Occupy.net CRM Use

Occupy.net CRM resources for contributors

Profile Forms Use Planning

NYCGA TechOps has spent the last few months developing a constituent relationship management system (CRM) that will allow Occupy Wall Street to streamline lots of activities commonly engaged in by community based organizations. These activities include sending one-way email communications to large numbers of people, collecting donations in a transparent and cost-efficient ways, and managing volunteer opportunities. While TechOps has built these tools with help from a global community of volunteers interested in the success of OWS, we've done our best to collaborative develop the system with the help of the NY-based community of OWS activists who will be using them.

Getting Started

While the system is currently being used to send out the OWS Newsletter, we're constantly expanding the system's functionality and training people to use it so they can send out mailings for their own groups.

To make this powerful system more accessible, TechOps has begun a series of CRM trainings where people can:

• learn how to use the different parts of the system
• get help uploading their contacts into the system.
• set up a mailing list registration form on your own website
• plug into the volunteer organizing efforts underway

To find out time/location information for the next CRM training, click here.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email crm@occupywallstreet.net.

Contact Management

The strength of CiviCRM is that it creates a contact profile that records every action a user email interacts within, that can be through forms they fill in, rsvp's to events and views of newsletters, as well as, ways you can communicate with them from within CiviCRM. Within a Contact Profile you can complete the following Profile Contact Actions from within CiviCRM. Read more about wayt to manage contact details here.

Organizing Data

Having your contacts organized is crucial to how you interact with them, how you group and tag your contacts will allow you to create filters & queries to connect with specific contacts at different times. Whenever you add/import new contacts it's importact to link them to a group and tags. Read more about organizing groups & tags here. Once you have done this, it will allow you to communicate with users in many ways, the advanced search lets you query specific details and then use the Actions to contact those specific contacts through CiviCRM, for example, send an email about a an action that is specific to a state or a region (visual here).

Embedding Profile Forms

No matter where or what your website is built on you can create profile forms and embed them into your website to capture data directly into CiviCRM. This page documents out you can create and embed profile forms. Once you create forms you'll be able to take the HTML form Snippet to add the form to your website. Important note: Always go into the Advanced Settings to link contact to a group and when embedding a profile form into an external website, always include a redirect URL so after submission they do no leave your website.

Profile Creation Steps

Create Profile

• Administer >> customize data and screens >> profiles
• Click Add Profile
• Profile Name: Create Name
• Advanced Settings: Add new contacts to a group? >> Your Group Name
• Redirect URL >> Create a page on your website where folks go after form is submitted form submitted so they don't leave your website.
• Drupal User accountres option >> No account (don't work when embeding on another website)
• Save

Build Profile Fields Form email subscription form it will be:

• Add field name >> Contacts Email Main
• Field label >> Email
• Required
• Save

For more details use: Go to Individual for First & Last Name all other fields should be under Contacts. Note: you can only create a profile form for one type of contact a time, that includes one individual or organization.

Custom Fields You can also create custom fields for your profile, to do this go to Administer >> Customiza Data & Screens >> Custom Fields

• Create a group field set, make sure to assign to Contacts so it can be accessed by by both Organizational or Individual Contacts
• Add Custom Fields
• Go back to Administer >> Customiza Data & Screens >> Profile to add the Custom Fields you created to your Profile(s)

Get the HTML Snippet

• Back to Profiles
• Click on more for the profile you are working with >> Html form snippet
• Copy the form HTML code only between <form> to </form>
• Remove cancel button to
• Adjust Email Required * detaails - backspace the so it is on same line as email.
• Change save to submit
• Add this snippet to widgetized area or page.

How to

Request a mailing list group

We would like to make CiviCRM available to the OWS movement as widely as possible. It's a powerful tool for publicity and organizing. But, that power can be abused. We want to make sure it is not used for spamming or privacy violations - or, more subtly, to circumvent democratic decision-making, with the mailing list admin making decisions about what to send out without accountability. Therefore, we have established criteria for giving out admin access to working groups. These criteria are, of course, evolving, and not meant to be applied in a rigid, bureaucratic fashion.

Criteria for access

We are only supporting OWS working groups which meet the GA-approved Groups Policy requirements. We may also support cross-group projects on a case-by-case basis; projects which want to use CiviCRM should have the support of one or more GA-recognized working groups.

If you as an individual want admin access, you should:

1. Be able to point to minutes on NYCGA.net of a regular meeting of your working group where you are authorized to be your group's CiviCRM admin.
2. Be able to provide us with your group's current contact list (for upload, and to demonstrate you already have access).
3. Attend a training on CiviCRM use. These are normally every other Tuesday; please check the Tech Ops events calendar for the next one. You'll want to do this, so that you know how to take advantage of all the features of CiviCRM!

