New CiviCRM extensions worth trying
CiviCRM is great right out of the box, and it keeps improving with every release.
Something else that keeps improving: the long and growing list of community provided extensions.
Here's a quick selection of three cool new extensions that have been reviewed and approved by the community in the past couple of months:
Makes it easy to provide a link to the appropriate membership renewal form for any contact.
Member calls you asking about where to renew? You can get the link easily from the CiviCRM membership record and then deliver that link by email, text, chat, etc.
Sending out membership reminders en masse? You can Include a token in the mailing that will automatically embed the correct link in each recipient's email message.
CiviCRM makes it pretty easy to edit the Message Tempolates that are used for delivering donation receipts, membership reminders, event registrations, etc.
What's sometimes not-so-easy is navigating the complex if/then logic in the template code, previewing your changes, and keeping track of how your changes differ from the original template provided in CiviCRM.
This extension aims to make all of that easier. It provides an advanced template editor that helps to simplify the template code; template previews; and a "view differences" mode to quickly highlight changes.
Importing contacts, contributions, and other types of data, has been a standard feature in CiviCRM for a long time. Though this feature is well used and well tested, it can sometimes be tedious, especially if you're in a position to repeat a similar import on a regular basis — e.g. weekly or monthly.
This extension provides a large number of features to streamline that process, including:
Pre-configuration of various import workflows;
Scheduling imports that retrieve data from a specified remote or on-disk location; and
Importing from sources other than the classic CSV format, such as Microsoft Excel and others.
It comes out of the box with several useful pre-set import schemes, and provides a framework upon which a developer can create customized import schemes that work specifically for your needs (and save a lot of effort in the process.)
There's always more to find:
The CiviCRM community is continually creating and sharing new and innovative extensions to make life easier by providing specific features for your site that maybe not everyone needs.
Keeping up with what's out there is to your advantage.
It's worth checking the CiviCRM Extensions Directory now and then to see what might be there waiting for you.
All the best,
A.