CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hello everyone,

I'm not a CiviCRM user, but am in the process of investigating different CRM systems to see which one might work for my department.

Specifically, I'm interested in finding out if there are others using CiviCRM to track and manage interactions with faculty within higher education. I work at a University and staff members in my department support faculty in ways ranging from simple inquiries/responses, to complex, year-long consultations with multiple communications back and forth. We're looking for a CRM to help us track and manage our faculty interactions and to share information among our staff members. In looking through the list of Ambassadors I didn't see any from higher education, but I would love to hear from anyone about whether CiviCRM could work for us (and what it would take to get it set up to use in that way).

Thanks!

Hi 'A'

We haven't worked with Tertiary but have done so with Secondary including systems that are designed for students who are expelled, need to find an alternative provider', with much interaction between old school, new school, parents and Ministry of Education etc.

The reason I mention the above is the system had to be very flexible and streamlined for the users, and capable of handling complex inter-relationships etc, which may echo your own situation.

We accomplished this by using a lot of Webform-CiviCRM forms and Views (both drupal modules) plus CiviCase and LOTS of Activity Types so that all the to-ing and fro-ing could be recorded, updated and tracked through a (in our view) easier UI outside of CiviCRM itself.

By using Webform and Views together it means that one can be submitting a form on a particular student, with all the specific context you require on the same screen, in terms of the other information/engagement that has occurred with them. This also provides the ability to ensure that people with existing relationships - or ones being created on the fly on the same form - get notified with the information they specifically require when the forms are submitted.

If it helps with your deliberations I would be happy to have a skype with you some time that suits and I can take you through some of the scenarios in case that helps broaden your view of how civicrm can be utilised. Send me a PM via this forum if you like