Testing the waters

When you want to try something new, remember: You don't have to try the entire thing at once to see if it will work.

A few years ago my father discovered a new hobby — sandblasting beautiful designs in glass.

Most of his projects involve putting names on mugs for friends and acquaintances.

But this year, he aims to etch a four-generation family tree and contribute it to the auction at the next family reunion.

And this time he's decided to etch it into the back of a mirror. He figures if he etches out the silver on the back, he'll get a lovely design that's quite visible from the front.

Having never tried this before, what do you think you did?

I'll tell you what he didn't do:

He didn't go out and buy a beautiful wall mirror and start etching the family tree right away.

He got any old scrap mirror he could get from garage sales or second-hand stores, and began making small test pieces.

The first ones didn't turn out too well.

But now he knows a lot more about what's possible and what's not. He learned a thing or two about technique.

And now he's confident and ready to begin the large piece.

I expect it will fetch a fine price at the auction.

Imagine the frustration and expense he would’ve had to go through if he’d just tried building the final project, over and over, until he got it right.

Here's the thing:

Imagine you decided you were going to build your dream house one day. All by yourself. With your own hands.

I hope you wouldn't just jump in head-first and start swinging a hammer.

Maybe try building a dog house first.

It's the same for your CRM system.

Test the waters. Try your big idea on a small scale. See what you can learn.

Once you've learned a thing or two, you'll be ready to do it for real.

All the best,
A.

Process of elimination

Ever find yourself up against a weird problem in CiviCRM (or WordPress, or Drupal, or any other system you rely on)?

Usually in a complex system, the your stubborn weird problem could be caused by any number of things:

Permissions problems, conflicts with your CMS theme, plugins, extensions, etc., etc.

How can you even know where to start?

The smart answer is:

Start anywhere you like, but find a way to try one thing at a time.

For example, maybe you think your weird problem with custom fields might be caused by one of your extensions:

• Try disabling all of the extensions, and see if the problem goes away.

• If it doesn't, you can stop wondering about your extensions. Re-enable all of them and check something else.

• But if it does, re-enable one or a few of them at a time, until you find the one that's causing the problem.

Or, do you think it's caused by something in the configuration of your contribution page?

• Try creating a new contribution page with the most basic of configurations possible, and see if that page has the problem too.

• If not, change one or two configurations to match that of your original contribution page. Does your new page now have this problem?

• Keep editing the configuration to be more and more like your problem page, testing as you go to see if the new page has the problem.

• If the problem never shows up on your new contribution page, you can be sure it's not the page configuration, and move on to checking something else.

Here's the thing:

If you've got a specialist who can look at it for you, you might save yourself a lot of trial and error. The advice of an experienced specialist can go a long way.

But when you don't have someone you can ask, a careful process of elimination is a whole lot better than just remaining mystified.

And the truth is, this kind of elimination process is what a good specialist will do anyway. They'll just do it a lot faster.

All the best,
A.

Fixing the right problem

This week I heard from a client who had been banging his head against the wrong problem.

I'm guessing it took hours out of his Friday afternoon.

What he saw was that a certain set of custom fields was not displaying on his contribution page.

What could be causing that?

• Permissions?

• ACLs?

• Something about the configuration of the fields?

• The custom field group?

• The profile?

• The contribution page?

• The WordPress theme?

• Some bug in CiviCRM?

It took me awhile to understand exactly what he was seeing.

He had written me several very brief emails asking about how custom fields work, how they might conflict with the theme, and several other potential causes that he was considering.

Finally, he gave me the URL to the page.

Within a few minutes I wrote him back with an explanation of the real problem:

One of his extensions was hiding those fields.

His response was wonderful:

That was frustrating! ... Smh

Cheers for that…I would have torn the whole car apart before I checked for gas!

I see two lessons here:

1. When asking for help, there's no substitute for a very detailed description of the problem (with screenshots and live URLs if possible).

2. When something goes wrong, the are any number of potential causes. Fortunately there are usually a few simple steps you can take to eliminate a large portion of those possibilities, so you can focus on the ones that remain.

