CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Sorry Matt, i should have been more specific    my interest being in the PhoneBank - and its applicability in other countries from a format of fields/geographies perspective rather than language - will contact you off forum

I stumbled upon this in trying to determine how to make profiles clear- we were creating more than needed, and the organization was messy.
I realize this is an ancient topic- but-
here goes another UI issue with custom fields vs build in fields- I think we need to differentiate the fields - with a color code- green boxes- for data in CiviNative fields- normal for custom - or something like that.
Also- all fields should be hinted- so there is no question of what they are.
I'm having a wicked time trying to build walk lists-
My problem - I think I have two sets of fields that are similar-
The voter lists- give me data: st number, st name, st direction, etc- which are custom data fields.
But- when I take a form response- I ask for a street address and get all in one "st number, direction, name, apt number"
Trying to combine them- and order them- and parse- has been confusing.
I'd also suggest an ajax search builder would be awesome- as would an ajax based report builder.
Hate me now.

Might want to check the profile builder while creating a survey in 4.3 which is the direction we are headed towards

http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/survey/add?reset=1 (its on the second page)

there has and will be a lot of discussion on multiple topics and improvements etc. However for any of them to be implemented one or more folks need to step up and help make it happen, either by contributing code and/or sponsoring developers and/or taking part in code sprints and working on it that time

We as a project need to do a better job of educating and explaining to people of how to contribute and help make the project better. Wishes and suggestions are great, but we need a lot lot more folks helping to implement a few of those

lobo

so a few thoughts and comments:

1. We've been moving a fair bit of stuff from the wiki into the book and making the book as the primary reference block. Bottom line, contributions to either of them are great and highly appreciated. So looking forward to some of your significant patches and improvements to material in the book

2. While we respect and appreciate your views on wordpress, things are not going to change from civi's end about being CMS agnostic in the near future. Currently most of our patches / improvements come from the drupal developer/integrator community and we do appreciate that. We'd love to see more WP developers start contributing and improving things

3. Unfortunately open source does not work with statements like:

"can't someone throw some ajax on them- and make them easy for anyone to customize? Take a look at WordPress menu construction. It's easy-peasy."

If it is easy-peasy and trivial, please do submit a set of patches / pull-requests. we'd be happy to review it and merge it into core. Rather than saying: Can't someone else do this, please think about doing it and submitting a patch. I'm not sure how you people can claim its trivial / easy-peasy and then not contribute code to make it happen

I think more importantly, we need to understand that Civi is an open source project and hence is as strong as the ecosystem is willing to put into it. Having a civil, positive tone and doing things to help the project helps you and everyone else

lobo

I am not a coder 
However- I can do UI specs- and design interfaces.
I can also point out where users are struggling- and make suggestions.
So far, the key issue I keep running into is the "code evolved offering almost the same set of features, but with a different UI"
and the naming convention isn't obvious.

Example- under "Campaign Module"- how can you have "Survey, Petition, Campaign" It's confusing things- especially when you get into "activities" which are available under "Contacts"- and then you go to search by activities and you have a box for "Survey" and a box for "Campaign" and an "activity type" and- you could pick the same thing in three places.

