New Tools in CiviCRM: SearchKit and FormBuilder

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!