CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

So I'm trying to retroactively create Drupal users for every contact within Civi so they can manage their own details. I have found detailed instructions how to do this. The snag is, even though I can successfully import/create Drupal accounts for each user that I exported, I can't seem to get Drupal and Civi to match them up, even though the primary email addresses are identical. I tried the Synchronize Users to Contacts function in Civi, and it doesn't seem to link the accounts (or do anything at all, for that matter).

The reason I know this is that, for comparison, I changed a Civi membership form to also create a Drupal user at the time of the membership signup, and created a member/user that way to see how the two accounts would link, and on that account's Drupal profile, you can see all details of both the Drupal user and the Civi membership - just as you would expect.

However, when I look at the Drupal account profile for a newly imported Drupal user I was attempting to synch up with an existing Civi membership, it does not have the information about the membership that you would expect it to pull from the Civi contact - it only offers them a blank form in that particular tab with no member information filled in. The two records obviously are not connected.

And I also know it's not a result of the import process, because to test for that scenario, I created a Drupal user from the back end, then tried to synch it, also with no success.

I've read all documentation I could find and googled the question to no successful avail. What's missing from this equation? Thanks in advance. 

Well, it does give a status message. It just doesn't make sense - it says something to the effect of 4 contacts found, no new records created - which I would think would mean since it didn't have to create *new* records, the records would be synched up (I only have about 4 Drupal users in there now for test purposes). As to upgrading, my boss doesn't want to because he's happier with "the bugs he knows" rather than some new bugs that might turn up as a result of upgrading. I can suggest it to him, but he's already vetoed that idea once.

Now - even stranger - when I look at the apparently non-synched user from the back end, it doesn't have any of the Civi information showing, however it does have a link that says "View Contact Record" - and that link does take me to the Civi record. WTH?

I really wish that last year we had allowed members to be Drupal users in the first place - I was told no because my boss was convinced that you shouldn't have to - it would make no sense to have to because he said Civi used to be a standalone platform, so he was not open to the idea - I think he was mostly concerned with potential security issues. I was finally able to find enough documentation this year to explain that they do have to be Drupal users in order for Civi to be "aware" of them as logged in users for matters such as membership renewals, editing their contact information, etc. So now I'm trying to go back and fix this.

So I guess, wish me luck.

If 'View Contact Record' link is there, than the Drupal user IS linked to the Civi contact record. That link will only show for users who have 'access CiviCRM' and 'view all contacts' (or equivalent ACLs).

Not sure what CiviCRM data you're expecting to see on the /user pages? CiviCRM data about the contact will only show on /user Drupal page if you have a CiviCRM Profile configured to be Used For "View/Edit Drupal User Account" - and then only the fields in that profile will be displayed.

I take it back - I just started over with new users in the latest install, and now it's working as expected. (It just didn't work when I was trying to synch contacts that were in there before the upgrade). Thanks everyone!