1 Month in Review

[biologyben]

I started collecting the various usability issues I found as I was starting out with the system as a way to track issues that I might otherwise forget about as well as to prevent me from pestering this board so frequently I'd be banned from further use. Now that I've used the system for a month, I thought I'd share the issues I found as a new, not a technical user - My day job is the executive of my organization, not a database guru.  As I've said before that I know enough to be dangerous, not enough to be competent.  That seems to make me a minority on these boards. 

After 1 month, I have now imported 1200 contacts (no contributions yet as quickbooks oddly does not allow refnum to be exported with transactions - Turns out, refnum is not the main id number of quickbooks (and seemingly few people know what it is exactly) and the QBID isn't easily exportable).  I'm just starting to invite some staff to start some additional data entry to get an idea of concerns & optimising workflows.  I have not dug into extensions significantly, but that will be coming soon.

I guess I'll go ahead and state that no, unfortunately I do not have funding at this point to address any of these issues.  However, I'd also like to think that I cannot possibly be the only one to have these same issues.  There are likely a lot of potential new users in smaller organizations who do not have dedicated IT staff who are turned off by these little issues that instead move on to paid systems.  (Side note - I spoke to one company who said the cost of initial set up of the system would be $8000 - this cost is about a decade of us using Donor Perfect.)

Anyway, here's a few suggested CiviCRM Improvements one month in:

Import
•   Master Address Belongs to:

• In the import form, this should at least be in the lower section with all relational data or in a special area due to its special data requirements
• Address does not show in contact screen after import (you must click on the link for the address to show the first time or import this data as well)
• Should show error if Master address belongs to field does not match an internal ID (or at least is not the proper form (if any letters are included or even validating each internal id’s)
• Make it usable to non-coders (pick one or more)
  
  • Allow individuals and contacts to be linked via internal contact IDs or external ID’s (instead of address.id)
  • Automatically make the home address the household address if contact is linked as a member of the household
  • Users should be able to determine the civicrm_address.id without needing to get into the mysql tables – Perhaps make this an exportable field?

•   Gender – M, F, m & f should be imported as Male & Female
•   If possible, failed imports should import all other good information as long as the minimum data is available to match or make a new entry.  If Mr. John Doe is being imported but the file lists him as mr John Doe, the name should be imported even if the prefix is not.


Reports
•   On the Contact Detail page (and other pages with lots of check boxes) it would be very handy to include a 'Check all/Remove all' option. 
•   External Identifier should be able to be shown on any report
•   Internal ID should be required as part of an export of Info
•   Search options in reports (only show contact type X)


Address Validation
•   Addresses cannot be entered if the usps validation fails – no warning, error, or message given

Dashboard
•   Add a contact list option, ideally with a selectable contact types (individuals & Orgs, but not households in my use case) & an a-z bar like what is featured after a search.
•   Allow for large dashlettes that span 2 columns- Useful for displaying contacts like above above


Most of these by themselves is not a major problem.  My concern is for those that hit several seemingly minor issues before getting to see all the advantages of this system.

Also - if any of these should already be fixed (but didn't work for me), please let me know so I can investigate! 

Thanks!