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Table of Contents

The following represents the state of the CiviCRM system as at 18-Dec-2019.

General

Knowledge Management resources (your reference guide)

Our Knowledge Base is growing steadily and augments the training and reference resources provided. It has articles categorised within three sections: Admin Guide, User Guide and Talking Points (for use when interacting with the media and general public). You can view and edit all articles, and add your own. It is suggested that you restrict your additions and updates to the User Guide (and take care that any such articles are marked as Public and all permissions except Anonymous User selected).

General purpose dashlets

Operational dashlets are provided (“out of the box”) covering activities and cases: Activities; My Cases; All Cases;

General CiviCRM dashlets are also provided(“out of the box”): CiviCRM News; CiviCRM Resources.

Specific Areas

Campaigns and Events

Events typically are run in the context of a Campaign, and can be reported on in that context too. Events are publicised on the website and online registrations are supported. During that registration process, various consents are requested so that they are not required on the day. Email updates regarding an event can be scheduled. Badge labels with the COTA Victoria logo in colour can be printed for the participants. An attendance record and updates to the consents can be captured electronically at the actual event.

  • Operational Tools: Events > Dashboard; Events > Manage Events; Campaigns > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: (as per Operational Tools) plus Event Participant counts for future events dashlet; Event Participant counts calendar year to date dashlet

Committees

A Committee is supported as individuals (and sometimes organisations) linked to a pseudo organisation (the committee). The Start Date and End Date of the relationships (the links) are used to manage the changes to committee composition over time. Both internal and external committees are supported. See Committees for the documentation.

  • Operational Tools: SearchContacts; Search > Advanced Search; Internal Committees dashlet; External Committees dashlet; Committees and their Representatives dashlet; Representatives on Committees dashlet; any dashlet whose name starts with Committee: (and there is one per internal committee but none for the external committees as there are just too many of them); any report whose name starts with Committee:.
  • Management Tools: (as per Operational Tools)

COTA Victoria’s Individual Membership data from South Australia

The COTA Membership Services (CMS) in South Australia maintains individual memberships for all COTAs. COTA Victoria’s data from the CMS system has now been loaded into CiviCRM each month since Nov-2018. The data has not yet been linked into our CiviMembership system, but is easily accessible nonetheless. Every member and household is stored with an Individual Membership number for which you can search and combine with the tags like Single and Joint.

Data Cleansing

Name data (specifically First Name and Last Name) that is freshly keyed in, either by COTA Victoria staff or by external parties (e.g. participants registering themselves for an event) is made proper (i.e. the first letter is upper case and all following letters are lower case) if it is all lower case or all upper case.

Enquiries

Enquiries are supported as cases in CiviCase. This supports the capturing of details of enquiries and the management and documentation of follow up actions. See Enquiries for the documentation.

  • Operational Tools: Cases > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: Case Dashboard Dashlet dashlet

General Reporting

Many locally created reports, including pivot tables and visualisation, are to be found under the Reports heading.

Media and Other lists

Many/most of the MS-Excel workbooks that were floating around on local drives or shared drives have been imported into CiviCRM. Each needed to be “munged” (a process of turning visually appropriate data into database appropriate data) prior to being imported. Each import used a unique External Identifier which allows subsequent re-tagging of the data as COTA Vic staff decide how to refine and use the contacts. Some imported data is just organisations, some imported data is just individuals and some imported data is organisations linked to individuals who are employed by those organisations. All of the media relevant data is tagged as Media Contact which can be perused via Search > Find Contacts. The COTA Cycling Mailing List is maintained in CiviCRM.

  • Operational Tools: COTA Cycling Mailing List dashlet;
  • Management Tools: Reports > Contact Reports

MS-Outlook

MS-Outlook running on a COTA Vic office Windows PC can now be linked through to CiviCRM so that you can have your outgoing emails stored automatically against the relevant contacts in CiviCRM. These emails are stored as Activities of type “email” and linked to the appropriate contact for later retrieval. This supports the goal that all communication with a contact be visible in the one place. You can add notes or activities, to any contact, regarding phone conversations or other interactions.

Policy Platforms

Policy Platforms are supported as cases in CiviCase. This supports the tracking and high level management of policy platforms carried out solely by COTA Victoria.

  • Operational Tools: Cases > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: Case Dashboard Dashlet dashlet

Publications

The sending of publications is supported via simple activities of type Send a Publication. Custom fields allow for the capture of the total price and the type of payments. This is the manual equivalent of a full system that would involve CiviContribute (not yet constructed).

  • Operational Tools: Publications to be sent dashlet; Publications sent recently dashlet
  • Management Tools: (as per Operational Tools)

Research Projects

Research Projects are supported as cases in CiviCase. This supports the tracking and high level management of requests for support with, and advertising of, research projects carried out by external parties.

  • Operational Tools: Cases > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: Case Dashboard Dashlet dashlet

Speaking Engagements

Speaking Engagements are supported as cases in CiviCase. This replaces the previous Need to Know and Speaker Booking implementations. It supports an online request for a speaker, through the search for a speaker, to the delivery of the actual speaking engagement. See Speaking Engagements for the documentation.

