GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS

GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Peter McAndrew

Implementor, Developer

Third Sector Design

http://www.thirdsectordesign.org

Being part of the CiviCRM community is really something to shout about! Not only is CiviCRM an amazing software package, its designed for organisations that make a difference in the world. We help non-profits across the UK gain control of their data through the power of CiviCRM.

It is without a doubt the best piece of software I've ever worked with, and I'm constantly discovering cool new features. More recently I've been working on CiviMobile as part of a project for my course at University. I'm really looking forward to seeing this being used by organisations across the globe.
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Tim Otten

DEVELOPER AND IMPLEMENTER

CiviCRM

http://civicrm.org
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Paul Keogan

Implementor

BackOfficeThinking

http://www.backofficethinking.com

CiviCRM allows us to bring all benefits and capabilities of a large commercial CRM and
donor management system to medium and large non-profits at a fraction of the cost. CiviCRM also allows smaller non-profits to benefit from an integrated solution for donor management, events, bulk email, etc. substantially increasing their effectiveness as compared to managing a variety of nonintegrated software and spreadsheets. Thanks to a strong CiviCRM community, CiviCRM’s functionality continues to advance and CiviCRM’s market continues to grow rapidly.
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Brylie Oxley

End-user and Developer

Woolman Sierra Friends Center

http://woolman.org

Working with CiviCRM enriches our commonwealth. Any investment in CiviCRM is
shared by the community as a whole. Community organizations naturally complement the spirit of Free/Libre Software.
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Merlise Clyde

End-user, administrator

International Society of Bayesian Analysis

http://bayesian.org

ISBA is an international non-profit society with members from all over the world. We have sections that represent different scientific areas and chapters that represent different regions of the world. Civi Member powers our membership system! We use CiviEvent for Conference and Workship registration, and utilize CiviPetition for creating new sections to our society through member petitions. We are epxloring how CiviGrants can be used to track our travel awards and look forward to features for integrating accounting and finance. As a growing non-profit CiviCRM plays a major role in managing our membership system!
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Jamie McClelland

DEVELOPER AND IMPLEMENTER

PROGRESSIVE TECHNOLOGY PROJECT

http://progressivetech.org
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David Greenberg

Core Team Member

CiviCRM

http://civicrm.org

I find the engagement with our community of users to be intellectually stimulating
and rewarding. Seeing folks with expertise in a particular area step up and contribute their time and ideas to help improve the product is quite exciting. Every time I hear about a new interesting organization starting to use CiviCRM, I get a renewed sense of excitement about our work. The range of civic sector organizations currently using the software is quite amazing to me - from large international advocacy organizations to local performing arts troupes. I also really enjoy interacting with our international community - building friendships and getting to share culture (food, music, humor ....) with colleagues on every continent.
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Kurund Jalmi

Developer, Implementor

Web Access India Pvt. Ltd.

http://webaccessglobal.com

I have been part of CiviCRM project from the beginning and feels great to see how it has grown over the years.
I am glad to be associated with such a wonderful open source project and an awesome community around it.
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Leena Nangia

Consultant

nfpservices

http://www.nfpservices.co.uk/

We use CiviCRM for our own business functions and participate in the development of CiviCRM and contribute enhanced functionality to the community.
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Robyn Perry

End-user, Administrator, Trainer

Progressive Technology Project

http://progressivetech.org

CiviCRM is helping us serve member-based community organizing groups across the
U.S. to keep better track of their events, fundraising, and membership data. It's helping our community to aim higher in terms of what kind of questions they should be asking and what kind of data they should be collecting. We chose CiviCRM because it's the best all-around tool to do what our groups need, AND because it's open source.
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Amy Bucaida

Administrator

Missouri Credit Union Association

http://www.mcua.org

We are a full CiviCRM install with Drupal.
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Kellie Brownell

End-user

EFF

https://www.eff.org

The CiviCRM community has been a tremendous resource for new ideas and helping us solve problems. We are excited to contribute customizations EFF makes back to core and support new features such as batch entry for offline donations or multiple payment processors on one donation form.

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Home

Documentation

This page gives an overview of CiviCRM's documentation. It is a starting point for people that want to know where to find documentation and how to improve documentation.

For more details on what is happening right now with documentation efforts, and for detailed information on how to get involved, read the documentation pages on the wiki.

The books and the wiki

The majority of CiviCRM's documentation can be found in either the books or the wiki. So what is the difference between the two?

Our vision for documentation is...

  • The books provide a definitive and stable guide to CiviCRM, both for end users and developers. They are the place to go for authoritative answers to CiviCRM questions. A significant amount of effort goes in to making the books comprehensive and accurate. Because of this, they may not contain up to the minute information on new features, etc.
  • The documentation wiki (CRMDOC) is the place to go to find documentation on new stuff and features that aren't stable yet. It is also the place to put content that is constantly changing (e.g. installation instructions) and things that don't fit nicely into a book (for example large comparison tables).  There is also another wiki (CRM) which serves as CiviCRM's 'notebook'. It has lots of information on past and present CiviCRM projects and includes things like requirements and specifications documents, road maps, and so on.

A lot of documentation starts of its life in the Wiki and then moves to the books as it becomes more stable.

Books

The books are available at: http://book.civicrm.org. There are currently two books:

The books are versioned. You can see versioning information in the top left hand corner and you can browse older versions in the archive for each book, e.g. http://book.civicrm.org/user/archive.

The wikis

The wikis are available at: http://book.civicrm.org. There are currently two wikis:

Improving documentation

Anyone can edit the book and the wiki! Reviewing and improving documentation is a great way for non technical people to contribute to CiviCRM and is also a great way to improve your understanding of CiviCRM.

Editing the wiki

Editing the Wiki is simple and your edits will be visible immediatley. Sign up for an account here http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/signup.action and start editing.

Writing the books

To ensure the quality of the books, we have a slightly more involved publishing workflow (a bit like a software release) in which any edits that people make are not immediately visible in the published version. Instead all contributions are reviewed before being released.  This helps is ensure high quality docuementation, which is especially important for new and inexperienced users.

The ‘source code’ of our books is here: http://booki.flossmanuals.net/civicrm/_edit/. If you want to edit a book, you can sign up for an account here http://booki.flossmanuals.net/accounts/signin/ and start editing.

Until now, we have done a lot of our book writing at book sprints. These are typically 3-6 day events where we get together in person to work on a major improvements to the book. At the the end of the sprint, we review our work and hit the publish button. We’ve had at least one book sprint a year since 2009 and try and tie in sprints with versions of the software.

Aside from booksprints, we don’t currently have a formalised process for making new releases of the books. If you have capacity to help in the release process, let us know.

If you are planning on making significant improvements or additions to our documentation (either remotely or by organising a book/documentation sprint) let us know about your ideas.

The documentation team are a very friendly bunch and are always on the look out for more contributors. We have a book and documentation forum http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/board,11.0.html and a low volume discuss list http://lists.civicrm.org/lists/info/civicrm-book which are great places to introduce yourself and get more involved. Also check http://civicrm.org/category/civicrm-blog-categories/documentation for blog posts on how we are improving documentation.

 

For more detailed information on what is happening right now with documentation efforts, and how to get involved, read the documentation pages on the wiki.

Other places to get help

Aside from the wiki and the books, there are plently of other places you can go to for help, including