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Author Topic: Getting started questions  (Read 1681 times)

Eileen

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Getting started questions
February 02, 2008, 03:53:33 am
Hi,

I have been playing with CiviCRM for a few days now and have been working tonight on trying to do an initial set-up for our organisation and I have a few questions....

Our organisation is called Wellington Circus Trust. We run circus classes amongst other things. At the moment all our contact management and class enrolments are done through an Access database which is time consuming as users can't enter their own data and CiviCRM is the only (opensource) thing I've found that will allow us to move it on-line (mainly because of the ability to customise fields). I am using 'Events' for our classes.

I have installed CiviCRM 1.9 with Joomla 1.5 (I am familiar with Joomla) but may need to revise the combo I am using.

I would like our existing students to be able to register themselves for classes but although I have uploaded their details into  civiCRM and I suppose I could create joomla accounts for all of them & get them to use the 'reset my password' link to find out their passwords I still won't have a link between the joomla accounts & the civiCRM systems will I? I guess I could regularly use the : synchronize users to contacts function - although so far it has given me an error:

    [message] => DB Error: already exists

Or, would I be better to attempt to come to terms with Drupal? I get the impression it is better in this area.  I am a bit put off Drupal by the fact I can't seem to use their website - in particular I can't see what sorts plugins are available and feeling learning yet another thing would spread me a bit thin (this isn't my day job). CiviCRM version 2 seems to have a couple of things that could be really good for us - in particular the ability to process off-line payments and the grants administration (although we receive grants rather than dish them out so I don't know if I can reverse logic that one). Since our site is Alpha as well I could possibly get away with installing the alpha...

Also, if I go Drupal I can determine who can see whose records can't I?

Our mailing list is under 500 people so although a lot of the functionality of civiCRM (in terms of tracking mail sent & choosing groups to send to) looks great we don't really need it's complexity (bounce / unsubscribe tracking) - any recommendations?

Another thing - in joomla you can link to a specific event from a menu but seemingly not a list of all the events of one type? Is that right? If so I'd need to keep manually configuring the link - is that the same in Drupal?
« Last Edit: February 02, 2008, 04:10:42 am by Eileen »
Make today the day you step up to support CiviCRM and all the amazing organisations that are using it to improve our world - http://civicrm.org/contribute

posco

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Re: Getting started questions
February 02, 2008, 09:49:17 am
I haven't used Joomla before, but I have been using CiviCRM 1.9 with Drupal 5 for a little bit now.

Quote
I would like our existing students to be able to register themselves for classes but although I have uploaded their details into  civiCRM and I suppose I could create joomla accounts for all of them & get them to use the 'reset my password' link to find out their passwords I still won't have a link between the joomla accounts & the civiCRM systems will I?

I've essentially run into the same problem with Drupal. We ended up doing exactly what you describe here. We imported all of the contacts into Drupal and then asked each user to request a new password. It has caused the usability of our site to decrease a bit and we are going to work on making the process more clear on our site (i.e. writing out instructions and making links to the user password reset form). In retrospect it would have been easier on us if we just sent out e-mails to all the users when we did the import, which is something we could have done. Maybe that could help your situation if you did switch to Drupal.

Quote
Also, if I go Drupal I can determine who can see whose records can't I?

Yes. You can use CiviCRM's built in ACLs for this or you can use Drupal Roles. We currently use Drupal Roles. I think CiviCRM's ACLs are bit more fine-tuned though.

Quote
Our mailing list is under 500 people so although a lot of the functionality of civiCRM (in terms of tracking mail sent & choosing groups to send to) looks great we don't really need it's complexity (bounce / unsubscribe tracking) - any recommendations?

Configuring CiviMail was our first big headache. We have been referred to this service: http://www.uas.coop/civismtp-application. We haven't used the service yet, but it does sound like it prevents a lot of the issues involved in getting CiviMail completely configured.

Quote
Or, would I be better to attempt to come to terms with Drupal? I get the impression it is better in this area.  I am a bit put off Drupal by the fact I can't seem to use their website - in particular I can't see what sorts plugins are available and feeling learning yet another thing would spread me a bit thin (this isn't my day job).

I agree with you. Their category system for modules is very confusing. Just off the top of my head, here are a few modules that I think would help any Drupal/CiviCRM site:
http://drupal.org/project/user_import
http://drupal.org/project/cck
http://drupal.org/project/views

And of course there are many others depending on your exact needs and how you choose to go about setting things up. I'm not sure about your question about events. We really haven't gotten into events much. I'm also fairly new to CiviCRM, so there could be many solutions to your problems I don't know about.

Hope that helps.

Donald Lobo

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Re: Getting started questions
February 02, 2008, 05:51:39 pm

I assume u r in wellington, NZ. I'm based in Nelson, NZ (for the next 6 months). I'd like to get a civicrm community going in NZ, so can definitely talk to you either online or on the phone. We are currently travelling and will be back in nelson on feb 9th

If you want tighter integration with a CMS, Drupal is a better bet (as posco recommends)

lobo
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Eileen

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Re: Getting started questions
February 02, 2008, 07:30:45 pm
That's very cool! I am will message you my cell phone although I don't know my new landline yet.

I am going to try to get Drupal going today. Unfortunately my ability to be involved in any community will be severely limited as in the next few months I will resign both my day job & my work with Wellington Circus Trust to embrace the joys of a screaming bundle of babyness.

I had hoped actually to expand the site (that I have now registered as classes.org.nz to be broader than Wellington Circus Trust & allow other small groups (e.g. gym clubs, pilates etc) to process their enrolments through it too - that way we could probably try to get grants from the council for development. However, I don't quite know when I'd find time.
Make today the day you step up to support CiviCRM and all the amazing organisations that are using it to improve our world - http://civicrm.org/contribute
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Pre-installation Questions (Moderator: Dave Greenberg) »
  • Getting started questions

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