Visible members, while the reset are active members. But for convenience everyone in the list is typically just called a member.

Tip:
if you long-press on a person in this list, you get a dialog that lets you use one of their quick-comms to call them quickly.

When you tap on a group in the groups list, the tabs at the bottom (iOS) or top (Android) of the screen change. One of these tabs is the Members tab, and it lists the members in the group. There will be member badges above the names of some members, which indicate their state in the group.

When a new resource is added to the group, a bright yellow New badge will appear above the name of the resource. This is done so that members of the group will notice the fresh News. The badge will gradually fade out and will disappear entirely in 7 days.

News stories are for formal announcements and communication within a group. Articles are written by the GM, or submitted to the GM by other members for approval. Articles can be scheduled to publish and expire on certain dates as needed.

Only published stories that haven’t expired can be seen by all group members, but the GM can access them any time. When the expiration date arrives, the news story disappears for everyone except the GM. See News Workflow for more details.

News stories (see: News Tab) may be added directly by the GM. However, it is also possible for members to submit a story – to the GM – that they have written. For such authors, there is a formal workflow process that occurs. The story’s state in this workflow process is shown using badges above the story’s text (in the list of news stories).

While an article is being written, a Composing... badge appears above the story. When the author is done, they flip “ON” a switch labelled “Story is Ready for Submission” and the badge changes to Ready for Review. This submits (after a sync) the story to the GM, who decides whether or not to accept it. For the GM, that same switch is labelled “Story is Ready to Publish”, as the GM can publish their own writing without review by others.

Once a story is accepted for publishing, it may initially appear only in the GM’s list of news stories, with a Ready to Publish badge above its name. The badge automatically changes to Published once the publication date is reached. Once Published, all group members can read the story.

Finally, when the expiration date is reached, the story will disappear from everyone’s list of News stories, with one exception: it will remain in the GM’s list with an Expired badge above its name.

In the Details Tab, the GM has a switch that determines whether or not active members may submit news stories. Note that only users with subscriptions can submit news stories; free users cannot create news stories irrespective of this switch’s setting.

On Android, the News tab is in the menu at the top of the screen. In iOS, the News tab is at the bottom of the screen and can be seen once a group from the list of groups has been selected. Tapping this tab displays the list of group’s news stories. See News Workflow for more information.

To support your right to be who you want to be, BeLooped allows you to define your persona. Think of a persona as being the portion of yourself that you choose to share with a particular set of people (a group).

You may have a different persona in each different group you belong to. A Work group might feature a photo of yourself in a suit and use your company email address, while your Friends group will be more casual, using a personal email address.

A member’s profile refers to their database record.

When a group is joined, members are given the option to choose or create a group-specific version of their profile called a Persona, with contact information and a photo relevant to that group.

Private contacts are simply like the entries in a traditional address book. They are entered by you, kept up to date (or not) by you and the person you’ve added probably isn’t even aware that you’ve added them. They have no access to any of the group’s information.

Private contacts may be added to a group by the GM or any active member of the group. That person is the private contact’s owner, and they are the only person who can view or edit the private contact’s data.

An active member who owns a private contact may nominate them for group membership. If the GM accepts the nomination, then the GM becomes the owner. The GM may make them a visible contact viewable by the entire group.

At any time, a GM may choose to invite any of their private and/or visible contacts to join the group. If they accept the invitation, they become a new active member.

The GM of a group may (should always) include a description of what the group is about. This is done in the Details Tab, in edit mode. Public notes may also be added to group members and resources. Public notes/descriptions can be viewed by all active members of the group.

This is done in the Details Tab (in iOS) or by tapping the edit pencil above the list of members (Android).

This is short for Quick Communication. As part of a person’s persona in a group, they may select a preferred telephone number, email address, FaceTime ID (iOS only) and messaging number. This makes it easy for other members to pick the right way to contact them.

To quickly contact the person, tap on their row in a group’s list of members. When their profile opens, simply tap on one of the 4 large buttons that appear below their picture. Other numbers that are listed in the profile may also be used, but always try the Quick Comm first.

Tip:
if you long-press on a person in the List of Members, you get a dialog that lets you use one of their quick-comms to call them quickly.

A big part of BeLooped is fostering communication between the members of a group. Email, messages, phone calls and FaceTime (for iOS users) can all be initiated from the BeLooped app.

In the list of your recent calls, two icons will be shown. The first is the icon for the group the person and the second is the person you contacted. If it’s a bulk email/ message then only one person will be shown and tapping on the (i) will open a new screen that shows everyone that was involved in the communiqué.

