CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm testing a new Drupal/CiviCRM setup. In the admin area there's a button for "Synchronize
Users-to-Contacts." Generally, this appears redundant because it seems to work fine that when a user signs up for an account in Drupal, he is automatically added as a contact in CiviCRM.

Questions:
1. What is the usefulness of "Synchronize Users-to-Contacts" when it seems this is automatic anyhow?
2. Is there an easy way to see a list of all new users that have been added as contacts each time an admin logs into CiviCRM?
3. What about the reverse? When I add a contact in CiviCRM is there some way for it to also automatically create a new User in Drupal--Synchronize Contacts-to-Users? Or would that be problematic somehow?

The primary use for the "Synchronize..." function is for Drupal sites that already have a bunch of users - and CiviCRM is being added to the site. The function creates CiviCRM contact records for all of the Drupal users who created their accounts prior to CiviCRM being installed/enabled.

You can sort Drupal's listing of users by the "Member For" column - which will give you a quick snapshot of new users.  (drupal/admin/user/user path). You can also use CiviCRM advanced search - "Change Log" pane - to see contacts which have been added or created in a given date range.

There is no built-in way to automatically create a new Drupal user when a contact is added - and I'm not sure this would be desirable. HOWEVER, 1.8 includes a new feature which allows you to offer folks the option to create an Drupal User account "inline" with a CiviCRM Online Contribution and/or Event Registration and/or Profile-Signup form.

http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-1633

Regarding your new question:

2. I'm still fuzzy on Contacts to Users though but I guess I can test it myself. Where I'm fuzzy is: what if a contact has been created in CiviCRM but they are not an authenticated user in Drupal. Then next week, they come to the website and sign-up in Drupal. Will that record be automatically matched or flagged somehow in relationship to the contact record already in CiviCRM?

In the case you've noted, CiviCRM will attempt to link the new user to an existing contact by matching the Drupal user email address to the CiviCRM primary email address.

No - not without making some code changes. You might be able to manage this on the template side with some added javascript - in which case you could use a custom template and not have to make any codebase changes...

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Customizing+CiviCRM+Screens