May I suggest a really fundamental change- stop granulating actions. Things like a phone bank, a survey, a walklist, a petition, mass mailing- aren't ANY DIFFERENT- all of them involve the EXACT SAME PROCESS- communicating with a CONTACT. These are ACTIVITIES.
There are only two kinds of contacts- those we've got in our DATA, and those that are NEW.
In each case- an ACTIVITY must be recorded- what information has changed, a date, who changed it, and a way to ANALYZE data- this is called a REPORT.
A report isn't used to make a walklist, or a survey, that's confusing.
Try calling your "ASSIGNMENTS" of "ACTIVITIES" not "RESERVE RESPONDENTS" (seriously- only corporate types could come up with this- or coders"- call it a "MISSION"- which you either complete, or don't complete within the time frame.
Since we are using the military term "CAMPAIGN"- using the military term "MISSION" makes sense, since you engage in "MISSIONS" to reach your objective. These are generally short term assignments, that are coordinated to reach your "CAMPAIGN GOAL"
"MISSIONS" are assigned to your "EVANGELIST" or "TEAM MEMBER" to accomplish. Not by an "INTERVIEWER" (I've yet to find out where I add my "Interviewers" to my "ORGANIZATION" which can be my "Organization" or "Someone elses organization"- and adding people to "Organizations" which are really just collections of "Contacts" should be as easy as creating a "Group"- whoa... isn't that the same as an "Organization" or a "Tag" yet another form of "ORGANIZATION"- meaning we need to define clearly how many ways we can form "collections" of "contacts"
If we get the taxonomy straight on these- we can probably reduce the complexity of both the menus- and the program- so that people can not have to go through a million steps to divide a group/smart group (a collection of contacts having a similar set of traits- either static (group) or active (smart group)) into manageable "MISSIONS" of single "ACTIVITIES" that are accomplished by an "EVANGELIST" to reach a "CAMPAIGN GOAL" which progress is analyzed by "REPORTS"- some of which can be displayed as charts on the "DASHBOARD"
Working within this framework- would help ALL USERS and DEVELOPERS find a common language for all.
You could swap out "MISSIONS" for "TASKS" but- I think of a task as a time consuming thing I'm forced to do- vs a MISSION as something I go out on to help win a campaign.
Note- some of this is stolen from my experiment with a DRUPAL based commercial product called 5ivepoints which is now dead. It had a very sexy mobile interface- that worked really well. It's sad that it's code is now sitting on the shelf not doing anything. I know the former CTO- and could reach out to him to see if the code could be donated to Civi.
Also- they had gamified the missions- giving the "Evangelists" or "Team" a scoreboard- much like the Obama campaign did.
I don't think that is needed for CIVI- but- I'd say it would be easier for someone to write once we get rid of the jumble we have now.
And- yes- it would be a lot better if I could write a check to a developer to make this happen, but, I can't - so all I can offer is my time to clarify the process.
I'm sorry.

A bit of background and clarification:
 
1. Most of the survey / campaign / petition specs cameand were agreed  by  3 sources: Will B, a state senator in MA,

Well- there's your problem. Never trust a politician to come up with something useful. Case in point- Tax code.

I am not criticizing- I know it's an open source project- and I'm only using CAPS for emphasis of key terms. Not SHOUTING
I'm saying the community is going to struggle with new adoptees- read- new help- if it's too complex.
This project has been sustained for years- which means it must have value-
the question is- how do we pay to make it what we really want?
Other CRM systems offer paid hosted solutions-
or- have been bought by other companies-
Just the CiviMail function beats the hell out of PHPlist or any other opensource mailer project-
you should be able to sell this app multiple ways.
I'm not trying to be mean- I'm just running into so many confusing and overly complex interface issues.
Like the one that just sent me back to the forums looking for help-
A good taxonomy- defined in a central location- will make things much easier for both users and developers. It's the common language. Refining the terms- would eliminate the confusion.

Quote from: The Next Wave on March 31, 2013, 05:05:36 am

Note- some of this is stolen from my experiment with a DRUPAL based commercial product called 5ivepoints which is now dead. It had a very sexy mobile interface- that worked really well. It's sad that it's code is now sitting on the shelf not doing anything. I know the former CTO- and could reach out to him to see if the code could be donated to Civi.

Would be great if you can get 5ivepoints to open source and release their code on github or any public repository. Any ideas on how and why it died?

lobo

Hi there, this is Chas Mastin, former CTO of 5ivepoints.  The site is actually back up but we're not taking on any new campaigns.  The app had a mobile web interface built with Sencha Touch, I would highly recommend it as a platform, and interfaced with Drupal JSON services.  We also had custom iOS and Android apps we built.  We used MongoDB to store our voter files and had a custom python system to determine their likelihood to vote a particular way. 

Right now we're in process of selling the application, but the reason we shut down is that there isn't an actual market for small to medium campaigns for the kind of decentralized mobile app we had.  Or, I should say the market was very difficult - tough sales cycle, short campaigns, and WAY too much politics for a neutral party to build something that sold to all sides.  Basically, the market is owned on the left by NPD VAN and on the right by a mix of companies, many with an ideological bent.  Most of the money still goes to advertising, and GOTV efforts are often spearheaded by the elderly, who aren't so hot on the mobile interfaces.  In short, maybe in a few cycles a business like this will make sense, but not now...

Anyhow, I'd love to open-source the code but it doesn't belong to me.  But using sencha touch/phonegap as a platform you could probably spin up a good mobile app in a couple of months.  Good luck.

hey chas:

thanx a lot for taking the time to offer your insights and commnets about the market and needs etc. Much appreciated

Good luck in selling the app

lobo