I'll write more about that second point tomorrow.

All the best,
A.

“I don’t know but…”

Nobody can know everything.

It's just not possible.

But to someone who is continually improving in their mastery of their systems, perhaps the most powerful phrase they’ll utter, more than once in their career, is this;

"I don't know, but I'll find out."

All the best,
A.

Netflix’s sneaky “free trial”

Have you ever shared your Netflix password with a friend?

Netflix used to turn a blind eye to that kind of thing.

But no more. Their recent crackdown means that users will have to pay extra to share their account with friends or family outside their own household.

The result (for Netflix): An increase of 5.7 million subscribers, according to recent reports. That's almost triple their expected increase of 2 million.

Sure, there's the usual moaning from people who took advantage of the lax enforcement to get something for nothing.

But viewed another way, the password sharers were, for years, getting what amounts to an unofficial free trial.

In fact, way back in 2016, their CEO said password sharing was a "positive thing" because it exposed more people to the service and eventually led them to subscribe themselves.

5.7 million of them, apparently.

Here's the thing:

If you want to run a successful organization with a positive cash flow — and you probably want that — you can't go around giving everything away for free.

But sometimes you can.

If you're confident in the value you give to your members and constituents, a free trial membership might actually be a winner for you.

It's not a simple matter. You'll need to do some careful planning.

But if you're setting clear goals and measuring results along the way, and if your predictions and measurements start to line up, it's worth considering the upside.

All the best,
A.

Next Wednesday: security update for CiviCRM

CiviCRM has announced that they will drop a security release near the end of the day next Wednesday.

Soon after that, you should start to notice a critical warning in your CiviCRM system status page, to alert you that a security update is available.

I encourage you to schedule some time now so you're ready to apply that update soon after it is released.

• If you're a Joinery hosting subscriber, I'll be handling this upgrade for you on Thursday or Friday. There's no action for you to take here.

• If you're a subscriber to one of my coaching programs, and you're not sure how to apply this upgrade, I recommend that we schedule some time on Thursday or Friday to go through the upgrade process together. Please contact me to schedule that call.

• I'm also available for a one-time coaching call anytime, in case you're not a coaching subscriber already and just want to work through this one upgrade together.

CiviCRM upgrades aren't difficult or scary, but they are different from upgrades to your other WordPress plugins or Drupal modules. You might at least want to check the documentation for grades under Drupal 9, Drupal 7, WordPress, or Joomla.

Here's the thing:

I don't usually recommend chasing the latest version of any software. It usually works better to upgrade only when you have a specific reason to do so.

But security fixes are at the top of that list of reasons.

You don't want to let this go by unattended.

All the best,
A.

For you vs with you

Say you've got a goal you're trying to reach, and you think your CRM can help you get there, but you need someone to help you make that it happen.

Would you rather:

• Have someone just do it for you? Or,

• Have them do it with you?

If they do it for you, you're likely to get:

• The chance to hand everything off to a specialist while you focus on other tasks.

• Some feature or configuration that does what you need (or at least, what they thought you would need).

• Very little understanding of how it works.

• A solution that's hard to change as your needs grow.

• Zero increase in your ability to do something similar on your own later on.

Conversely, if they do it with you, you're likely to get:

• More involvement in the configuration and setup work, which will take some time out of your schedule.

• Some feature or configuration that actually does what you need.

• A pretty good understanding of how it works.

• The knowledge to adapt that solution as your needs grow.

• A significant increase in your ability to do something similar on your own later on.

Which do you prefer?

Here's the thing:

There is no right answer.

Some people prefer to have things done for them. Others prefer to gain the knowledge that gives them increased flexibility and confidence.

Either way, it's worth thinking about what you want and how you're going to get it.

All the best,
A.

Relationships and availability

Obviously you are in the business of relationships. That's why you have a CRM — to Manage your Constituent Relationships.

But your operation relies on other important relationships too:

• With your staff.

• With your board.

• With your vendors.

How you make yourself available to them — and they to you — has a big impact on the quality of those relationships.