BeLooped does not peek into the content of your communication, but it does record who you called and when. This is done so that you can call the same person/people back easily. However – for your security – the list of who you contacted stays on the device you used. It is never sent to or through the BeLooped servers and for that reason it doesn’t even get synched to any other devices that you might own.

Edit allows you to select items that you want to delete. If you only want to delete one item from the list, you can instead use the “slide left” gesture.

Action allows you to remove all entries or just those older than 2, 7, 14, 30 or 60 days.

A Resource can be a website, business, or any other services, supplier, or contact that is relevant to the group without actually being “in” the group.

Resources can be incredibly useful. For example, if the group is an Elder Care group, the resources might be the: doctor, dentist, pharmacy, ambulance, police, podiatrist, hairdresser, grocery store with a delivery service, favourite restaurants that deliver, etc. For a team, it might be the association president, head of referees/umpires, spare goalies, team sponsors, addresses of fields/rinks/pitches, etc.

The Resources tab is in the same set as the Details tab, Members tab and News tab. It becomes visible when a group is selected from the Groups list, and the contents will vary by group.

A resource suggestion is in many ways analogous to a new member nomination. Users with subscriptions can add private resources to a group that they’re in. Then, they can send a suggestion to the group’s GM that the private resource be added to the group’s resources so that all members can see it.

This can be very useful as members can cooperate to save the GM some effort. For example, a member may volunteer to enter the details about a team’s sponsors while another member adds resources that are the names and addresses of the various fields on which the team plays. These would then be “suggested” to the GM. When the GM accepts the suggestion, the entire group would see the new resources.

Secret Codes are used to verify ownership of an email address. Email verification is part of the process when adding BeLooped to a new device or confirming an email change with an existing account.

Secret Codes are 6 digits long, and valid for 30 minutes after they’re sent.

Also see: Authorize your Device

On iOS devices, the Settings tab is on the same screen as the Groups tab (the list of groups) and the Store tab. In Android, Settings is at the top of the List of Groups screen, usually in the overflow menu in the top right corner.

Because iOS and Android are different, many of the settings differ, and it is best to look at that tab to see what they currently are; both have good explanations on-screen. One important thing that they have in common is the sync interval.

Use the slider to increase or decrease the font size that BeLooped uses.

A shared member refers to any member in a group that is intended to be seen by all of the group members. In other words: all members except Private Contacts and Nominated Contacts.

Similar to a shared member, it’s a resource that is intended to be seen by the entire group. In other words: all resources except Private Resources and Suggested Resources.

On iOS devices, the Store tab is on the same screen as the Groups tab (the list of groups) and the Settings tab. In Android, the Store button is at the top of the List of Groups screen and looks like a shopping cart.

The Store Tab is where you purchase a subscription to BeLooped, or add useful icon sets which can be used as pictures for Groups, Resources and sometimes even Members.

There are two kinds of users in BeLooped: users with subscriptions and Free users (who are not subscribing to BeLooped). The Free users can be members of groups and view the information that the group’s owner is sharing with the group, but users with subscriptions get much more.

A subscription allows a BeLooped user to be the owner of many more groups with many more members in the group. Plus, they can fully participate in group activities instead of just being an observer: nominate new members, suggest new resources, submit news stories, participate in the forum and much more.

BeLooped does not sell, lease, rent, give or in other way share your personal information with third parties. We just don’t like the idea of making it easy for other companies to convince you the buy their product, elect their candidate or charge you more for insurance.

Instead, we charge a modest monthly or annual fee. It’s far less than one coffee per month or a less than a single piece of bubble gum per day (even if you buy your gum in bulk).

If you are only using BeLooped because somebody has invited you to join, BeLooped is free. However, if you value your privacy or if you want to use the power of BeLooped to manage almost any group people, we urge you to subscribe so that this policy can continue.

When a user with a subscription adds a private resource to one of the groups they belong to, they can later suggest to the GM that it be added so that the entire group can benefit. When the suggestion is sent, a Suggested badge appears over the name of the resource so that the GM will notice it and decide whether or not to add it for all members.

In order to share information between devices, your copy of BeLooped needs to occasionally sync with the BeLooped server.

In the Settings Tab, you can specify whether your copy of BeLooped should sync with the server every 30 minutes, hour, 4 hours, 8 hours or just once per day. This is called the sync interval.

You can also “force” a sync to occur at any time. In iOS, this is done by “pulling down” when the list of Groups is showing. Or, if you want to only sync a single group, doing the same action while on the group’s Members Tab, Resources Tab or News Tab.

