Tern will be rolling out beta features for group travel throughout the Fall. To learn more about when each feature is available, you can check out our Group Travel Beta: Product Roadmap!

As each feature is available, we'll keep this article up to date on how to plan group trips in Tern.

Our very first feature - Group Trip "Shells" or "Folders" - is now live. Here's a quick summary of what we'll cover in the rest of the article:

As mentioned above, we aren't anywhere close to done yet! We'll keep this article updated as we roll out group trip itineraries, landing pages, self-service sign-up for clients, and more.

When you create a new trip in Tern, you'll see a new "trip type" toggle. Change that to Group Trip, and fill out the rest of the details for creation.

You'll immediately land on the group trip overview tab, where you can now create sub trips and manage group-level actions and settings.

Before creating a sub-trip, take a look at your Group Settings on the right. These are the same settings you'll see for regular trips in Tern. But think of group-level settings as a "template" for creating new sub trips -

Collaboration settings work the same way - trips created under this group will be automatically shared with the same people as the group trip.

Once your settings look right, you're ready to create your first sub-trip! And don't worry - you can also move regular trips into your group, which we'll cover later.

The experience for creating a sub-trip is almost identical to creating a regular trip in Tern. The main difference you'll notice is that group settings are automatically copied into the trip creation modal. Don't worry - if you need to adjust something specific, like the 'travel end date' if this particular client plans to stay longer - you can do so without a problem.

Once you create your sub-trip, you'll see it appears immediately in the table. For now you'll be able to see the name, lead client, dates, and status (coming soon!) for all of the sub-trips in this table. In the future Tern will support additional management and reporting views, to help you easily look across all your sub-trips.

If you click into a sub-trip, you'll see it looks a lot like a regular trip in Tern. That's because it is! There are a few specific differences we'll call out in this article, but for the most part it functions the same way as any other trip.

A few group-specific differences -

As of right now, Tern supports group-level tasks, emails, notes, and activity. These are just the first versions of these experiences for groups, and Tern plans to enhance them over time.

One important note is that your workflow auto-apply logic will not apply to group trips. It will still apply to sub-trips within your groups. We do plan to support group-level workflows in the future.

Group tasks work like any other trip task in Tern - they are just on your "group trip", instead of sub trips within your group.

Group emails let you send an email to any traveler on a sub-trip, right from your group trip inbox. In the future we plan to introduce improved ways of targeting travelers and tailoring your emails/variables across your group. For now, this can be a great shortcut - but there are a few things to keep in mind -

In this example, Mary and Molly are from two different sub-trips, but I can send an email to both of them at the same time.

Also please keep in mind that emails sent from the group-trip level won't show up at the sub-trip level, unless you change their trip categorization on the right. Currently an email thread can only be associated to one group or sub-trip.

Group notes work like any other note in Tern - they are just on your "group trip", instead of sub trips within your group.

For now, group activity just lists specific activity at the group-trip level. So things like when the group trip shell was created, when notes are added, and when status changes.

When viewing one of your regular trips in Tern, you'll see a new option to "move to group" in the menu. Please keep in mind that regular trips moved into group trips retain all of their current settings and itinerary items. If you'd like to use the default settings for your group, we recommend creating a sub-trip from the group directly instead.

When you do so, you'll be able to add it to any group trip you've created.

After moving the trip into the group, you'll see it listed as a sub-trip:

When looking at your trip board or table, you'll notice a few new things for groups!

First, in your trip filters -

You'll see new options to filter by trip type. Many of you may choose to hide sub-trips, and then just use the group trip as the entry point to manage sub-trips.

Next, as you create group trips and sub-trips, you'll notice they look a bit different on your board/list. On the trip board, you'll see that group trips show the number of sub-trips they have. And sub-trips list the group trip they are associated with.

On the list view you'll also see the number of sub-trips associated with your group, and the associated group trip for your sub-trips.