Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By : Erik Hommel, Joseph Murray, Brian P Shaughnessy
Book Image

Using CiviCRM - Second Edition

By: Erik Hommel, Joseph Murray, Brian 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 (20 chapters)
Using CiviCRM - Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Toolsets and timing


Reports are accessed from the main navigation menu, and by default are organized into submenus by the type of data they are working with. Within the reporting tool, we have two important concepts to understand: report templates and report instances:

  • Report templates define the features of a report. This includes what fields are available to the report, options for grouping and filtering, display choices (tabular, bar/pie chart), and any other options available.

  • Report instances are a saved set of criteria and options you have selected for a specific template. For example, you may want to view a constituent summary report, displaying all contacts in Group A. At a later time, you may create a second instance of the constituent summary report displaying all contacts in Group A and Group B. Report instances are often just referred to as reports.

What's important to understand from these terms is that a single template may be used to create multiple report instances. Many times...