CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi folks,
I installed CiviCRM 2.1.4 onto Joomla 1.5.x late last year. I was exploring opensource options for managing events within Joomla. I also need to manage newsletter (outgoing informative emails to lists), and eventually inbound donations. So I was happy when I found CiviCRM. At the time, however, my main requirement was handling event registrations. It was taking me too long to get that up and running in CiviCRM so I went (temporarily) with a third party solution (amiando.com).

I am now back to seeing how and if CiviCRM will suit my needs. I am a one-man show, with reasonable tech skills (20 years as an IT consultant), although not when it comes to language specific coding (PHP, etc.). I have spent the better part of this morning (about 4 hours) and many hours late last year trying to get my head around whether or not CiviCRM is even going to function (out of the box) the way I am wanting. Short of pulling my hair out, I figure perhaps if I simply ask, someone may be able to point me to the answers.

Here is what I would like to achieve:
1) CiviCRM registrants (people on mail lists; people who registered for events, etc.) are syncronised with Joomla.

2) When a person registers for an event, I can put a tick box onto the registration form which allows them to opt in or out of one or more mail lists.

3) People who register for an event are automatically entered into the Contacts

4) If an existing Civi contact or Joomla user registers for an event, and they are logged into Joomla front end, then their contact info is not required

4.1) If they are not logged in, they can simply log in and their details for the event registration and obtained automatically

5) There is easy integration between CiviEVENT and one or more Joomla calendar systems

6) If I don't want to use the CiviMAIL system (because it looks rather complicated, for instance) and instead prefer to use another Joomla newsletter extension, is there a way to have a contact opt in or out of a list in that Joomla newsletter system when they register for an event (an in effect are thus creating a civicontact and Joomla user account)?

COMMENTS ON THE ABOVE:
1) I understand this is a built in function.

2) I was not able to figure this one out. I am guessing it is a matter of their being a field on the registration form which allows the person to opt in to the group I have set up for a particular mail list. I have tried adding the Contacts >> Group(s) field to the "Event Registration" Profile I set up. This then forces me to add an email field (which means they are asked for their email twice) and it provides no further option for picking a group I want them to opt in or out of, nor does it display anything on the registration form, except whatever I have entered into the Help field.

3) This function exists and works

4) I have not been able to determine this one yet. More testing required. As far as I can tell there is no connection between whether the person is logged into Joomla or not. They are asked for their contact details no matter what. Is that correct?

4.1) Same as 4. above

5) I am not sure about this. I found some information in the forums about various ways people have managed to pull this off. It seemed, however, to boil down to "workarounds" due to a lack of development within the Joomla community for calendar integration ith CiviEVENT. Seems Drupal is currently better in this regard.

6) I get the impression this is not a built in feature.

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Those are the main points I can think of just now that I wanted to figure out and what I have (or have not) discovered so far.
I'd greatly appreciate feedback or pointers on the above.

With much thanks,

Jonathan