If you meet these requirements, we will create a CiviCRM group for you, assist you in uploading your contacts, and do our best to answer any questions you have and provide any help you need on an ongoing basis.

Use of lists

Groups should abide by the rules for list use - eg., include sender information & an unsubscribe link - described in this document.

Import Contacts

CiviCRM enables you to create lists of people to whom you can send newsletters, petitions and other types of communications.

Your group probably has contact lists in a few different places:

• Google Groups
• Spreadsheets

Export from Google Groups

Getting your contacts out of Google groups is quite easy:

1. sign in as an administrator of the Google Groups account
2. make sure you're using the old Google Group interface. You can select this option on the top of the screen below the bar Google tool bar.
3. Click "Members" on the side bar
4. Scroll down and click "edit member list and permissions"
5. Scroll down again and click "Export member list"
6. The member list will now download to your computer as a CSV

Open the CSV and check the data. If first and last name show up in a single cell:

1. select the contents in the "nickname" column
2. under the menu "Data" select "Text to Columns"
3. choose the "delimited" pilot button. Go to the next page.
4. under delimiters, uncheck any existing boxes and check off "space." Go to the next page.
5. click "finish"

Once you've got a CSV of your contacts on your computer, you can move on to the "Importing a CSV"

Create a Contacts Spreadsheet

1. Create a spreadsheet and include your working group's name in the title. We will tag all your contacts with your working group name so you'll be able to access them in the future. At the bare minimum, you'll want the spreadsheet to have columns for: first name, last name and email. If you'd like to use a spreadsheet with all the possible data columns, you can download one here.
2. Fill out the spreadsheet with the appropriate data.
3. Save your spreadsheet in a CSV format. This means the file's name will end with .csv.

If you have an administrative CRM account, you can log into crm.occupywallstreet.net and perform the next step of tasks labelled "Importing a CSV". If you don' have that access, email your contacts along with the name of your group to contacts[at]nycga[dot]net.

Import a CSV

If you have access to the CRM backend, you can import the contacts directly into the system by following the following steps:

1. Go to your CiviCRM, click the 'Contacts' menu item and click 'Import Contacts.'
2. Select your file in the Upload CSV File field.
3. Does your first row contains headers instead of contact information? If so, click the first check box.
4. Change the "For Duplicate Contacts" radio-button to "Fill".
5. Leave everything else as it is and click 'Continue.'
6. In this area you need to match your 'Column Names' on the left with the 'matching CiviCRM field' on the right. Here are some additional notes:
   1. If your import rows are blank, it's because you first few rows don't have content. Click 'Previous', go back to your spreadsheet, delete the blank rows on top of your spreadsheet, save and reimport the sheet.
   2. Do not map 'current employers' because it will cause an error.
   3. If you filled out a field that doesn't have a corresponding CiviCRM field and still want to import it, consider mapping it to the 'Note' field.
   4. If you plan to add more contacts in the future with the same spreadsheet format, click 'save this field mapping.' Click 'Continue'
   5. Make sure you're importing the same amount of rows that you have in your spreadsheet (minus the column headers).
7. Add these contacts to the appropriate groups and tags. Click 'Import Now.' Click 'Ok'.
8. If an error appears, check to make sure that your contacts haven't imported anyway before trying again. Imported contacts don't always show up in the 'recent items' feed on the left of your CiviCRM so make sure to search for a contact that you imported to see if everything works. Sometimes it works, even if it says it didn't. :)

You can also add individual contacts through the CiviCRM application by doing the following:

1. Log into contribute.occupywallstreet.net and then click a button in your navigation menu titled 'CiviCRM'.
2. Click on the 'Contacts' button and a drop down menu will appear. Click on "New Individual."
3. Fill out as many fields as you want. You'll have an opportunity to add groups and tags to contacts later.
4. Click 'Save'

More Info

• CiviCRM.org: Exporting Data and Importing Data.
• FlossManuals.net: Importing Data into CiviCRM
• FLOSS Manuals

Send a mailing

1. Go to Mailings -> New Mailing.
2. Enter a title, and include your group. Hit Next.
3. If you want your mailing to be archived publicly on the Internet (which you probably do), change "Mailing Visibility" to "Public Pages". Hit Next again.
4. Fill in the mailing content, including from address, subject, and body - you can use a template to get a header & footer, or fill in everything yourself. Important: If you are not using a template, see NOTE below.
5. Hit Next. Send a test email to yourself, verify that it looks right, and hit Next.
6. Schedule the email or choose to send it immediately, and hit Submit Mailing.

