Agiliway continues actively working on CiviMobile - a mobile app that allows leveraging all the benefits of CiviCRM anywhere and anytime. The major change introduced in the second release was the ability to update CiviCRM data via mobile app. Current third release of CiviMobile has a set of new important changes complementing the mobile application with additional value.
What Is New
The new features that users are about to discover in the latest version of CiviMobile are:
1. Memberships. Using the CiviMobile app, you may check the status of your membership and renew it if necessary. The membership structure, conditions and dues will depend on personalized membership settings of your organization. You may also check the membership status of other contacts assuming you have enough privileges. Another important feature is the possibility to renew your membership from mobile device which may be very useful for external members, supporters, or users of your organization.
2. Contributions. Now CiviMobile allows tracking all contact payments and donations on a mobile device. On the contribution screen, you can see aggregated totals: the number of transactions and total and average sums you have paid this year and since your very first contribution. This quick data is followed by the history of your payments detailing the sum, the type of the payment, as well as the date, time and status of transaction.
3. Relationships. CiviCRM relationships are now available in CiviMobile. You can track relationships relating to other contacts as well as view case relationships and/or those relationships that are no longer active. In addition, you can create a new relationship choosing one of the types set in your CiviCRM system and selecting relevant contacts or, on the contrary, disable or delete some non-relevant relationships.
4. Notes. Using this feature, users are able to leave notes concerning particular contacts. Notes may be visible or hidden from all other users.
The mentioned functionality may be easily accessed from the profile screen, which design has been altered accordingly.
5. Other important updates include a Settings screen that allows customizing CiviMobile’s work and view to users’ preferences. As for now, users can use it to set a start screen for the app (for example, Calendar, Cases or Events) and the language of an app. Now, users can choose one of the four languages including English, German, French and the newly added Italian language. Still, we are also setting up an environment for other developers to contribute to the project by translating the application to other languages, so we expect the choice to increase soon.
In addition, we have:
- Improved navigation on some screens and simplified the deployment of the extension on CMSs.
- Fixed few permission related bugs
- Created step-by-step video instructions that will easily lead you through the process of installing CiviMobileAPI extension on Drupal, WordPress and Joomla.
What CiviMobile Allows Now
With all the new updates, CiviMobile has turned into a comprehensive yet easily accessible tool that can be used not only when working in the field, but for a day-to-day work with your CiviCRM system too. In particular, let us remind you that beside the new features described above CiviMobile already supports many core CiviCRM functionality including:
- Contacts. The mobile application allows to access, add and edit the detailed contact information. Specifically, in one’s profile, you may find the general contact information, phone numbers, emails, social media profiles and physical addresses, relationships, membership, contributions, and notes. You may easily find the right contact, as the app gives suggestions on the names you have started to type or pulls up the list of recent and popular contact searches. What remains to you is to choose the best way to reach out. With the mobile phone application, this may be as simple as dialing the person up or attaching the photo you have just taken to a contact.
- Calendar. The graphical calendar of CiviMobile is close in style and functionality to the graphical CiviCalendar extension Agiliway has developed for CiviCRM users. The calendar consolidates all the planned cases, activities and events turning them into an actionable working plan for a day. The use of colors helps users to easily distinguish between various types of plans. Users can access the details on their plans directly from the calendar. Together with the option to edit and update cases, activities and events, this feature makes time management very convenient. For example, having a quick look on the plans, you can access those you will not actually complete that day and cancel, reschedule or mark them as completed right away.
- Cases. Using the CiviMobile application, you can view a case and its details. Users can use a comprehensive filter to find the case or cases they are interested in. For example, you can filter all the cases by titles, types and dates. If the case has been resolved, you can update its status using the mobile app too. Another feature of CiviMobile Cases is the ability to assign activities to CiviCRM contacts on the go.
- Activities. The CiviCRM mobile application allows to access and edit an activity (comprehensive filters for activities will help you easily find the one you are interested in) or create a new one anywhere and anytime. Assigning activities to yourself or other users, which is also possible using CiviMobile, is a way more helpful than making notes or reminding other people about what they have to do. First, relevant contacts are notified of the activities assigned to them and can see these in their calendars. Second, you can create activity for multiple users on the go, thus wasting no time for individual messages or calls.
- Events. Using our CiviCRM mobile application, you can view all events hosted or recommended by your organization and register to it right away. Users are free to view their past and future events and access their details. A perceived advantage of a mobile use over a desktop is the ability to switch to navigation in just one click when looking for the location of the event. With events, you can also enjoy another common in the modern world feature – sharing an event to your friends and contacts outside of the CiviCRM system in an email, a private message or social media.
The CiviMobile application caches the data from a CRM system in a mobile memory allowing users to work with their systems even in an offline mode. Any changes made using the CiviMobile app are synchronized with the CiviCRM database.
As it has been mentioned, CiviMobile leverages the most useful features of the phone and allows to build a route from your current location to the one you are heading to. For example, you may use navigation to get to an event or an address you have found in a CiviCRM profile of an organisation or a household.
Overall, we are absolutely excited about all the features we have managed to realize for a mobile CRM system and encourage you to set up the newest version of the CiviMobileAPI extension for your CiviCRM system. If you still haven’t used CiviMobile so far, give it a try simply downloading the app form a Google Market or an Apple Store and using demo site credentials. Find out more about how to start with CiviMobile here.
