Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By : Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy
Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By: Hommel, Murray, P Shaughnessy

Overview of this book

CiviCRM provides a powerful toolbox of resources to help organizations manage relationships with constituents. It is free, open source, web-based, and geared specifically to meet the constituent relationship management needs of the not-for-profit sector. Beginning with broader questions about how your organization is structured, which existing workflows are critical to your operations, and the overarching purpose of a centralized CRM, the book proceeds step by step through configuring CiviCRM, understanding the choices when setting up the system, importing data, and exploring the breadth of tools available throughout the system. You will see how to best use this software to handle event registrations, accept and track contributions, manage paid and free memberships and subscriptions, segment contacts, send bulk e-mails with open and click-through tracking, manage outreach campaigns, and set up case management workflows that match your organization’s roles and rules. With specific emphasis on helping implementers ask the right questions, consider key principals when setting up the system, and understand usage through case studies and examples, the book comprehensively reviews the functionality of CiviCRM and the opportunities it provides. With this book, you can help your organization better achieve its mission as a charity, industry association, professional society, political advocacy group, community group, government agency, or other similar organization and position yourself to become a power user who efficiently and effectively navigates the system.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Tracking, managing, and resolving cases


At this point, you're ready to begin working with cases. This will involve creating case records, working within them toward resolution, and searching/reporting on them.

Creating and managing case records

When you first open a new case, CiviCRM collects information, including the type of case you are creating, the status, the subject, and various details that will be stored in the open case activity. Once you've created the case, you will enter the Manage Case screen, where you will spend most of your case-management time:

The screen is roughly divided into five sections:

  • Summary

  • Roles

  • Other Relationships

  • Case Tags (optional; not present in the preceding screenshot)

  • Activities

The Summary section includes the case client, subject, type, status, open date, and reference ID. Below this section, you have tools to create a new activity, add a timeline to the case, run an activity audit report, generate a print-friendly summary of the case, merge the case with another...