CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I have an interesting situation that may not be be a bug, but perhaps a workflow problem or a configuration issue.  I would appreciate any help with it.

Steps to reproduce.

1. A Contact exists with custom data stored in a Profile
2. This profile is displayed on the Membership "Join" form
3. A Contact signs up as a member, pays dues, and fills out the custom data in the Profile
4. This Contact also has a Drupal account created

So far so good, right?

Until a year later it is time to renew their membership.  The Contact comes to the website, but doesn't login, even though they have an account.  They click the link to Membership "Join" Form.  You may be thinking at this point "well they should log in!" but unfortunately end users don't think this way in the real world sometimes...

I realize one of the GREAT things about CiviCRM is that the Membership form doubles as both a "new member" form as well as a "renewing member" form depending on if the person is logged in and/or already a member.  That's great, but it does produce a rather disadvantageous workflow problem.

See if the current member goes to the Membership form to renew, and enters the email address on account (the same email they joined with last year) they can complete the Membership registration form.

1. The membership is processed,  without an "are you already a member" check and a forced login.   I can't tell if it's processed as a renewal of an already existing member or a new member, but the person can submit the form without being logged in even though they are a member already.

2. If the contact doesn't fill out all the custom data a second time because it is both
   a) optional
   b) the contact assumes the data already exists in the database and they don't have to enter it again

   Then the custom data is erased.

So I'm wondering how we can run a check for "is this email already a member?" and force a login so the data can be pre-populated and the membership can be processed appropriately and custom data not erased.

Am I missing some kind of configuration item?  What can be done to improve this workflow, because in our "real world" situation we are having contacts trying to renew their memberships and instead erasing their data.

THANKS!

Eileen,

While I do appreciate a response, perhaps you should have read my post a bit more thoroughly, as your question is answered in the post.

Yes I am using a profile. 

Furthermore, I don't understand how I could "force a logon" but perhaps that is what I am asking. 

However I am using the same Membership form both for NEW members and for RENEWING members, so forcing a login is not appropriate for a new member who doesn't have a logon at all.

Any other thoughts?  Anyone else?

There are two options in Advanced Profile Settings that seem relevant and they are:

Drupal user account registration option?
Update contact on a duplicate match?

Both these seems like might help, but upon reading the blue (?) help links it appears these settings have no effect on a Membership form at all.  Read below, there is no mention of Membership forms...

If you are using this profile as a contact signup and editing form, OR in an online contribution page, OR in an event registration page - this option controls what happens if the data matches an existing contact record. If this option is enabled, the matching contact record is updated. Otherwise the user will get a "duplicate record" warning, and their input will not be saved. Contact matching is based on your configured "Strict" rule for matching duplicate contacts.

I tested it and it is true that checking either of the above options has no effect on Membership form.  A member trying to renew who does not login is still capable of renewing their membership AND erasing all their Profile data.

So I would be happy to demonstrate this use-case to the team and hope that this issue can be corrected.  Who should I speak to in the team to get this fixed up?
 

So this is a long standing issue with CiviCRM that on a successful duplicate match, new data overrides existing data. This happens in profiles (and hence on membership, contribution etc)

The fix for this is non-trivial and is currently not on our 2.3 roadmap. if this is an important issue for you/your org please consider either sponsoring the fix and/or hiring the developer. If i had to guess this is a 50-100 hour fix. I'm not sure what the right thing to do is even

lobo

@Lobo - thanks for the situation report.  Unfortunately I don't think my client is in the position to hire a developer for anywhere near 50+ hours so we'll have to find a workaround.

@Dave Greenberg - I understand that this "login required" advanced setting SHOULD be helpful, but in my experience it does nothing for my membership form.  Attached you will see my settings in the .png images.  You can view the form here:
https://www.nscss.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1  (scroll down to view the profile "Individual Data"

Am I doing something wrong?  Why is there no login prompt as you describe on my form?

Did anyone think that the approach here could be generally useful?

http://drupal.org/node/434080

If makes sense to me that something like that IF the person is not logged in AND the contribute form is not available to anonymous users then forwarding them to a login / register page (and to the contribute page afterwards) would help in a lot of situations. But it doesn't make sense to publish an event page (for example) with a link to 'register' for which you get permission denied instead of a chance to create an account.

If you didn't want this behaviour you could continue to make the form available to anonymous users.

Yes, in Stoob's case that is what he is doing - I think for event registrations (maybe less so contributions & membership but not sure) if setting the level to authorized user meant the person got prompted to create an account or login first many organizations would then choose to set the level to be authorized user rather than anonymous.

@Dave Greenberg - I understand that this "login required" advanced setting SHOULD be helpful, but in my experience it does nothing for my membership form.  Attached you will see my settings in the .png images.  You can view the form here:
https://www.nscss.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1  (scroll down to view the profile "Individual Data"

Am I doing something wrong?  Why is there no login prompt as you describe on my form?

Check these requirements (quoted from the pop-up help on that field):
"This feature requires the 'Email Verification' option to be checked (Drupal User Settings). In addition, you must include a Primary Email Address field in the profile. "