Have you ever needed to send an email from CiviCRM that includes a list of upcoming events? Then you know how much fun the copy/paste effort this entails, especially if you want to use a checksum in the links to register. Plus you know you get to repeat the whole exciting process for the next newsletter the following week or month. Or if you have someone else you need to train on this task, try explaining to a non-technical person how to hand-edit the URL query string to include the checksum paramaters. (is the contact ID query string param name "cid=x" or "id=x", well that depends....) And even if you do not deal with events, you can have the same fun teaching someone else to properly use checksums when you need to include a hyperlink to a contribution page or a stand-alone profile.
If you want a much easier process for listing upcoming events with links to register, including links to contribution pages and stand-alone profiles, then try out the new extension called "Fancy Tokens" https://civicrm.org/extensions/fancy-tokens. That page also includes more details about how to use the new tokens. I have tested this with versions 4.3 and 4.4. Since this is a native CiviCRM extension, it works with WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.
Never used checksums before? Then you are missing out on a great (but previously hard to use) feature of CiviCRM. Checksums give each recipient a unique URL that will be preloaded with the recipient's contact data (such as email, first name, last name or whatever data you are collecting.) The use of checksums saves time for the recipient when filling in your contribution pages, event registrations, and stand-alone profiles. It may also reduce the chance of duplicate contacts in your database due to poor data entry habits of your recipients.
Technical Note: I had to include the .tpl file "/CRM/Mailing/Form/InsertTokens.tpl" within this extension because the core version of this file has a hard-coded width for the token dialog window that is too narrow to display longer token names. If this file can be eliminated, then this extension would work with more versions of CiviCRM.
-Sarah Gladstone
Comments
Thank you for taking the time to create this - really really useful.
Hi Sarah,
It would be awesome to have a token for a single event (like you have for contrib pages). As it's mostly going to be used with message templates, wondering if the user can directly edit the token to put the event id at the right place?
Is this there already, or would it be complex to add?
X+
That is a good idea. I will plan on adding it. What I am thinking is that I would list individual tokens for the next 3 events in the "Insert Token" dialog window, but then the user can edit the token in the message to reflect the preferred event id. (What I want to avoid is having a rediculously long list of possible tokens in the "Insert Token" dialog window.)
Hi. I have installed the extension. I tried using it on two different civiCRM installations. Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I enter a token for "events in the next 3 months" and the resulting email is empty- no links. I DO have online events in the next 3 months.
Is there a manual available somewhere? Thanks!