Author Topic: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data??? (Read 9432 times)

hallman · October 03, 2007, 03:05:01 pm

Has anyone put together a demo or instructions for using the Sample Data?

I've been exploring and making some notes. It looks like the sample data is great for learning how things work, but I could use some direction. If no one else has done it, I'll see what I can do.

Reference: In the instructions for installing CiviCRM for Drupal (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Install+CiviCRM+1.8+for+Drupal
Step 5, Create and Load CiviCRM Database Tables), there is an option to load sample contacts, profile forms, events and other data - this provides a helpful head-start to using CiviCRM.

Judy Hallman

geilhufe · October 03, 2007, 05:07:53 pm

Not sure I understand what your looking for. In general, the sample data is only relevant if you want to get a sense of how CiviCRM works. Without sample data, nothing shows up in lists and searches and it is generally hard to figure out how things work.

If I were providing instructions, I would suggest:

"CiviCRM provides a sample data set (fake information) for trying or testing CiviCRM without putting in real constituent information. Production installs of CiviCRM should not include sample data."

Dave Greenberg · October 04, 2007, 09:43:51 am

Judy - What I "hear" you saying is that a page which walks-through/describes the various things included in the sample data set would be useful.... I don't think this exists and I agree that it would be one useful way for folks to get oriented - you could link it from the Install page(s).

hallman · October 05, 2007, 08:38:20 am

OK. I'll work on it. Will probably take a couple of weeks.

hallman · October 14, 2007, 11:50:00 am

I think I want to allow registered users to "play" with the Sample Data on a test/demo site. When the data gets messed up, I'll want to restore it back to what I installed with CiviCRM. How can I do that? Is there something out there I can import? This would also be nice to have for people who install CiviCRM without the Sample Data and then wish they had it. If there's no easy way to re-install the Sample Data, will this get everything, if I do it now, while my Sample Data is still pretty clean?

Select all Individuals. All records. Export contacts, Export PRIMARY contact fields.
Select all Households. All records. Export contacts, Export PRIMARY contact fields.
Select all Organizations. All records. Export contacts, Export PRIMARY contact fields.
Find all contributions. All records. Export contributions.
Find all members. All records. Export members.
CiviEvent. Find Participants. All records. Export participants.

And then import them all back with "Update" option.

Donald Lobo · October 14, 2007, 12:14:09 pm

If you dont care about any of the data then use phpmyadmin (or mysql command line to load) civicrm_41.mysql and civicrm_generated.mysql

The first file (civicrm_41.mysql) drops all the old tables and creates new tables. The second one has the needed config and sample data

lobo

Denver Dave · November 02, 2007, 01:14:39 pm

Quote

Has anyone put together a demo or instructions for using the Sample Data?

hallman - you may have moved on since your post, but I think I've just arrived and beginning to think about reviewing the sample data. Any insights you care to share?

hallman · November 09, 2007, 12:07:10 pm

Sorry to be so slow responding...

I've got a draft for working with Sample Data. I just put it at http://nccommunities.org/node/197#getstarted

It says to go to my test site (http://test.nccommunities.com), which we can use for people to explore Sample Data. I created the user "demo" with password "demo" and gave authenticated users access privileges for CiviCRM, so you should be able to log onto the test site, if you want to. It got set up as test.nccommunities.com and I really wanted test.nccommunities.org and am trying to get the systems guys to change it, so watch out for that change, hopefully early next week.

Lobo's instructions for resetting the database work well.

Dave Greenberg · November 13, 2007, 06:46:12 am

Hi Judy - this looks very helpful. I'm assuming that for the version of this we put on the CiviCRM wiki - we'll direct folks to use our public demo (demo.civicrm.org) rather than nccommunities.org. Let me know if you want me to add this doc to the wiki, or if you are planning on adding it. Might be good to include it as a child of the Planning section, OR create a new Getting Started section with this as one sub-section.

BTW, we added a Credits page to the doc w/ some much deserved kudos for you. Let me know if you want me to add any professional info to it (or feel free to update it).

http://wiki.osuosl.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Credits

hallman · January 28, 2008, 08:40:42 am

I finally finished "Exploring Sample Data" and put it in the wiki at http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Exploring+Sample+Data

If you start at the documentation home page, there's a new section "Get Started" and a link to "Exploring Sample Data" in that section.

I still have it using test.nccommunities.org instead of http://demo.civicrm.org/. The CiviCRM demo site is used so much it can be kind of over-whelming for someone getting their first look at CiviCRM. The Sample Data gets lost in with all the other stuff. Would it be possible to have another civicrm.org site just for sample data?

I set up test.nccommunities.org so I could try out upgrades and new modules. I'll be improving the way it looks, but for now, my preference is to let people try exploring sample data on this site.

Dave Greenberg · January 28, 2008, 01:28:42 pm

Judy - Kudos for pulling these improvements together!

With regard to using demo.civicrm.org vs. nccommunities.org - I'm thinking that the issue is more about how often the DB is "reset" back to just the sample data. Unless we decide to remove access to adding / editing records - folks are going to play with the data :-)

We probably need to reset the DB on demo more often - to reduce the "overwhelm" factor. I'll discuss it with the team.

hallman · January 29, 2008, 09:17:59 am

I think two different sites. The demo site is wonderful for trying things out as a system administrator. I would change it. But if you're going to give a presentation showing CiviCRM, you want to do it with a site that isn't changing -- at least not much.

I went to the demo site one day and it was in German. That's fine. No problem. I was able to change it to English. But if I was giving a presentation and the site suddenly changed to German, I'd be uncomfortable.

My preference would be to have a site like sampledata.civicrm.org that is used just for beginners and for presentations. Reset the data once a day or so. Pretty much read only, but allowing things like recording email sent in activities. If you did this, then people probably wouldn't need to install Sample Data on their own machines.

quiethero · June 27, 2013, 07:26:43 am

Can you walk me through deleting the Demo Data or creating another database and pointing Drupal & CiviCRM to that database? Learning Drush, some php, Drupal and limited MySQL has my head trying to find an intelligent manner to decipher it all and it does get easier. Nevertheless, I have to delete the DEMO Data and your seemingly simple instructions has me compiling everything I can to understand your process. Please elaborate the directories and steps once more because creating new databases and making changes in different settings files makes sense but exactly where and exactly what changes to make has me somewhat confused. MySQL on a VPS Apache limits me.

My experience has been that everytime I touch the database, because I am just not that familiar with it at this point, I end up destroying it and starting from scratch. Can you help?

CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

News:

Author Topic: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data??? (Read 9432 times)

hallman

Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

geilhufe

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

Dave Greenberg

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

hallman

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

hallman

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

Donald Lobo

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

Denver Dave

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

hallman

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

Dave Greenberg

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

hallman

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

Dave Greenberg

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

hallman

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???

quiethero

Re: Demo or instructions for using Sample Data???