New Tools in CiviCRM: SearchKit and FormBuilder
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New Tools in CiviCRM: SearchKit and FormBuilder
About CiviCRM:
- https://civicrm.org
- Civi plugs in to WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Backdrop
- free and open-source
- has all your data in one place (customer info, email systems, donations/transactions, event registrations, volunteer management, etc)
- CiviCRM community chat via mattermost, at https://chat.civicrm.org/
- new releases every month
use cases:
- used for 11+ years; transitioned to Salesforce and then transitioned back :)
- use for 15,000+ personal contacts
- use Drupal+Civi for events, organizational coordination system and student management for HELP (Haitian Education and Leadership Program)
- https://alcoholjustice.org/
- Peace and Justice Studies Association (academic association) - been using for about 10 yrs, ex. https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/donate/
- lots of progressive/radical tech projects use it internally and with clients: Palante Tech, MayFirst, Agaric, etc
new extension: searchkit
- https://civicrm.org/searchkit
- https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/the-user-interface/search-kit/
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjSU7YfE0E028kuK948i7_qxUlbHZbfJR
- demo
- in the new release, enable search kit from administer menu
- packaged searches
- searchkit is the API explorer but meant for end users - builds a search query; can also call queries from searchkit through the API
- "Query info" - from search results page, you can click to view the query itself as well as the SQL language - useful for developers & replicating later
- can build displays - lots of column manipulation!
- CMS-agnostic - not a wordpress plugin or a drupal module, it's built into Civi
new extension: formbuilder
- https://civicrm.org/form-builder
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jiqLAlnjMM
- can build two types of forms through GUI - submission forms and search forms
- can customize layout and fields
- can embed the form on a custom page to access it later - if for search form, will see the search results table as you've built it; for submission forms, will see the inputtable fields (e.g., registration form)
- can associate form submission with an activity
- trajectory is to use this for Civi's own internal UI
- eventually would be a replacement for Drupal-Civi's webform_civicrm/civicrm_entity module approach to forms
- development largely sponsored by wikimedia!