• NOTE: There are two required "tokens", the organization's address and an "opt-out". If a user clicks the opt-out, they will be unsubscribed from ALL emails from ANY user of the CiviCRM system, which could affect other working groups, even if they're just annoyed at YOUR sucky emails. That would be bad! Even though Civi does not require it, please make sure that you ALSO include an "unsubscribe" token - which is different from the "opt-out" - so that the recipient has the option of just getting away from you, while staying in touch with other, better people. Please make the unsubscribe link more prominent than the opt-out link, and clearly describe the difference. If you are using a template, this should already be the case.

Set up Groups (for administrators)

CiviCRM used with Drupal allows you to develop complex permissions to meet the needs of your organization or community. For OWS, many working groups can use CiviCRM for their contact management needs while maintaining privacy of emails across groups. To setup your permission needs, there are two parts, one in the Drupal permissions and the other in CiviCRM Access Control Levels (ACLs).

Each working group will correspond to at least two sets of people in CiviCRM - admins and people who are just on the contacts list. The following instructions describe how to create one admin group. In some cases it may be desirable to have two admin groups: a Group Admin role and Group Team role. The main difference for these is to provide group admins with a few more options like creating groups, campaigns, surveys or petitions and provide some support to the working group. The Team role is for those who will access contacts for mailings, interviews and the like. You will have to adapt the instructions below if you want separate Admin and Team roles.

Create Permissions

The CiviCRM ACLs are linked to a Group, so you will have to start by creating two groups for each working group. One for access control, so named something like "<working group name> Admin", and the other for email lists or newsletters, which could be "<working group name> Email Updates" or similar. You create groups by going to Contacts > New Group/Manage Groups. There would be one group as admin for the Working Group and you can create as many newsletter or mailings list within the group as needed. So for example you would have Direct Action Admins, which is an admin only list, and Direct Action Email Updates, which could be a public list people could subscribe to.

The "<working group name> Admin" group should be checked as an Access Control group, and the "<working group name> Email Updates" group should be checked as a Mailing List group.

After you create the groups you then have to assign ACLs to the admin groups. You do this by going to Administer > Users and Permissions > Access Control.

1. Create the role under Manage Roles, one ACL Role is created for each working group admin group (easier if you keep the same name as you used for the group name, "<working group name> Admin"). After you create the ACL Role, go back to Access Control main page.
2. Go to Assign Users to CiviCRM ACL Roles. Assign your new ACL Role to the CiviCRM group of the same name ("<working group name> Admin"). Go back to Access Control main page.
3. Go to Manage ACLs and add two ACLs, one to View "<working group name> Email Updates" Contacts and the other to Edit "<working group name> Email Updates" Contacts. Each ACL should have the Role "<working group name> Admin" and the Group "<working group name> Email Updates".

Group Admin

Permissions

• Form builder
  • Create admins
  • Create profiles
  • Create custom data
• Group Admins
  • Create mailing
  • Create Drupal forms
  • Create events
• Group Subscriber
  • Newsletter
  • Group form

Add contacts to main OWS Newsletter Lists

Normally you will want members of your email list to also receive the OWS Newsletter, in which case you need to add the Email Updates group to the OWS Newsletter Recipients smart group. To do that:

1. Find the OWS Newsletter Recipients group under Contacts > Manage Groups and click "Contacts" (not settings).
2. Click "Edit Search Criteria", and move the new Email Updates group over to the included groups.
3. Click "Search".
4. Select "Update Smart Group" from the dropdown below the Edit Smart Group Criteria section, and click "Go".

Add admins

Users will need permissions under both Drupal (the web framework) and CiviCRM (which is a Drupal module).

Once you have your CiviCRM Groups set up, the working group admins will need to register as Drupal users. Once they have registered as users, the Drupal & CiviCRM admin must go in and set the Drupal user to Working Group Admin. You do this in the "People" Drupal menu option by editing the user role settings. After this, you go into the CiviCRM contacts, search for this user and, under Tags and Groups, assign the user to the CiviCRM "<working group name> Admin" group. Now when they login, they will see on the contacts from their group with the menu permissions assigned through Drupal roles.

More Info

• CiviCRM Wiki ACLs Documentation
• ACLs case study on CiviCRM.org

Other Pages

• Using CiviCRM
• Proposed Rules for Managing Email Lists at #OWS
• CRM permission
• CiviCRM permission

Potential CRM Training Program

• Intro to Civi
  • What is a CRM?
  • Why CiviCRM?
  • Your permission level
• Using Civi
  • Signing up and signing in
  • Tour of a record
  • Adding a record
  • Creating and maintaining a list
  • Importing a list
  • Tagging during and after import
  • Creating and Sending an Email
  • Incorporating templates
• Mass Mail Theory
  • Identifying your objectives
  • Building and working with lists
  • The importance of quality control
  • Required information (reply to, etc)
• Do's and Don't
  • Avoiding multiple emails with similar content.
  • Keeping quality high
  • Avoiding repetition
  • Staying in compliance with the law