Pubblicato
2011-03-15 09:18
Rooty Hollow is excited to announce the release of our Constant Contact Integration module for CiviCRM. If you are not able or willing to deal with sending bulk e-mails form your host this module is for you.
A year ago or so we quietly published a module on drupal.org (sorry Drupal only at this point) to allow for synchronization between contacts in CiviCRM and Constant Contact. Thanks to funding from Constant Contact we recently were able to work out the kinks in the module and have posted it to a release candidate just this week. The original work on the module was developed by Fidelity Investments' LEAP Program in partnership with the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers thanks to an opportunity made possible by Common Impact.
The core fucntionlity of this module is:
- Upload contacts from a CiviCRM installation to Constant Contact for groups that are synced (done on automatically during Drupal cron run)
- Synchronizes CiviCRM groups and Constant Contact lists as contacts are added to a from a group (or groups are added/deleted)
- Update CiviCRM's records as "do not mail" when a contact updates themselves via a Constant Contact E-mail
The module is quite simple to use. All you have to do is install it as you would any Drupal module (upload the module to the sites/all/modules folder and enable it at /admin/build/modules etc...). You will also need to download Constant Contact's php library from SourceForge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctctphplib. Next you need to tell CiviCRM that you want a particular group in CiviCRM to be synched to Constant Contact. Once you install the module all you have to do is edit the groups you want to sync and choose "yes" for Synchronize with Constant Contact.
We have not had a wide testing base (a couple 5K - 15K record databases at this point), so I would suggest setting up a test account to sync to before you go live with this module. Please add feedback to the module issue queue on drupal.org, as we will be more likely to see them there.
The module comes packaged with an installer that adds/removes custom fields to track what groups are being synched, so you shouldn't have to do any major configuration.
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Comments
This looks awesome. I will keep my eye on it.
Does it do well handling duplicates (ie if emails already exist in Constant Contact)? When you say "Upload contacts from CiviCRM to Constant Contact" is that a live sync -- ie if a user changes an email address does that update go to CC?
Thanks a ton!
sorry yes updates to e-mail make it up to Constant Contact. At the time of development Constant Contact's Address APi wasn't functional so at this point it's on name and e-mail that get updated when you edit them in CiviCRM
why anyone would want to use ConstantContact and pay 60 bucks a month just for the privilege of sending emails. Especially in the nonprofit world, where so many other services (VerticalResponse, MailChimp, and our own beloved CiviMail) do the same thing for free.
But well done for writing this module anyway.
Yeah I'm also a little unclear on your description. Is this two-way sync?
I have worked with the rc versions and the the first release version and have great hope for this module. I have logged some issues on the drupal site. One is minor (relating to a left over custom data field on uninstall). Two issues are showstoppers for me (a) while it appears that it does a great job of syncing groups (adding and deleting those in CC based on the Sync radio button on the group form), the group contacts were not synced for my installation and (b) I got an error trying to add a CiviCRM contact to a group after the install of the module. I wish I had enough smarts to help debug these issues. Alas, I don't. I will continue to track this module and test next versions.
Drupal 6.20
CiviCRM 3.3.5
Superfish menus
Nitobe theme (no js)
The defect fix on line 133 described in the issues list on Drupal gets past one showstopper from my site. However, after this is applied, the module does not import CiviCRM contacts into the groups created in Constant Contact and I see cron errors (time limit exceeded) when the module is enabled.
Is there a version for WordPress?