Tell a friend feature

[petednz]

Hi - have only really just started exploring the Tell A Friend feature. I have some questions and comments. First of course, great to see this in here.

Was surprised to spot that the contacts that they were being sent to were being entered as a new contact - not because it isn't desirable, but just because I am unsure how it would fit with our privacy commitments. On similar systems we have used we have committed to not keep these types of email addresses. Of course they should only be contacted by us to confirm if they want to opt-in or not.

So wondering how other people are dealing with this 'harvesting' of emails issue.

Also when the recipient clicks on the link it is not using a Checksum so the 'friend' arrives at a blank form - with the potential that they will enter themselves with a different name and even email address, creating more duplicates. So maybe some thought should be given to integrating checksum option with this function to avoid this (probably downsides to this but lets discuss). Especially given that the 'friend' may be someone who was already on the database.

Other issues.

Contact Match: looks like it is running the Contact Match rules against the Name and Email address when the 'friend' contact is first created. Good.

Subject: email subject may need to be more easily configurable so it doesn't just use the name of the Contribution Page

Further options: Ability for us to send email to contacts with some form of a checksum that takes them to a Tell-a-Friend page that isn't necessarily related to an Event or a Donation. It could be about going and watching a video - or reminding them to Go Vote.

[Dave Greenberg]

Peter - We would also be interested in hearing more feedback on the "harvesting / privacy" issue. When I've explained the feature to folks at conferences etc., folks seemed to "like" this behavior - but not sure how much thinking went into those responses.

Also interested in others reactions to the checksum idea ??

We did architect the Tell a Friend code so that it is relatively component-independent - with the idea that it could be used in lots of places. Perhaps you spec'ing out the "general campaign" flow / functionality would help move this forward. Might also be a good feature for folks to implement as a Drupal module using the underlying data model etc.

[petednz]

Will give some more thought to this, but with our election tomorrow it is not something I will get to for a few days. I certainly 'like' the idea - just cautious about inappropriate harvesting especially without clear statement that this is happening.

I also note that if we really want to promote the 'Tell a Friend' then there should be other options like it being far more prominent, opened up on the page, etc. Our experience is that it isn't getting utilised as strongly as I think it could be.

[petednz]

And had a really good example of why the Tell a Friend would be so useful - having just had several cases of people sending on 'donation request' emails which included checksums, to other people, who then duly ignored the message saying 'if someone elses name is filled in please click here instead!" (and maybe that is because we need to figure a way of ending the 'persistence' that we created) - and duly overwrote their name etc.

So a link in our original email saying - if you want to pass this on, click here, put in the names and emails, - and then have the system send out  a templated email with checksums for the 'friend' - now that would rock!

[Dave Greenberg]

Peter - might be good to start a wiki page (and link to it from the 2.3 roadmap) with ideas / detailed descriptions of change and improvement suggestions. Not sure I completely understand your last post and what's needed.

[petednz]

Sure - will line that up for post-election results.

[petednz]

Will do - though I see there is a 'tell a friend' stub that has not been written for the current feature. What do I call this 'extended feature' page - and where do I put it? (noob question!)
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/

Anyhow here is what I will put in it.

TELL-A-FRIEND extensions

The 'tell-a-friend' feature is available as part of Event and Contribution process and enables the person using the forms to send an email to friends encouraging them to join/donate/attend. I am suggesting two extensions to this feature.

Include checksum in tell-a-friend email to help avoid duplicates
Currently when the email is sent to the 'friend' it does not contain a checksum, therefore there is a good chance that the person invited will create a duplicate record if they opt to join/donate/attend and use a different email, or a variation on their name.

So the suggestion is that the email that is sent out contain a token/checksum that takes them to a join/donate/attend page that already shows the details their friend put in the database. ("IF you want to 'join/donate/attend' click here and you will go to a page that already has the details entered by your friend")

Enable contacts to step directly to the 'tell-a-friend' feature from an email invitation to 'join/donate/attend'

Secondly, contacts who receive the invitation to join/donate/attend may choose not to take up the invitation, but may want to pass on the option to others (eg can't attend event but know others who might be interested).

Currently it is likely that the email sent to them will get forwarded on with the risk that the checksum is then triggered by the wrong person.

An improvement would be having the ability for contacts to step directly in to the 'tell a friend' without having had to sign up for the event etc.

So our email to our contacts would include another link that says "if you want to tell your friends about this opportunity to ..... please click here". This would take them direct to the 'tell a friend' function of the join/donate/attend process and enable them to fire out the email described above.

[Dave Greenberg]

Peter - These "specs in development" generally go under the Requirements - Active Discussion section of the wiki. I've created a stub page for you at: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Tell+a+Friend+-+Phase+2+Requirements

Would be good to blog on this as well to solicit feedback from others who are using or would like to use the Tell a Friend feature.

[treedawgus]

I'm new to CiviCRM, so perhaps I missed it, but I'd love to see the ability to Import Contacts directly from the Tell a Friend page. For example, import from Outlook or Gmail contacts. I'd also like to see the ability to send to Facebook friends. The drupal for facebook or simply Facebook connect should potentially make this easier. Haven't looked into those extensively yet.

[Dave Greenberg]

Those features are definitely not available yet. This would potentially be a cool community contributed / sponsored add-on.

[treedawgus]

Anybody know if there have been updates to this? To recap, I'd like to allow people to import their contacts from Facebook/Outlook/Gmail from the "Tell a Friend" page.

[Dave Greenberg]

No progress on this yet. If you're interested in sponsoring or contributing code for this, check out this wiki page, and contact me (dave at civicrm dot org):

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Developing+with+the+CiviCRM+team

[Treedawgus]

Dave - have you gotten any interest from other community members about the ability to allow people to import their contacts from Facebook/Outlook/Gmail from the "Tell a Friend" page? I'd be interested in sponsoring a MIH project for this. If we start with Gmail and Outlook, what would you scope out the project to be? How many hours would you think?

[xavier]

Hi,

For FB, that's a like/share (ie bit of js to embed and write on their wall), ie. it doesn't go through civi.

For Gmail they have a new api that makes it easier to import contacts, is this what you have in mind ?

And then, there is outlook.

X+

[Treedawgus]

For FB: sure, makes sense.

For Gmail/Outlook, when a user clicks "Tell a Friend", ideally I'd like to allow them to select contacts from their Gmail or Outlook contact list to send the message. However, the tricky part is that I'd like to allow that user to return later and check which of those contacts actually signed up and/or donated. This would likely require storing the "tell a friend" contacts in a DB, and cross-referencing with the Civi user and/or donation table.

Happy to discuss more live..