  • Operational Tools: Cases > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: Case Dashboard Dashlet dashlet

Strength For Life (SFL) which was known as Living Longer Living Stronger (LLLS)

The LLLS system, historically implemented in MS-Access, has been migrated over to CiviCRM and is now undergoing further minor development and testing. The final cleansing of the data, the production of invoices and interfacing with the accounting system is still a work in progress which is now on hold during a review of the service offered.

  • Operational Tools: any dashlet whose name starts with SFL
  • Management Tools: (as per Operational Tools)

Submissions

Submissions are supported as cases in CiviCase. This supports the tracking and high level management of submissions carried out solely by COTA Victoria or in collaboration with one or more external parties. See Submissions for the documentation.

  • Operational Tools: Cases > Dashboard
  • Management Tools: Case Dashboard Dashlet dashlet; All Submission Recommendations dashlet

Volunteer Data, Reporting and Workflow

All volunteers have been loaded into CiviVolunteer into some 40+ projects, and many volunteers are contributing to multiple projects. Each project has a manager and an owner. It is expected that each manager loads the Volunteers on Projects that I manage Dashlet onto their Dashboard, and that each owner loads the Volunteers on Projects that I own Dashlet onto their Dashboard. The workflow of volunteer management from first contact through to allocation to a project has been documented in the Knowledge Base and a range of Dashlets to manage this workflow are available to be loaded onto the Dashboards of the relevant staff (the managers and the owners of the projects). The final reconciliation of the paperwork is still a work in progress. Once that is completed, the volunteer system will be in full production. In addition, the commencement date of each volunteer on each project is being amended retrospectively in CiviVolunteer. This will support the provision an accurate report on the length of service of each volunteer for the provision of long service awards.

  • Operational Tools: Volunteers > Manage Volunteer Projects; Volunteers available dashlet; Volunteers on Projects that I Own dashlet; Volunteers on Projects that I Manage dashlet; Volunteers by Project dashlet; Counts of Roles on Volunteer Projects dashlet; Current Volunteers dashlet plus dashlets whose names start with Volunteer that track the workflow of the acquisition of a volunteer and the subsequent allocation/re-allocation of a volunteer to a project: Volunteers with personal information not filed or loaded dashlet; Volunteers with no OH&S induction dashlet; Volunteers with no CrimCheck dashlet; Volunteers with incomplete paperwork (excluding CrimCheck) dashlet; Volunteers not yet interviewed dashlet;
  • Management Tools: (as per owners and managers above) plus especially the workflow tracking dashlets as these represent the health of the management of volunteers

Staff Training

One-to-one and small group training is taking place as opportunities arise, nearly always using production data.

Our Website has had a Makeover

This is not CiviCRM functionality as such, but it is related and it is important. The COTA Vic website has migrated from a single hosting at VentraIP to a multi-hosting at NetVirtue (via Code+Visual) where it will co-exist with other COTAs. COTA Vic has joined the multi-hosting, with the expectation that other COTAs will follow. This allows some moderated contact between various COTAs as well as delivering a mandated, common look and feel across all COTAs. COTA Vic’s CiviCRM remains on the VentraIP hosting.

What parts of CiviCRM are enabled?

  • CiviContribute – handles money
  • CiviMember – manages memberships and invoicing
  • CiviEvent – manages events
  • CiviMail – does single and bulk mailouts
  • CiviReport – provides reports and dashlets system-wide
  • CiviCampaign – is a capstone over events, surveys and petitions
  • CiviCase – provides case management and is currently configured for Enquiries, Submissions and Speaking Engagements, but could be extended further.

What parts of CiviCRM are not (yet) enabled?

  • CiviGrant – manages grant applications
  • CiviPledge – manages receipt of pledges

“Behind the scenes”

“Behind the scenes” there has been a huge amount of cleansing and organising of data, a lot of fixing, upgrading and extending functionality, and some upgrade of technology. The following are the significant items:

  • Installed 24×7 monitoring of both the website and CiviCRM via UptimeRobot.
  • Removed administrator rights from many staff to improve security.
  • Installed, configured and populated the WiKi-like extension that holds the User Guide and the Admin Guide (including this article).
  • Liaised with Agileware (CiviCRM service provider) and VentraIP (hosting service provider) to resolve many, many issues and bugs that had been unaddressed for a significant period.
  • Upgraded PHP (a server-side scripting language designed for web development) for increased performance.
  • Increased the speed of the Internet link significantly and moved from asymmetric to symmetric for improved performance.
  • Installed the CiviVolunteer extension to manage all volunteers via projects.
  • Installed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) functionality into both CiviCRM and WordPress to meet legal requirements.
  • Structured tags and groups into hierarchies and removed obsolete tags and groups.
  • Restructured custom fields, added new ones and removed obsolete ones.
  • De-duped the contact data such that only a small number of unintended duplicates remain.
  • Added new relationships and removed obsolete ones.
  • Monitored errors being reported by the CiviCRM Report Error extension.
  • Developed the ability to create “home grown” reports and dashlets.
  • Developed “home grown” reports and dashlets.
  • Developed new de-duplication rules suited to COTA Vic’s needs.

Our ICT Volunteers

Many thanks to the volunteer Knowledge Management team (Aditya, Alex, Akshatha, Arub, Dinusha, Kavya, Kay, Lindsay and Vidya) who have worked hard to achieve these outcomes since mid Oct-2018.