Blogues

Many CiviCRM customizations have been packaged and distributed as Drupal modules. This can be desirable when a customization delves into both the CMS and CRM functionality, but -- when a customization focuses only on CiviCRM -- Drupal modules are a drag: they need to be patched for CMS upgrades (D6/D7) as well as CRM upgrades (Civi 2.x/Civi 3.x), and they don't work with CiviCRM's other CMS's (Joomla and WordPress). This article introduces a proof-of-concept solution.

Last week I wrote a blog about technical debt (comparing it to keeping a kitchen in order). I got a lot of feedback - most of it constructive. I'm going to resist belabouring the whole metaphor & limit this blog to a quick summary of some of the discussion that came out of it.

My name is Mark, I run a small consulting Firm in Vancouver Canada. I have been working with CiviCRM since 2009 and have implemented customized solutions with it for 7+ clients. I have several clients who use CiviCRM and CiviContribute and at the end of each year there is always a moment where they mention their wish list to be able to generate a CRA [Canada Revenue Agency] compliant tax receipt for each of their Contributors.

Do you like to whinge about CiviCRM code? Have you sat through others doing having a rant? I've certainly done both. Being in the drupal world people often like to compare CiviCRM code with drupal & CiviCRM usually comes up a bit short. I think that's like comparing my kitchen with Bill Gate's kitchen. There are a few good reasons why my kitchen is not as nice as his.

A wide variety of organizations make use of CiviCRM, especially in the areas managing contact/donor data, contact communication and receiving online donations. Performing arts organizations also have those needs, as well as some unique requirements around events (performances) and tickets. Over a series of upcoming blog posts, I hope to outline how our organization has used and adapted CiviCRM to meet our needs for those use cases.

A member sends several separate payments to cover outstanding dues on a single purchase, like an expensive membership or a table at an event. How are you going to record this?

A conference participant selects “Pay Later” on several different event registrations, and later wants to pay them all in a single credit card transaction.  How are you going to support this?

Thanks to successful Make It Happen on consolidated cron jobs, we can set just one cron job per site.

As described in the docs, you can set this cron job using either an "URL" method or a "CLI" method.

Although the API changes in 4.1 are not as obvious as took place in 3.4/4.0 there have been quite a few changes under the hood. This is a fairly detailed explanation of what's going on inside the API wrapper.

<Cross posted from Advomatic.com The code blocks will be easier to read there.>

Sometimes after launching a new site our clients find that there are fields and features in CiviCRM that they don't use.  We are working with a client that wants to remove all fields and features that aren't useful in order to simplify their user interface and make it easier to use.  This includes things like SMS features, email signatures, and demographics.  There are also several fields that they wanted renamed to be more consistent with the legacy system that they migrated from.  To fulfill this requirement I used a combination of template overrides, and CiviCRM's translation system.  

First up I should point out that if you do want to go down this path you need to make clear to the client that this will take a fair amount of effort up front (hopefully less for you now that you are reading this recipe).  Additionally, if/when you upgrade CiviCRM these customizations will need to be reviewed at the very least, and possibly even re-done to some extent.  So while this customization will make things more usable for CiviCRM administrators, it will add cost to both the initial site build, and to ongoing maintenance.  

This feature has been sponsored by the New York State Senate. The issue spec is on the issue tracker.

I am very glad to have opportunity to work on this feature and sharing my thoughts and experience for same :) . This feature is added in trunk and scheduled for version 4.2 release