CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hello people,

Each time I do an upgrade I send an email to the client which summarises the major differences from their point of view.  This has been especially necessary in 3.1 where big things have changed like the menu.   I wondered if there are any wiki pages that are used to summarise these differences from their point of view.

Seems like it will always be necessary to do a bit of translation and cut out the things that they aren't interested in (for example if they don't use CiviEvent, they don't want to know about any of the changes in CiviEvent but I imagine that the consultant's / administrator's work flow would be something like the following

1) Do the upgrade

2) Go the the Upgrade review from a users POV page and copy and past that page into an email

3) Remove all unecessary information that the client doesn't need, leaving a concise review of all the changes tailored for this client

4) Send the email to the client

5) When that client asks questions that weren't covered, the responsible consultant / admin both

5a) emails the client to answer their question
5b) updates the wiki page so that the next client isn't in the dark.

Here's an example email that I just sent to a client.

Below I've gone over a few of the main things that you will notice are different.  I've attached annotated screen shots for some of these differences.

There will most likely be other changes that I've missed out.  Let me know if you spot any and you have any questions.

A new menu.

The menu is now across the top of the page, not along the left hand side as previously.  Click the menu to access items (it doesn't drop down automatically) that were previously available in the left hand side menu.

Quick search

A quick search box is now included in the top left corner.  This was previously in a block on the left hand side.

Delete permissions

We can now set up delete permissions for specific users.  I've set this up so all database users can delete activities, but only database administrators can delete contacts.  We can talk about if that sounds sensible to you.

Mail subscribe and un-subscribe pages

There is now a page (which is currently visible to the public) which lists a set of public mailing lists.  People can use this page to give you their email address and tell you what they are interested in hearing about from [client].  You can then send people mailings based on these preference.

I would suggest that we sit down and have a talk about how to best use these pages.

The pages is available here (http://[root]/civicrm/mailing/subscribe) though you won't see anything at the moment because we have no public mailing lists.

Advanced search custom fields

These are now collapsed by default, which should make the search interface more usable.

I'm happy to create a wiki page from this.  Wanted to get feedback here before I do.

Michael

Hey there,

OK, so good that Erik and Xavier like the idea.

I think this would work best if it were planned to co-incide with the release cycles and publicised on the blog post that accompanies the release.  It seems like this is something that the community can easily step up and help out with and seems natural for them to be the people that translate the Jira issues into end user understandable language.

I am guessing that the blogs accompanying releases are quite standard and we could include a line something like.  "End users should read this page which describes new functionality.  Administrators and implementors please add to and use this page as a training guide when rolling out upgrades.

Worth a shot for the next release?

Hi,

The road map gives a good explanation already isn't it ? (albeit not that easy to find the roadmap yet in the wiki).
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+Roadmap

Process-wise, what's the correct way to start helping with this and other documentation? Should I wait until the book sprint is done? Post comments in this thread? I'm not comfortable editing the wiki directly until I've submitted some docs for review and been validated.