Preface
A good implementation of CiviCRM can transform your organization. Online management of contacts, members, communications, campaigns, funding, and casework used to be beyond the means of small non-governmental organizations (NGOs). But not anymore.
CiviCRM is loaded with features designed and developed by NGOs that make it a second-to-none management tool.
This book takes you from a CiviCRM installation and guides you through, by example, how to exploit the features that make it so popular.
We cover the post-installation setup and all the core and component parts of CiviCRM. In some cases, the recipes focus on CiviCRM, while in others, we cover using CiviCRM with Drupal.
The recipes in this book are not just meant to provide solutions to specific problems. They are there for you to explore and adapt to your own situation.
You don't need to be—and are not expected to be—a CiviCRM expert or a coding ninja. Far from it. What you do need, however, is the will and enthusiasm to use CiviCRM to take your organization from where it is now to where you want it to be.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Setting Up CiviCRM, covers the important post-installation tasks that will get you going quickly. We look at some of the hard-to-do and hard-to-find settings and explore some of the ways of implementing workflows using Scheduled Reminders and CiviCase.
Chapter 2, Organizing Data Efficiently, covers the role of tags and groups. We also explore importing and exporting data, and some techniques to make these processes trouble-free.
Chapter 3, Using the Power of Profiles, covers how you can exploit the power of CiviCRM profiles to improve usability, speed up data entry, and control listings and directories.
Chapter 4, Controlling Permissions, demystifies permissions and shows you how you can use them in a variety of contexts to control access to viewing and editing data.
Chapter 5, Managing Communications, covers how to get the best out of CiviMail. We explore the mail templating system and a Drupal-based alternative to authoring your mailings. We also cover techniques for managing mailing subscriptions and allowing users to update information easily.
Chapter 6, Searching and Reporting, focuses on the search capabilities of CiviCRM. We look at how you can use searching to find and group data easily. We also explore how you can customize the search result display, and finally we will look at a search technique in Drupal that is not possible within CiviCRM itself.
Chapter 7, Integrating CiviCRM with Drupal, covers integrating CiviCRM with Drupal Views and using the power of the Drupal Webform CiviCRM module to do things CiviCRM can't. Finally, we explore some experimental modules that enable you to create user accounts on the fly and to organize contacts using Drupal taxonomy terms.
Chapter 8, Managing Events Effectively, uses CiviEvents to explore how you can use jQuery to alter the display and behavior of CiviCRM forms. We also look at how you can use Webform CiviCRM to control registration workflow for paid-for events.
Chapter 9, Using Campaigns, Surveys, and Petitions Effectively, covers in detail how to set up campaigns, surveys, and petitions. We also look at how you can use Drupal Views to create a Campaign Dashboard so you can get at-a-glance information about the progress of your campaigns.
Chapter 10, Working with CiviMember, explores CiviMember, a CiviCRM component used for membership management. We look at a popular requirement—displaying a membership directory—and then explore how to link common membership tasks with other CiviCRM components.
Chapter 11, Developing with CiviCRM, looks at the software, skills, and resources you need to start developing CiviCRM in earnest. We also cover developing a simple Drupal module and exploring the CiviCRM API.
What you need for this book
You will need an installed version of CiviCRM. For several recipes, the CMS of choice should be Drupal. There are no specific recipes for Joomla! or WordPress.
For some of the recipes you should have a good text editor.
Who this book is for
This book is for the nontechnical CiviCRM user. You will know how to get CiviCRM installed, but will now want to find out the tips, tricks, and techniques to get the best out of CiviCRM for your particular situation. You should understand the basic operation of CiviCRM and Drupal. For some recipes, it helps if you are familiar with a coding environment as we will be doing some PHP scripting, but you do not need any programming or technical skills as you will learn everything you need in this book.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "In the previous recipe, we used a URL to access the profile we created, that is, civicrm/profile/create?gid=N&reset=1, where N was the ID of our profile."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Navigate to Administer | Customize Data and Screens | Profiles and add a new profile that will contain the fields you wish to display on your directory."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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