Event Details

Join Dave Greenberg of the CiviCRM Team for the opportunity to ask YOUR questions on CiviCRM.

Do you use CiviCRM in your organization? Are you responsible for configuring and/or maintaining CiviCRM for your organization? This is your chance to ask a CiviCRM developer your burning questions about the ins and outs of CiviCRM and how to use it more effectively for your organization.

NTEN Members will have an exclusive opportunity to ask questions and hear them answered. Check out the NTEN blog closer to the event for a chance to queue your questions before the event.

> Get the Recording - FREE for NTEN Members!

CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, open source, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

CiviCRM is created by an open source community coordinated by CiviCRM LLC, and the 501c3 non-profit Social Source Foundation.

NTEN wants to continue to help connect you with resources to make your use of CiviCRM the most productive. Dave Greenberg and another CiviCRM Team Member will be available to answer your questions in this members-only phone call and live chat.

Dave has 25 years of experience in the application software, electronic commerce and banking industries. Prior to joining Social Source Foundation, Mr. Greenberg was a senior consultant to Groundspring.org where he lead the product design effort for their online donation and email broadcast services, as well as the customerbilling systems.

How's It Work?

This will be an online chat event where you will listen on the phone and simultaneously sign into a live chat. This event is only available to NTEN members, so if you aren't - become a member today!

Event Materials

Below you'll find a transcript of the chat questions as well as some comments made during the live Q&A session.

Thank you to our civiCRM experts Dave Greenberg (DaveG), Kurund Jamli (Kurund) and Donald Lobo (Lobo) and to all who participated.

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ntenhross: If you have any questions for Dave that you want to ask now, please feel free!

guest967919: When does Civicrm 2.1 come out?

Jonathan: I'm about to adopt CiviCRM for the first time. When preparing records for import, how best to format data in Excel, anticipating various groups and custom record types?

Ariel: Quickbooks integration? is this the current status: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=3483.0

Marc Ray: can you discuss the difference between gpl and the licnese civic-crm uses? I am curious about this in regards to developing hosted products on top of civicrm and the privacy of client data.

NYCCAH Import-specific question: For "Preferred Communication Method" in civiCRM_Contacts table, how do you format the data if there is more than 1 preferred communication method (i.e., phone, email, postal mail, etc)? Do you separate using ";", ",", etc.?

Kurund: NYCCAH: you can pass comma separate values.

guest514556: have you reduced the size of the code base? We found it uses a lot of server resources to run.


Ruby: Speaking of intergration, I woudl also like to know about whether CiviCRM (and drupal, by extension) and Democracy in Action can talk to each other.

jcsa: why do you need joomla or dropal and what are those?

Todd Christensen: Any plans for shopping cart like functionality? as well as sending accounting codes to the merchant account

Lobo: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Civ…

NYCCAH: @kurund: Thank you!

Corey Snipes: @Dave et al - Expected direction for CiviCRM regarding inclusion in Joomla, Drupal, or standalone... Do you expect all 3 to still be available and used in 2011?

Kurund:  http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Todd Christensen: What about the accounting codes?

Todd Christensen: But the codes are only in Civi

Gregg Marshall: Is there documentation how to use CiviCRM for trade associations? I've seen references to it being used for that, but little help understanding how...

Gary: In technical terms, what are the things I can customise and not customise ?
And what is the "correct" way to customise ? I haven't found a good
overview on this and am assuming I just edit your HTML pages.

bchoc: Where is Civi headed, presently, as far as volunteer management & tracking is concerned?

Gary: eg. If a form has "Mothers Maiden Name", can I just remove that from the
HTML page and expect CiviCRM to cope and be happy when the form is posted
back ? There must be core elements that we mustn't touch, but how do we
_know_ what we shouldn't touch ?

Todd Christensen: What about combining membership dues with events?

Todd Christensen: or including really

Kurund: Gary: you will have change the code to do that..

Ariel: I found an issue, googled it and found that the issue had been fixed, but it wasn't fixed - http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2042 - What's that mean?

Corey Snipes: Data import on wiki: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

ntenhross @Corey Snipes - thanks! Very helpful!

Todd Christensen: Will Civi head more towards a drupal kind of architecture? i.e. Core code and the hooks so that modules can be built to customize

bchoc: @jonathan -- Even if you use Excel to manipulate the data, I've found it good to use OpenOffice.org as a middle step to generate the CSV files because OO is much better about encoding text (e.g. UTF-8) pleasantly.

kurund: Ariel: Can you specify exact step to replicate and comment the issue...

Jonathan @bhoc: thanks.