I recently started a pilot program in my coaching practice, and I was surprised by what it did to the relationship I have with my clients.

The gist of it is this: unlimited advisory support.

No hourly billing. No limits on how often you can contact me. Just a straight monthly subscription, and as long as you're subscribed, I'll help you with strategic guidance, coaching, and training, on anything related to CiviCRM, as much as you like.

Once I started, I immediately saw a wonderful change in my relationships with participating clients:

• They ask questions. They never have to hesitate to reach out with a question. So they ask more questions, and better questions, and their learning process is rapidly accelerated.

• Our interests are easily aligned. I'm interested in helping organizations become the masters of their own data systems. Program participants want that for themselves, too.

• Our goals are aligned. Because the clock is never running on our conversations, we have time to drill down on the outcomes they care about most, and discuss freely the pros and cons of one approach or another. My goal is to help them achieve their goals. I want to hear that the work they're doing, with my help, is hitting one home run after another. Of course, they want that too.

Frankly, I was surprised by the difference. I've had happy clients for years, to the extent that I don't even bother to advertise my services, since happy customers are glad to hire me again, and to refer their colleagues.

But in hindsight, it's no surprise at all. I aim to help people I like get what they want. And I do like the people I work with. Why wouldn't it be better when I make it easier for us to work together?

Next Monday I'll be opening this unlimited advisory program to all of my clients. Some will want it, and some won't. Everybody's different. But since I only have a few spots available, that should work out just fine.

Here's the thing:

Relationships count. None of us does great things all on our own.

What steps might you take to level-up the way you relate to the people you rely on?

All the best,
A.

Why ask why

As a CiviCRM coach and trainer, I often have clients asking me how to do one thing or another in CiviCRM.

Naturally I want to help them, so I usually ask “why” before I start spouting off instructions.

I dig around a little so I can get a clear picture of what they're actually hoping to achieve:

If you knew how to do this, and you did it, what would that get you?

And that result you get, why is it valuable?

What problems would you have if you couldn't do this?

Sometimes, the answers make it clear that what they're asking about is actually going to get them what they want.

But more often, one of two things comes to light:

1. The thing they're asking about is possible, but it won't get them what they really want.

2. The thing they're asking about is possible, but there's a much easier way to get what they really want.

If I were just interested in selling them a training session, or in charging them for implementation and custom development, it would be easy enough to say, “Sure, that's possible. Here's how we'll do it.”

But I'm much more interested in helping them get measurable results in the areas that they really care about.

Here's the thing:

Nobody really cares about a checkbox or a button or a form.

They want happier staff who work more efficiently, well-served members who renew more often, reduced costs, increased income, or some other measure of bottom-line mission success.

Because I want to help them get there, I ask them why.

Only after that can we effectively work on the how.

All the best,
A.

“Why” is more valuable than “how”

A young driver asks his uncle how to change the oil in a car.

His uncle is an absolute gearhead who's always rebuilding one or two of something, and he's delighted that this young fellow is ready to start getting under the hood.

So he invites the kid over on a Saturday and takes him through the whole process.

The nephew takes copious notes, including all the steps and the tools he'll need.

The uncle bemoans the difficulty of getting rid of used motor oil but says he has a friend who will take it, and he agrees to pass on the nephew’s used oil as well.

After all this is done, he asks the boy what led to his interest in oil changes.

The boy says he wants to buy a car, and he's heard that you have to change the oil every 3 months. He couldn't find anybody else who knew how to do it, and he was, in fact, mystified how all these people have cars but can't change the oil.

The uncle explains that most people just go to the QuickLube and pay 40 bucks to have it done.

The nephew says, "You mean they'll just do it for you? That's even better!"

The kid never did change his own oil.

He had finally gotten an answer that was better than his question.

All he really wanted to know was: How can I handle oil changes if I’m not a mechanic?

Here's the thing:

When somebody asks how to do something, it helps an awful lot to know why they're asking.

And when you're asking someone how to do something, you’ll probably get a much better answer if you can explain what you really want to achieve by it.

If you don't tell them, and they ask anyway, there's a good chance they're really trying to help you get what you want.

