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Author Topic: [Solved] Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours  (Read 1251 times)

matthewboh

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[Solved] Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 10:14:02 am
I'm doing some pro-bono work for our local Literacy Council and one of their requirements is to be able to enter in total travel, preparation and tutoring hours each month.

After trying a few things, some incredibly helpful folks at the CiviCRM training came up with the following idea.  I just wanted to document it and make sure we weren't suffering from burn-out.

1)  Write a custom report that will include all the required fields for Activity Import along with a column for hours.  Each tutor will have 3 records.  One for Travel Hours, one for Preparation Hours and one for Tutoring hours.  The date will be the last day of the month.

2)  Export the report to a csv file.   Allow the staff to contact each of the tutors, get the hours and update the csv file

3)  Import the csv file to Activities

4)  Create another custom report that will detail the number of hours for each Tutor with totals with a date selection capability.

That's it - Let me know if there's a better / different way to accomplish this!

Thanks,

Matt
« Last Edit: March 26, 2011, 11:56:26 am by matthewboh »

petednz

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 10:52:13 am
Consider using an Event - one per month - you just clone the event for next month - including your fields as Participant fields. No csv extraction - just send them a monthly reminder with a checksum link to the Event - so they get to the form, it is prefilled with their contact data - all they do is add hours etc - and of course you need to check if the Reporting will work for you, but suspect it will.
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Donald Lobo

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 11:16:14 am

yet another option might be ...

the new survey stuff can/should be used for this, you can then use  the activity report for this.

It basically adds custom data to an activity. Volunteers / Admins can "fill" out the survey on a monthly basis.

the thing missing is a report that totals the hours of those custom fields. If using drupal, maybe via views

lobo
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petednz

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 11:22:39 am
the above also suggested to me the option of using a Webform - with the new 'connect to civicrm' module for the contact data fields, plus some standard Webform fields for the hours collection - then you can grab reports through Views simply
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matthewboh

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 11:36:55 am
I'm a relative noob so I might be asking some dumb questions....

new survey stuff - In CiviCRM or in Drupal?  I've been working with 3.4 alpha 2.  Is it in there?  Didn't see it, though

using a Webform - with the new 'connect to civicrm' module for the contact data fields, plus some standard Webform fields for the hours collection - then you can grab reports through Views simply - I'm assuming that the Webform, Connect to CiviCRM and Views are all Drupal modules that I would have to load?  Or do you mean using a  Profile?

Thanks - this is probably the greatest community I've seen in open source....

Donald Lobo

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 11:41:26 am

in my (simple) mind, i see webform storing "one off" data. Using it as a respository for your CRM data does not seem the right path to go down. CiviCore does not know about that data, so any functionality that uses that data will need to be "integration" code

lobo
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petednz

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 18, 2011, 11:48:16 am
Quote from: matthewboh
I'm a relative noob so I might be asking some dumb questions....

new survey stuff - In CiviCRM or in Drupal?  I've been working with 3.4 alpha 2.  Is it in there?  Didn't see it, though

civicrm/admin/setting/component?reset=1 - check component is enabled

then in Menu under Other/Campaigns you will see Petition etc

Quote from: matthewboh
I'm assuming that the Webform, Connect to CiviCRM and Views are all Drupal modules that I would have to load?  Or do you mean using a  Profile?

The former - but Lobo of course has a point re Webforms - just thinking that if calculations are required, having the data in a form that you will find in Views easily may avoid some issues that may not yet be covered with the new Petitions stuff - haven't looked at how the latter type of data will come through to Views.

But Webforms are just another Content Type, and a User can fire in a different one for each month - and have access to the data to go back and edit it if required, which you can't do via Events. Not sure about Petitions.
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matthewboh

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 24, 2011, 02:40:09 pm
Okay - I've tried to go through all this and figure out where I'm at....

Surveys - can't be used because they require a multiple choice field - which doesn't really make sense to have.  In addition, their work flow is that they want the central office to enter the data.

Petitions - There seems to be a lot more capability then I need here, but could get a form out there working.  However, they want the central office to only enter in the hours - not the volunteer

Activity - I could create a new Custom Activity but not sure if that's a good long term strategy.  However, this seems to be the best way to move forward that works well with their workflow.  I can't just add a new Activity Type because I need custom fields.

Case - It seems a little easier to create a Case type than a new Activity, but this may be slightly better because there should be some workflow to these.  NEW NOTE - Just realized that a Case always has the same data fields and is basically a different type of Activity - so back to the idea of a custom Activity?

Ideas?

« Last Edit: March 24, 2011, 03:17:33 pm by matthewboh »

Donald Lobo

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 24, 2011, 03:45:27 pm

both surveys and petitions allow you to extend the "questions" you can ask. So you can ask folks for hours and description (and whatever else). not sure what u mean by "they require a multiple choice field".

Both are basically special instances of activities. For your needs petitions might be better (since surveys have an result field that needs to be filled)

lobo
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matthewboh

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Re: Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours
March 26, 2011, 11:55:41 am
I think I'm finally starting to get a grasp on CiviCRM -

Went back and said "Why can't these just be Activity Types?"  So I made three additional Activity Types, one for each type of hours they had to save and report on.

I then modified the Activity and Activity Summary Reports to add in Duration.  If you let me know where to drop them, I'm happy to share my changes...
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  • [Solved] Workflow Sanity Check for entering Volunteer Hours

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.