Gary: would you recommend a new installation to start with 2.1 now with the assumption of it becoming stable in september ?

ntenhross: keep those questions coming!

Jonathan: How does CiviMail compare to DIA, GetActive etc - or is it more like a more configurable alternative to a listserv?

Gary: will the rest api be in 2.1 ?

jcsa: when will you be stand alone without joomla or drupal

Kurund: Gary: we still in developing cycle.. so few things might be broken.. so i would say you should wait for aplha..

Ariel: @kurund will do. thanks.

Kurund: Gary: no

ntenhross: please repeat your question if I'm not getting to it!

bchoc: Repost: Where is Civi headed, presently, as far as volunteer management &
tracking is concerned?

ntenhross: @bchoc - thanks - you are next up!

Todd Christensen: Any plans to add in membership and event functionality. i.e. Join now and get a cheaper rate for the event

Jonathan: excellent, thanks

Ruby: @Jonathan, I think it's comparable to DIA or GetActive on the list/supporter management side, but it lacks the advocacy features.

Gregg Marshall: Is there documentation how to use CiviCRM for trade
associations? I've seen references to it being used for that, but little help
understanding how...

Kurund: jcsa: standalone version is available with civicrm v2.0

ntenhross: @Gregg Marshall - Thanks!

ntenhross: more questions?

Corey Snipes: @Dave et al - Do you intend to continue embedding with CMSes like Joomla and Drupal, or do you see the application moving toward standalone version only?

Tad: how many client are using CiviCRM now?

Gartrell: good question Corey, exactly what I am thinking (my NPO is moving away from standalone products, it is too costly).

Kurund: @Todd Christensen: you can use civimember_role, http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,2150.0.ht…

and then restrict cart for particualr role

Corey Snipes: @Gartrell - thx!

Dave G: A number of presentations on this page - including "CiviCRM in Action" PDF

Dave G: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Ruby: Reposting: I have another question: I would like to consider CiviCRM as a replacement for DonorPerfect at my organization, but it would need a LOT of customization to be easy/friendly enough for my colleagues in the development department. Are there many consultants who are CiviCRM experts?

Ariel: Can you talk or point to resources for drupal integration. kurund: you mentinoned some strong modules?

Kurund: @Ariel: you mean civicrm integration with drupal or drupal modules ?

Ariel: @kurund. ..i guess...what are some of the drupal modules that work well with civicrm?

Dave G: http://civicrm.org/professional

Gary: any chance of a civicrm customisation book ?

Dave G: http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php

ntenhross: we have just 20 minutes left - what else would you like to know?

Lobo: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Lobo: @gary: there are quite a few civicirm hooks

Dave G: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Lobo: i've not documented the new ones as yet

Gartrell: Less techy question, what are your general thoughts on NTEN 2007 CRM Satisfaction Survey and where CiviCRM stands in the market

Lobo: irc.freenode.net, #civicrm

Kurund @Ariel: http://drupalmodules.com/module/civicrm

Todd Christensen: So will you be looking for test sites?

NYCCAH: To set up mailing lists in CiviMail, is there an easier way to create queries rather than using the Search Builder? Could this be done in the MySQL backend?

elkay: @Dave where does Social Source Foundation's funding come from? Can you tell us a little about the organization and how it operates?

ntenhross: more functionality questions?

Lobo: @nyccah: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Kurund: few more drupal+civicrm modules: http://civicrm.org/node/228

Jonathan: What is distinction between groups and tags?

Lobo: would be great to get any feedback from current users of civicrm

Kurund: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

Kurund: @jonathan: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/…

CynthiaT: Is there any way to limit what tags a user sees? Using ACL's maybe?

Gary: is there an easy way to print the documentation en masse ?

Lobo: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=177914&package_id=231295

ntenhross: last chancce for questions - we have time for one more

Corey Snipes: Thanks dave, lobo, kurund, holly, anna. Very helpful!

John Kenyon: I do consulting and training on civicrm if anyone is interested - http://www.johnkenyon.org

ntenhross: thanks everyone!

Ariel: @kurund, I updated http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2042 with how to duplicate the issue

Dave G: Thanks for your interest folks. Please feel free to post follow-on or unanswered questions on the community forum at http://forum.civicrm.org

Kurund: Ariel: @ we will check it

Lobo: ariel: can u also reproduce on drupal.demo

Ariel: what do you mean reproduce on drupal demo?

Kurund: Ariel: http://demo.civicrm.org,that's the drupal demo site

Dave G: http://demo.civicrm.org/drupal to get there directly :-)