All the best,
A.

Hacker defense: “strong” passwords

Based on responses to yesterday's email, I want to drill down a little on "strong passwords".

If you Google a little bit, you'll find lots of advice about what constitutes a strong password.

You'll see assertions like, "A strong password is at least 16 characters long and contains a random mix of upper and lower case, numbers, and punctuation."

Obviously, that is simplistic.

Strength is relative.

My coffee table is strong enough to hold a few books and a glass or two of iced tea. It probably would not hold up under seven dancing teenagers, however cool they think it might be to try.

So you could ask, how strong is "strong enough" for your staff website logins? You could get into a long and tedious debate about that with your security geek friends, if you wanted.

Fortunately, you don't have to do that. Consider:

• If it's easy to remember in your head, it's probably easy for the bad guys to guess it.

• So, admit that it should be complex enough that you can't remember it.

• So, it might as well be at least 16 characters long and contain a random mix of upper and lower case, numbers, and punctuation.

• Use a password safe to store it, and you get most of the convenience of an easily remembered password, without the liabilities of an easily guessed one.

If you need help generating those passwords, there are lots of tools to help you:

• Your password safe probably has a feature to do that.

• WordPress will always offer you such a password as a starting point when you attempt to change your password.

• There are many free tools online, like this one, that will generate random strings just like this.

Here's the thing:

The criminals who want to abuse your site have been refining their tools for decades.

You are surely far behind them, and weak passwords are very likely the weakest link in your defense.

Remember that security and convenience are trade-offs.

If you want to keep the bad guys from abusing your site —and your constituents’ personal information — the smart choice is to trade off a little bit of inconvenience for a significant increase in security.

All the best,
A.

Another hacked site

I spoke with someone today whose WordPress site had been hacked.

Nobody likes to talk about it. But I'm talking to you about it.

I see it, now and then. Almost every time, it could have been prevented by a few simple measures.

• Turn off unused accounts.

• Configure restricted roles for most of your users, so only one or two people have full administrative rights.

• Set up two-factor authentication for your CMS.

• Educate your staff users so they select strong passwords.

• Guard your email passwords as closely as your CMS passwords (because CMSs allow resetting the password through email).

• Never delay in applying security updates for your CMS, your CRM, and all plugins and extensions.

While you're at it, think now about what you will do if and when your site security is breached:

• Make a plan for notifying your constituents about possible data disclosure. What will you tell them? What are the criteria that will determine whether you tell them or not?

• Ensure you have a solid backup plan, because recovering from a breach often means reverting to a backup.

• Decide who you will call, whether it's to help you recover from a breach or to answer questions when you think there may have been a breach.

In today's case, we were able to act quickly. We immediately locked down the site and took it offline, determined the date and time of the breach, and reverted to the most recent backup before that happened.

They're back online, and they're taking steps both to prevent it happening again with some of the above measures, and to formulate a plan in case it should ever happen again.

It's not pretty.

You hope it will never happen to you.

But hope is not a strategy.

Take steps now so you can reduce the likelihood of it happening to you, and so you can be prepared to act quickly and decisively in case it does.

If you have questions about any of this, hit reply and let me know. I'll be happy to share more information about ways you can make progress in this area.

Whatever you do, don't gamble with inaction.

It's better to think about it now — when you don't have to — than to be forced to think about it later because you were unprepared.

All the best,
A.

You can't answer seven

You've got an idea that you might want to try something.

Maybe it's a new hire. Maybe it's a new use for your CRM. Maybe it's a change to your membership policies. Or a new alumni program.

Doesn't matter.

You have to decide whether you like this idea or not. Rate it on a scale of 1 to 10.

Here's the catch:

You can't give it a seven.

Why not?

Because of seven is cheating. It's safe. It says, “Yeah I kind of like it, but I'm not sure I want to do it.”

Get out of that middle ground. Call it a six, or call it an eight.

Six, well that's pretty close to a five, so it's not much better than a coin flip.

Eight, that's something you can take action on.

