Civimember roles sync - not running automatically when membership updated

[Dave Melkman]

Hi,
We're having trouble with this functionality. 
Using the module in Drupal 7 we're trying to get roles to sync in Drupal when a new membership is created in Civi.  It works fine when manually synchronising but if we use the setting 'Synchronize when membership is updated. '  it never updates automatically.
Has anyone else had this problem or has anyone else in fact got it working ok in Drupal 7 - Civi 4.0.5

Thanks
Dave

[Upperholme]

I have the same problem, but on a Drupal 6 site running CiviCRM 3.4.7. I'm looking around to see if there are any issues around this functionality that i need to be aware of. No luck as yet. Any pointers would be most welcome.

Regards
Graham

[petednz]

hi - this might not be quite the answer to your question but it has stumped people before so may be useful to repeat for others benefits if not yours. As i understand things ...
Depending on your settings, a change of Membership (or Group) status will not immediately be reflected in the Users roles since those roles get allocated the next time the user logs in.
Ie, if an admin gives a user a Membership via the backend, and you then go look at the user, then you will not see any related Role as having been granted to the user, and may conclude something isn't working.
But when the user logs in, the system goes 'hmm wonder what roles to give this person, i had better go check if they should get any Roles based on their Civi Member (or Groups) status and if so, either give or take away the necessary Roles.'

[Upperholme]

Pete hi, and many thanks for pitching in on this one.

I have to say you have me confused now. My understanding of the Civimember roles sync module is that there are three options as to how the membership change will sync with the Drupal role:
1. via cron
2. when the user logs in/out
3. when the membership status changes.

It the third option that i want to use, and I expect it to work such that when a user logs in to the site and signs up for a membership, their Drupal role is changed to reflect that signup. This is certainly the implication by my reading of the Dharmatech post at http://dharmatech.org/ideas/2011/improved-civimember-roles-synchronization

From what you have written I understand that the change only works when a user logs out and back in, regardless? This seems to run counter to the Dharmatech post, which, judging by its date - Jan 2011, those changes will be in the bundled Drupal module in CiviCRM version 3.4.7 (released Oct 2011) - the version used in this case.

Any one else able to cast light on this?

[petednz]

hi - my posting wasn't meant to cover the situation of someone who is logged in, and who then changes their membership status to something that would give them a new role and hence new access to content.
my naive thinking is that drupal still needs to be asking the question 'what roles should this user have' and i have no idea if changing a logged in persons membership status can do this while they are still logged in.
keen to hear the answer if someone has it. otherwise sounds like if this used to happen and now doesn't that the module needs some TLC

[Dave Melkman]

We've had a little breakthrough with this which we discovered when looking through the example module code for hook_civicrm_post (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC41/CiviCRM+hook+specification#CiviCRMhookspecification-hookcivicrmpost)

It just involves a minor change to the names of the variables used in the last function of the civicrm_member_roles.module file.

This is the original code:

Code: [Select]

function civicrm_member_roles_civicrm_post($op, $objname, $objid, &$objref) {
    if ($objname == "Membership") {
        if (variable_get('civicrm_member_roles_sync_method', 0) == 3) {
            _civicrm_member_roles_sync(NULL, $objref->contact_id);
        }
    }
}

which we replaced with this:

Code: [Select]

function civicrm_member_roles_civicrm_post($op, $objectName, $objectId, &$objectRef) {
   if ($objectName == "Membership") {
        if (variable_get('civicrm_member_roles_sync_method', 0) == 3) {
            _civicrm_member_roles_sync(NULL, $objectRef->contact_id);
        }
    }
}

and all now seems to work ok.

[Upperholme]

Any idea if this has been rolled in to the released module in version 4.1.2?

[Dave Melkman]

No it hasn't, we just upgraded to Civi 4.1.2 and I had to copy this snippet of code across manually

[Upperholme]

I'll raise an issue for it, and hope we can get it into the next release.

http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-10107

[Donald Lobo]

i cant see a diff between the two code snippets? can u elaborate a bit more on what the change is and why changing the variable name makes a difference?

lobo

[Dave Melkman]

The only difference changing all instances of the names of the variables used in the function (ie. $objectName, $objectId, &$objectRef). 
I'm kind of surprised this made a difference but changing these to match the exact syntax given in hook specification code made all the difference.