Configurations: “Ongoing maintenance” for CiviCRM
Effective use of CiviCRM will involve a frequent need to make configuration changes. Your CRM is all but useless without it.
For example, you’ll need to:
Create new users, and manage user permissions.
Create and manage contribution pages, events, membership types, custom fields, and similar data structures in CiviCRM.
Manage navigation menus and other content-related configurations in the CMS (usually Drupal or WordPress).
What it is:
This is the point-and-click configuration by which you’ll set up CiviCRM and the CMS to behave as you need it to.
This configuration will serve as a durable structure within which your users can perform the tasks they need to do.
For example, by properly creating and configuring an event in CiviCRM, you’ll create the forms and fields which your constituents can use to register online for that event.
What it’s not:
Don’t confuse this with data entry — we’re not talking about the task of creating or editing contacts or updating membership records.
That’s fairly low-skill work that’s usually performed as a day-to-day clerical staff task.
We’re just talking about the work of a site administrator in configuring the site’s features so that other users (staff and consitutuents) can use those features in a structured way.
Who can do it:
We could look at this question using the in-house/outsource criteria from yesterday’s email. I’d rate this item like so:
| Technical | Generic | Explainable | Inscrutable | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System configuration | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 |
And specifically on each criteria:
Technical: Not at all.
This is point-and-click configuration; you may need to learn more about how your CRM actually works, and it may sometimes seem tedious, but this doesn’t require special knowledge or tools.Generic: Not at all.
The configuration of your site is virtually 100% unique to your organization; there’s nothing generic about it.Explainable: Somewhat.
Depending on the complexity of what you need, it could take quite a while to explain the need to an outsider.Inscrutable: Not at all.
Even after this configuration is done, you need to know how it has been done. It’s not enough that “it works for now” — because you will need to modify it later. So you definitely need to understand how it works.
All of this means that it’s a very poor candidate for outsourcing.
By the time you explain what you need to an outsider, and by the time they explain to you how they’ve configured it, someone on your team could have done it faster, cheaper, and probably more to your liking.
Getting help:
Sometimes you’ll hit a need that requires some fairly complex configuration. So you might want some help.
Pulling in an outside expert — to create a sound strategy for the best configuration, and to work through those configuration tasks with you — can be a great way to get yourself to the point of mastering these configurations.
If you’re not confident in how to configure your own CRM system, and you’re not satisfied with your progress through consulting the CiviCRM online documentation, I’d strongly encourage you to seek out coaching and training so you can start moving forward in a decisive way.
In summary:
There’s no getting away from configuration management — without it, your CRM is virtually useless to you.
It’s not a great candidate for outsourcing; the most valuable approach here is to have someone on your team spend the time to become confident in this kind of work.
Help is available, whether it’s just by consulting the online CiviCRM documentation, or by pulling in an expert for coaching or training.
Up next, we’ll discuss feature improvements: What are your options when it’s time to make CiviCRM do something that’s really not possible through point-and-click configuration?
Tune in tomorrow.
All the best,
Allen