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

Recording external e-mails


While our attention thus far has been primarily concerned with outgoing communication to your constituents, that is only one-half of the equation. You also receive communication from your constituents and will want to think through how to effectively capture that information for future reference in your CRM. In earlier sections, we discussed using activity records to store information about phone calls received, meetings that took place, or to manually store e-mails that you sent from an external e-mail application.

CiviCRM facilitates the process of recording externally-originating e-mails through an automated, scheduled job. The script will post the e-mail as an activity to every contact in the From and To lines. This lets your staff use their preferred e-mail client while having CiviCRM accumulate a relatively complete record of interactions with constituents.

Here is how to set up the autofiling e-mail feature:

  1. Navigate to Administer | CiviMail | Mail Accounts...