CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Sorry for the long post, but I suspect these usability issues are affecting lots of civiCRM evaluations:

I installed civiCRM 2.0 for a local non-profit for test-drive. They like the system very much, except for the manual data entry -- which they think is way too cumbersome compared to their existing Filemaker setup. They do lots of "offline" check/cash transactions (this is a grassroots organization that does a lot of outreach and membership signup through tabling, etc).

Initially, I showed them how to do manual data entry through the standard "core" interface. However, that was way too slow because they had to go through multiple screens (with the Tabs) to enter all the data: contact info page, then contribution, then the membership page. Since one contribution can qualify for multiple memberships, this could involve going through many pages just for a single member signup.

In response to that feedback, I created a Contribution page with custom profile. This page mostly works because it combines the contact info, contribution, and membership on one page. However, we ran into a couple problems with that approach. The first problem is that only one membership is possible on the contribution page. I can mostly workaround that issue with some custom fields.

The bigger problem is that the system wants to inject the user's profile information into the name/address fields. We use Drupal as the front-end, and if the data-entry volunteer is logged into Drupal (to get access permissions), then that person's profile is what gets edited, as opposed to actually creating new Individual records. The only workaround I've found is to have this volunteer not be logged in, which makes the system see the new data as coming from "anonymous". I would rather not make this volunteer have to keep logging in and out based on which page he is using. The only other solution I see is to write some custom php script which uses the civiCRM API to write directly into the database, something I would rather not do as that can get complicated.

BTW, another problem we encountered was importing the existing data records out of the Filemaker system. As far as I can tell, the only way to do an import is through the web interface, which only allows about 300 records to be imported at a time before timing out. Is the some way of doing the import through the UNIX shell command line interface? Having to import 10,000+ records 300 at a time is going to be a real annoyance.

In response to that feedback, I created a Contribution page with custom profile. This page mostly works because it combines the contact info, contribution, and membership on one page. However, we ran into a couple problems with that approach. The first problem is that only one membership is possible on the contribution page. I can mostly workaround that issue with some custom fields.

Can you explain your use case where you want multiple memberships / contribution?

The bigger problem is that the system wants to inject the user's profile information into the name/address fields. We use Drupal as the front-end, and if the data-entry volunteer is logged into Drupal (to get access permissions), then that person's profile is what gets edited, as opposed to actually creating new Individual records. The only workaround I've found is to have this volunteer not be logged in, which makes the system see the new data as coming from "anonymous". I would rather not make this volunteer have to keep logging in and out based on which page he is using. The only other solution I see is to write some custom php script which uses the civiCRM API to write directly into the database, something I would rather not do as that can get complicated.

An alternate approach might be to get the volunteers to do the transaction using a different browser. I'm typically logged in on FF but use Safari to test other cases (anon user, other logged in user etc)

BTW, another problem we encountered was importing the existing data records out of the Filemaker system. As far as I can tell, the only way to do an import is through the web interface, which only allows about 300 records to be imported at a time before timing out. Is the some way of doing the import through the UNIX shell command line interface? Having to import 10,000+ records 300 at a time is going to be a real annoyance.

You can fix this by increasing the php execution time (make it 3600 seconds or so). This should increase the amount of records you can import

alternatively if you have the budget, you might want to consider upgrading your hosting plan to a VPS / dedicated server

lobo

Also, one thing I neglected to mention in my original posting are some problems with the "Household" record type. Again, this is a problem with too much manual work on data entry -- it takes a huge amount of work to enter household data because one has to first enter the individual records, and then enter the household record, and then enter the relationships. There should be a simple way to create a single form where all household members are entered on one page, and then system creates the proper records behind-the-scenes.

Don't quote me on this as am running from memory but if you start by creating the Individual (this assumes you aren't using Profiles or Contribution Pages as your data entry forms) and having put in their address, click Use Household address/Create New Household - then this will both create the Houshold and add the relationship.

We have also run into problems with doing a search on household name: unless one follows the convention Last-name, First-name1 & first-name2 then the search will fail. They had entered the household name as: first-name1 & first-name2 last-name -- in this format, a search on the last-name won't pick up the record.

While we have a protocol of 'surname & surname' or 'surname & italic1 & italic2' you should still be able to search for your surname by using %surname%.