In doing some research for a potential project, I was exploring what kinds of eAdvocacy options were available to plug in to CiviCRM. Many of the big commercial eAdvocacy tools have big commercial price tags to go with them (and don't integrate directly with CiviCRM besides).
In an older thread on CiviCRM, mbriney describes the problem:
"The problem is not in building a solution... it's maintaining it. Most of the congressional offices utilize a web form as the only method of sending email. These forms often change, are replaced with new code, new systems, the member redesigns their site, someone new comes in, there are many reasons why this changes. What the big advocacy firms do is monitor these sites for those changes and...
- 4 comments
Recently on CiviCRM irc and forum few people asked about adding client side validation for phone field. By default CiviCRM packages validate plugin, so this can be easily implemented with minor customization. Below is the example of validating US phone number on new contact form.
Important: This release includes critical fixes to resolve conflict between civicrm and jquery update drupal module. If you haven't upgraded to a 3.4 / 4.0 series release yet, you may want to review the 3.4/4.0 highlights post
This point release has quite a few bug fixes as listed here. Some of recently added features have been included in the last release blog post
New and improved CiviCRM API...
I recently completed a conversion of about 8 years of history from a 5 year old Blackbaud Kintera site to a Drupal CiviCRM solution. Confused yet? Don't worry, all we be revealed in time. As a way of giving back, I am planning to share my experiences good and bad, what worked, what did not, what I learned and what I will and won't do next time.
Let's start with a little background. I have been the technology consultant for Women in Development, New York (www.widny.org) for the past 8+ years now. I started out as a member, graduated to a board member and in the end became their consultant. I have been with this organization since before they had a formal database to manage their members and before they had their first website. Back then, I used my own mail servers to send out their mass emails, my how the times have changed. In addition, to selecting and managing their original database solution, maintaining their first website and...
Read moreCiviCRM 3.4.x and 4.0.x introduced API v3, a more consistent set of interfaces for integrating with CiviCRM using PHP, Smarty, Javascript, and REST. Building on this consistent core API, recent CiviCRM updates have introduced even more ways to manipulate your data -- such as chaining and CSV batch importing.
Thus, functions implemented according to the API v3 conventions can be invoked several different ways. If you would like to leverage this infrastructure for use with a new or customized API call, then download the latest release. With 3.4.6/4.0.6, external developers can expose API functions for new entities, new actions, and even generic actions.
This would, for instance, allow you to create an API that returns the top donations of a person, grouped by contribution...
Read moreAs a freelancer, here are a few notes and an overview on how I solved a client's contacts consolidation when the data came from external sources:
My Use Case
- Client had ongoing events and conferences over several years which meant there were databases and mailing lists all over the place (many of which had crossover).
- I set up ongoing JSON exports of the contact data from the external sites, which could be queried by date range to get the latest changes.
- I had a contact consolidation script on the CiviCRM end, that took these JSON exports, and loaded them into Civ via the API.
- About 5 different source sites created about 1200 contacts
A Few Challenges
- The documentation can be quite scattered and it was difficult sometimes to find the right versions. I really pity whoever has to deal with this challenge though!
- It took me much longer than it should have to learn how to activate the API...
The team is excited to announce the release of 3.4.6 and 4.0.6. This point release includes several exciting new "Make-it-Happen" features, along with 170+ bug fixes and minor improvements.. The new features include:
If you are using Drupal 6, you have a vested interest in extended Drupal 6 support for CiviCRM 3.4 until spring 2012. If you are staying with Drupal 6 because of budgetary reasons or because Drupal 7 doesn't yet support all the modules you need for your site, this is vital for you. You will make sure your 3.4 CiviCRM/Drupal 6 setup remains healthy and safe.
Please donate here, if you haven't already.
A couple of issues have begun to sting us repeatedly and I see others raising same issue.
#1
Getting a Default Header/Footer used in the SysTplMsgs
SysTplMsgs (System Template Messages) are found here /civicrm/admin/messageTemplates?reset=1)
To avoid repeated copying of the desired header/footer in to the upto 22 SysTplMsg, one option would be to add a checkbox to the CiviMail Footer/Headers (/civicrm/admin/component?reset=1)
So the current Default in CiviMail Header/Footers would become Default CiviMail, and a new option/column would show for Default SysTplMsg.
This would then cause the requisite code to be included here in the SysTplMsgs