Here's the thing:

Decisions are hard. But they're valuable. Wasting time in the Undecided Zone is not going to get you what you want.

All the best,
A.

P.S. Credit where due: this is not my idea. I heard it from Tim Ferriss, who got it from Kyle Maynard, who got it from "a well-known CEO." See Ferriss talking about it here.

P.S.S. I know yesterday I promised to tell you yet another example of events that don’t fit in CiviEvents. But, yeah, it’s just one more example of the same thing. I hope you enjoy the above notion a little more.

Events that don’t fit CiviCRM

I had two clients ask me last week about how to set up CiviCRM Events (CiviEvent) for their events, and both times the answer was:

Don't use CiviEvent for that.

Here's the first one:

We have a regular schedule of drop-in events like karaoke night, trivia night, and open mic. We want to display these in a calendar format so they're easy for people to find. We don't need people to register; we just want them to know the event is there so they can come and go as they please.

So why is this not a good fit for CiviEvent?

Because you're not collecting any data about the participants.:

• They don't need to register with their name in advance.

• You won't track attendance as to who came and who didn't.

In short, this is similar to anonymous surveys: there's really nothing for a CRM to track here.

Instead, you could just list these on a page on your website. If you want a calendar format, your CMS almost certainly supports any number of plugins or modules to handle that kind of display.

Here's the thing:

If you're not tracking anything about a specific named human being, there's nothing for your CRM to do here.

Count yourself lucky that you have a simple situation, and use your extra time to work on your guitar licks for open mic.

Break a leg!

All the best,
A.

P.S. More tomorrow on that second don’t-use-CiviEvents client situation!

Anonymous surveys with CiviCRM?

One more type of intake form you might be thinking about: anonymous surveys.

Say you've got a list of 20 questions, you’d like to collect responses from your constituents, and you have good reasons not to identify the people who answer.

(Usually it's because the questions are of a sensitive nature, and you believe you'll get more honest answers if respondents can remain anonymous.)

If you’re looking for the best CRM tool to build such a form, think again.

Anonymous surveys are in the category of things that don't fit well in your CRM.

Think about it. You’ve decided to collect no personally identifying information. In a contact relationship management system, which contact are you going to attach these answers to?

None, of course.

You'll be better off using one of the CMS-driven form builders. You might even prefer to use an external service like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.

Any of those solutions will let you create a set of questions, configure the possible answers — from multiple choice to long texts, to dates, to lots more — and send the link for that simple and beautiful form to your pool of anonymous respondents (say by email — which, by the way, is a great use of your CRM).

Then you can export that data to a spreadsheet and analyze it however you like.

That's all you really need to do here. No need for a CRM at all.

Here's the thing:

When you have a really nice hammer, it's tempting to see everything as a nail.

CiviCRM is a fantastic hammer. But not everything is a nail.

All the best,
A.

Intake forms for your staff

If your staff have tasks that involve predictable and repetitive data entry, you can save them a lot of time by creating custom forms in CiviCRM to handle the data entry.

You've basically got two options to do this. Just like I explained yesterday about intake forms for your constituents, the main difference between these two is in their flexibility and complexity:

• CiviCRM Profiles: Relatively easy to configure, and relatively limited in the types of data they can handle.

• CiviCRM FormBuilder: More flexible in what you can do with them, with a matching increase in complexity when creating them.

(You could in theory also use one of the CMS-based form builders like Webform or Caldera Forms, but since we're taking about staff users here, I don't see much advantage in going that route.)

My preference:

Once again, I'll usually suggest going with FormBuilder here.

The learning curve is a little steeper, but the extra features will, I believe, make it well with the effort.

All the best,
A.

Intake forms for your constituents

When you're collecting data from your constituents directly, you need to be sure of two things:

1. The data needs to land in the right place in your CRM.

This means you need to know what the right place is, and that probably means you'll have (or will need to create) the relevant custom data fields and other configuration to store the data.

Before you start creating the forms for your users, it's a good idea to manually enter a few sample responses through the back end; and then run a few reports or searches to examine that data.

This way you can be sure of where the data is supposed to be, and that you'll be able to use it effectively once it's entered.

