Sarah Online

The last week has been very busy as I participated in the first ever CiviCRM conference, officially called the first International CiviCon, located in San Francisco, followed by a drive to the Lake Tahoe area to participate in the CiviCRM book sprint.

At the CiviCon I was a speaker in my first ignite-style presentation. I presented a case study on how I have implemented and customized CiviCRM for use in a synagogue. An ignite presentation means that there are a bunch of presenters, each of whom have 5 -10 minutes, can share 20 slides, and the slides are automated to advance every 15 seconds.  I got good feedback from the audience later on, even though my timing of voice-to-slide was a bit off. You can judge the video for yourself . Here are my slides from the presentation. The rest of the Ignite videos can be viewed at: All CiviCon Ignite videos

A book sprint is a collaborative process with a bunch of people locked in a house for several days with the outcome being a book.  We used the fantastic free open source tools at Floss Manuals  ( http://www.flossmanuals.net ) and were mentored and guided in the process by Adam Hyde, the founder of Floss Manuals.  View or edit the book online or order a hard-copy Its printed on demand, so you always have the latest.

I really learned a lot about CiviCRM and its community from the process of working on the book and meeting with the core team and other hard-core fans and members of the community. What is amazing is how many different ways people can use it. I never would have guessed that it is being used to track the members of the Grammys or to collect information door-to-door with a custom iPhone app.

Initially during the book sprint, I was getting off-track with ideas to improve CiviCRM. Eventually, I wrote everything down instead of disrupting the other sprinters.  Here are the ideas in no particular order:

• Template is a loaded word:  CMS templates OR .tpl files OR templates for email messages/PDF letters OR event templates. If writing on the CiviCRM forums/wiki/book/blogs/jira/etc always be clear about which template you mean.
• Relationship is a loaded term: general purpose term OR relationship between nested groups/tags/menus OR CiviCRM relationship between contacts
• What is a Dashboard: the Home dashboard has configurable dashlets, none of the other dashboards have this.
• In book sandbox, which is the dev version of 3.2: The left side button “New” does not give any hint that there are choices under it. ( such as a down arrow or a select list style. Do not use … )
• In the “Advanced Search” screen, give each custom field group its own grey bar. ( Instead of nesting under the “Custom Fields” bar ).
• Be able to mark or tag  JIRA issues if they impact user documentation/experience. Then the people who like documenting things can create a filter of the JIRA to see what they should focus on.
• When is a member a contact? When is a participant a contact?   What is confusing is the search action list for “Find Members” is inconsistent. Displays some contact-type actions ( such as send email ) , but not others, like generate PDF letter.
• Combine contact search actions “Create PDF Letter” and “Generate Mailing Labels” into a single action.
• Store address label “addressee” info seperate from the postal address. ( For different address labels, I may choose a different top line for the same person/household. Such as Mr. John Doe v.s. The Doe family. )
• CiviEvent and CiviContribution Idea: Allow anyone to “tell a friend” from the event/contribution description page. Use recaptcha to prevent spambot abuse.
• Usability idea: When in a contact record, click on the event tab then click the “register for event” button.  The select list for chooosing an event has a link below it to control the amount of information in the list.  This seems like a nice way to control potentially unwieldly list.
• Usability: Clarify menu items “Delete Participants” and “Delete Members” vs “Delete Contacts”  . Perhaps “Remove Memberships” “Remove Participation” would be better labels.