# Circle member directory that shows who actually contributes

> One searchable screen for your whole Circle community, with tags, spaces and a contribution score for every member, so you stop clicking through profiles.

- Workflow type: app
- Services: Circle, Gmail
- Categories: Operations, Customer Support
- Published: 2026-08-16

## What it does

- Puts your entire Circle membership on one searchable, sortable screen, with each person's tags, access groups and spaces visible in the row instead of buried in their profile
- Counts how much each member actually posts and comments over a window you choose, such as the last 30 or 90 days, and sorts the roster by real contribution
- Sorts everyone into tiers like contributor, lurker and dormant based on how much they post and how recently they showed up, so you can filter down to one segment and work it
- Opens a detail panel on any member with their full profile, their spaces and their recent posts and comments, plus buttons to tag them, add them to a space, change their access group, or write them a personal note as a Gmail draft

## What you'll need

- A Circle community on the Business plan or above, which is the level where outside tools are allowed to read your member data
- Admin or moderator access to that Circle community
- A Gmail account, if you want the option to write personal notes to members from inside the app

## Prompt

Build me an internal app I open every day to see who is actually contributing in my Circle community. Right now Circle makes me click into profiles one at a time to find this out, and its native member analytics only surfaces top members and top commentators, so the app has to compute its own per member picture. The audience is a community manager or moderator who looks members up constantly and needs the answer on one screen.

The main view is a searchable, sortable roster of every member, loaded from List Community Members. Each row shows the member's name, avatar, email, join date, their tags from List Member Tags, the access groups they belong to from List Access Groups and List Access Group Members, a contribution count, and a tier badge. Let me sort by contribution count, by how recently they were active, and by join date, and search by name or email.

Compute the contribution count yourself over a window I pick, defaulting to the last 30 days with 90 days and all time as the other options. Call List Spaces to enumerate every space, then List Posts for each space limited to the window, then List Post Comments for the posts that come back, and attribute every post and comment to its author to build a per member post count, comment count and last active date. Show posts and comments as separate numbers as well as a combined total, because a member who only comments is a different kind of contributor than one who only posts.

Bucket every member into a tier from that data. Contributor means meaningful post or comment volume inside the window, lurker means they are present and recently seen but producing little or no content, and dormant means no posts, no comments and no recent activity at all. Base the tier on both volume and recency, keep the thresholds in one place with sensible defaults, and expose them in a settings area so I can tune what counts as a contributor for my community size.

Let me filter the roster by tier, by tag and by space, and combine those filters so I can work one segment at a time, for example dormant members inside the paid space. Show the active filter set and a count of matching members, with a one click reset. List Tagged Members is available if fetching the members carrying a given tag directly is cleaner than filtering the cached roster.

Clicking a row opens a detail panel for that member. It shows the full profile from Get Community Member, the spaces they belong to via List Space Members, their tags, their access groups, their contribution numbers for the chosen window, and a reverse chronological list of their actual recent posts and comments with the space name and a link back into Circle.

From that panel I can act on the member without leaving the app. Tag them, creating the tag first with Create Member Tag when it does not exist yet and then applying it with Update Community Member. Add them to a space with Add Member to Space. Grant an access group with Add Member to Access Group, or revoke one with Remove Member from Access Group behind a confirmation step. After any write, refresh that member's row so the roster reflects the change immediately.

I also want a write a note action that composes a one off personal email to that member and saves it as a Gmail draft using Create a Draft, addressed to their Circle email. Prefill it with the context already on screen, such as what they last posted and how long they have been quiet, and make clear it is a draft I review in Gmail before sending. This is an ad hoc action taken while looking at one person, not a batch send.

Be careful with reads. Circle's request allowance is plan based and the Business plan is only 5,000 requests a month. Paginate every list call, fetch the roster and the per space activity scan once and cache the result in the app rather than refetching on every keystroke, do all searching, sorting and filtering against that cached snapshot, and give me an explicit refresh button with a visible last refreshed timestamp. Show progress while the first scan runs, since a large community across many spaces takes a moment. Remember my chosen window, my tier thresholds and my last used filters between sessions.

Two things are deliberately out of scope because the connection does not expose them. There is no course progress or lesson completion data, so do not design any course completion column or filter. There is no direct message or member broadcast either, which is exactly why member outreach routes through a Gmail draft instead.

## How to customize

- Change the activity window the contribution counts are measured over, such as the last 30 days, the last 90 days, or all time
- Tune what counts as a contributor, a lurker and a dormant member, so the tiers match the size and rhythm of your community
- Decide which columns matter most in the roster and which order they sort in, and set which filters you want applied by default when the app opens

## FAQ

### Why do I need this if Circle already has member analytics?

Circle's built in analytics shows you top members and top commentators, but not a working directory. For anything more granular you have to open profiles one at a time, and the richer filtering and grouping is reserved for higher plans. This app builds the per member view Circle does not give you, by counting each person's posts and comments itself.

### How is the contribution count worked out?

The app looks across every space in your community, pulls the posts and comments made inside the window you picked, and credits each one back to the member who wrote it. You see a post count, a comment count and a combined total, so someone who only ever replies still shows up as the contributor they are.

### Does opening the app change anything in my community?

No. It only reads your community until you press a button. Tagging someone, adding them to a space, or changing their access group happens only when you explicitly choose it from that member's panel, and removing an access group asks you to confirm first.

### Can I email members straight from the app?

You can write a personal note to a member and it is saved as a draft in your Gmail account, so you read it over and send it yourself. It is deliberately one person at a time while you are looking at their profile, not a bulk send.

### Will this use up my Circle request allowance?

It is built to be careful. The roster and the activity scan are loaded once and held in the app, so searching, sorting and filtering are instant and cost nothing extra. You refresh the data when you want to, with a timestamp on screen showing how current it is.

### Can I see how far members have got through my courses?

No. Course progress and lesson completion are not available to outside tools, so the app deliberately leaves them out. Contribution is measured from posts and comments, which are available.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/circle-member-directory-that-shows-who-actually-contributes