2. The form should be as easy to use as possible

Now you need to think about how your constituents will actually provide that data.

What are you going to use to build the form that they'll be using?

You've got a few options:

CiviCRM profiles:

This method is the simplest to implement, and it works well for simple updates to information about a single contact.

But if you intend to store the data in multiple contact records, or in activities or other entities, profiles are probably not going to be able to handle that.

CiviCRM FormBuilder:

This relatively new feature in CiviCRM is growing rapidly and can already handle most anything you want to do in your data collection form, including the collection of data about multiple contacts, activities, and other entities.

It's a little more complex to configure than a profile, but it's a lot more flexible.

CMS-based form builders:

Under Drupal and WordPress, you may simply prefer to work with one of the popular form builders in those platforms.

In Drupal, Webform is the tool for building custom intake forms. With its CiviCRM integration, you can do all of the above.

As a bonus, it also supports taking payment via the form. Right now it's the only option in this list that will do that.

In WordPress, the most popular form builder is Gravity Forms. But it has no integration with CiviCRM.

Instead, you should look into Caldera Forms. This WordPress plugin, with its CiviCRM integration, supports collecting data on a fairly diverse set of entity types (contacts, activities, etc), and its forms also tend to “look pretty" with your WordPress theme.

My preference:

Where possible, I recommend starting with CiviCRM’s FormBuilder. The learning curve is a little steeper than with profiles, but once you’re past that the flexibility of this tool is pretty impressive.

There's not much that the other solutions can do that FormBuilder can't.

And once you get the hang of it, you might be surprised by what it will allow you to do.

All the best,
A.

Pick your poison: Intake forms

For contributions, event registrations, and membership sign ups, CiviCRM has dedicated forms that pretty much have you covered.

But what if you want to collect some other kind of data?

• Questionnaires or assessment tools for your service recipients

• Streamlined data entry for your staff

• Anonymous surveys

• etc.

There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat.

So depending on your situation and your needs, you could do all this a few different ways:

• CiviCRM profiles

• CiviCRM FormBuilder

• Caldera Forms (WordPress)

• Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms (WordPress)

• Webform (Drupal)

None of them is perfect for everything, but they can all be great for one thing or another. Sometimes you have to pick your poison.

In my next few emails I'll cover each of these and look at pros and cons.

With a little care, you can select the one that's best for you.

All the best,
A.

Cleaning the corners

In my office at home I have a habit of leaving things in the corner that I expect to deal with “later.”

You know, things I ought to put away in another room, but can't be bothered just now. Amazon purchases I keep meaning to return. Stuff that doesn't really have a place yet, and I'm not sure if I'll want to keep it or throw it away.

Now and then, when I'm not beset by urgent tasks, I'll make a little time to clean the corner.

It's a simple task. I just go through things and make some quick decisions. It's even refreshing in a way, and when I'm done, I have a nice clean office again.

Here's the thing:

Most systems have “corners.” Little places where we leave things to be dealt with later.

In CiviCRM that could be things like:

• Checking your system status messages for anything that might need attention.

• Reviewing your extensions and deciding which if any really should be upgraded.

• Scanning for duplicates and merging a few of them.

Sure, you can schedule time for things like this. And frankly, you shouldn't let those things go too long without attention.

But sometimes, when you have a minute, it's just nice to clean the corners.

All the best,
A.

Protecting open-source software in the EU

If you have an interest in the success of open-source software — whether you live in the EU or not — you might be interested in this open letter to the legislators of the European Union from the makers of WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and other popular open-source tools.

They're concerned that a newly proposed EU law could drastically hamper the work of open-source software developers, and the future of the software itself.

Maybe that’s not your thing, and that’s fine of course.

But perhaps it is nice to know that individuals and organizations — thousands of people around the world — are working together to maintain and improve the tools we use every day.

And, that those folks are also putting in the extra effort to navigate political and legal decisions that might limit their ability keep doing that great work.

Here’s a wish that they, along with you and me, can continue working to make the world a better place for people they care about.

All the best,
A.