On an Android device, the “force sync” is performed by tapping the double-arrow-circle at the top of the groups list screen.

Also see: Settings Tab

The group’s GM may turn any of their Private members into Visible members. There is only one difference between the two: Private members can only be seen by the person who added them to the group, while Visible members can be seen by the entire group.

Visible members are usually used to add people to the group who are unable to maintain their own profile or persona. Since only the GM can create a Visible member, the GM has to maintain their profile on their behalf.

Visible members have a badge (labelled “Visible”) above their name in the group’s list of members.

In iOS, tapping on an image related to a Group, Member, Resource or News story might expand it to be much larger, for your viewing pleasure. Whether or not this happens depends on one of the options in Settings. If the Zooming Avatars option is turned off, it is a little bit easier when using check-circles to select a set of people.

Sometimes, you have a set of people who belong in a group for organizational reasons, but who – while relevant to you – are irrelevant to each other. For example:

• a list of suppliers for your business, or subcontractors for various trades.
• very important customers, or random friends who don’t know each other.

In such cases, you have two choices:

Choice 1:

Create a group but have no members (other than yourself, of course). Add those people (e.g. suppliers, subcontractors) as resources. Then, if anyone asks you if you have a list of good subcontractors, you can add that person as member of the group and they’ll see those resources. For example, when friends ask if you know a good plumber, you can just invite those friends to your Good Contractors group.

Choice 2:

Create a group with these people as Private members. This is the best choice for the important customers list, as you will be able to send them an email blast with news of a sale. And as for the random friends, look at it this way: a group where every member is Private is exactly the same as the traditional address book you used to use.

There are many sites on the internet that have decent royalty-free images that you can use for personal use. Images for your groups, resources, news (and very occasionally member) pictures should qualify so long as you are not a commercial venture. Here is an example:

https://openclipart.org/ - Lots of free clip art images

To use images from sources such as these, use the following guide:

See: Subgroups & Merging Groups

People sometimes forget the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. You may well find situations where you can take advantage of this by including information in picture form.

The screen shot shows how this works: on iOS, you can get about 10 lines of legible text. This image was done by typing the text on a computer screen and then taking a picture with the iPhone camera.

This technique is particularly useful for Resources: pill schedules, short procedural instructions, etc.

BeLooped is compatible with emoji characters:

• Add them to the front of names of related groups, and those groups will sort together in the list of groups.
• Use them for emphasis or to clarify the function of a particular group.
• Use them to differentiate who’s in what group when two people share a device.
• Emoji characters work anywhere, including with Resources, News and the Forum.

Telephone numbers, email addresses and website URLs that are included in a member’s Private or Public Note can be tapped. This also works with Resources and inside News stories.

Here are a few uses of this capability:

• If the list of members are the students in a class, you can add the parents’ names, phone numbers and email addresses in the student’s Public or Private note (depending on whether the parent wants everyone else to see it or not). Then members can tap the phone number or email address when they need to contact the parent.
• The same scenario works with sports teams involving children.
• Since News stories can be quite long, it is not unreasonable to use them to hold lists (with decently long descriptions) to content stored elsewhere, such as important web links, corporate HR policies, instructional YouTube videos, etc.

Taking a photo is a great way to create a picture of a member – it’s fast! And definitely do not underestimate how useful photos can be for Group and Resource images.

For example: a great group image can be had by taking a photo of the logo on a team’s jersey or of the sign on the door of a sponsor’s business.

You can even create a logo on your computer and get a surprisingly good image by taking a photo off your computer’s screen. This works especially well if you simply use an emoji and expand its size to 200 points!

The Problem: BeLooped uses a revolutionary registration process that is secure yet appears to need no password. But a side-effect of hiding the password on the device (it’s stored in a secure location on your device and is typically already protected by your fingerprint) is that there can only be one BeLooped account on any given device.

While this works great for 90% of people, what about couples who share a device?

Fortunately, there is a solution...

In v1.0, this feature is only available on the iOS version.

When a group is large, there are occasions where a subgroup is needed. For example, in Cohousing, there may be 100 members, but there will also be inside and outside maintenance, security, governance and other subgroups.

Create the subgroup as you would any other group. Initially it will have no members, and this is where time can be saved:

Phone numbers are made up of the digits 0-9. But there are a few other symbols that are also allowed:

, = soft pause. Causes a 2 to 3 second delay.
; = hard pause. Dialing stops and waits for user input
+ = insert country code.
* = used to invoke a special PBX feature.
# = octothorpe = also usually used by PBX systems.