Salsa - Forum Topics

working with multi-addresses for supporters

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:31:18 -0500

I am having some problems with the multiple related Addresses feature: 1. All of our legacy addresses, when we ran some upgrade to the Supporter Management module, were turned into "Home" addresses in the new multi-related Addresses pane of supporters' detail pages. In fact, since we are involved in policy advocacy, many of our supporters connect with us via their jobs and use their work address. Because we really don't know whether a supporter's address is for Home or Work or something else, we'd like to just call it "Other" until such time as we figure out how the heck to have supporters edit all their contact details for us :-) But there appears to be no way to edit that Address Type field manually. Is there a way to edit it programmatically? 2. How would we specify which address is a supporter's primary mailing address, in the event that we some day may wish to send out snail mail? 3. How does one specify which address is the one the supporter used for voter registration? (say someone lives in one state and works in another) thanks!

How to best use Contact History?

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:26:55 -0500

I'd like to know if the new-ish Contact History feature is useful for our organization. I cannot find any details in the documentation so have some questions: 1. How could a low-skilled user log in and easily see a list of their own scheduled contacts? Is the only solution to send them to the long list of queries, and train them how to enter their own Campaign Manager key to narrow the list to their own to-do's? 2. Once a list results from a query, it seems the only option is to export it. How can folks click through the Contact History in detail view for a group of selected records ... i.e., are there Previous/Next/Return to List buttons on any interface? I wonder if anyone here is using the Contacts feature to good effect, and, if so, if you can describe the workflow you've set up for folks who are intimidated by the query interface. Note: we do not have programmers on staff so we cannot program our own user-friendly UI using the API. We are hopeful that a user-friendly option for CRM exists within Salsa itself. thanks!

Letting People Choose a Shirt Size

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:38:28 -0500

I created t-shirts as an item for our storefront. How do allow people to choose their size? They can select the amount of shirts they want, but not the sizes. Do I have to create a different item for each shirt?

Clearing supporter fields with import function

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:51:40 -0500

Has anyone used the import feature to clear a supporter field? I want to clear our "Other Data 3" field, so I tried an tab-spaced import. It had three columns, the middle being empty. When choosing fields, I applied the middle column to "Other Data 3". The import finished but the data is still there.

Copying target lists to chapter campaign manager accounts?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:34:37 -0500

Hello! The problem I am curious is about is whether it is possible to cop a target group from a super admin account to a "normal" chapter leader account instead of re-entering all the targets into that account. Anyone have any insights? Thanks!

Profile address changes

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:25:19 -0500

Under the Dashboard collections tab on the lower right side, there is: Profile Page - http://hq-salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/525/profile/ which allows supporters to unsubscribe, change their profile info and add subscriptions. Is it possible to get a report of address changes periodically so they can be sent to a vendor? Many thanks!

Anyone have a kitchen gadget for this?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:10:02 -0500

Hi there, I need a report of all my campaign managers and their roles. I can look them up one at a time, but what I really need is a report that I can work with. Thanks. :->

Auto Email AFTER event?

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:05:23 -0500

Is there a way to set up an auto email that people receive AFTER they have attended or hosted an event? We are trying to encourage people to tell us how their event went, and it would be nice if they could receive a follow up email auto-matically. Is this already possible?

Eblast to event registrants

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:06:30 -0500

Is there a way to send an eblast to everyone signed up for an event or do you need to transfer them to a group first? Thanks!

Searching supporters by "contains" (phrase)

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:16:00 -0500

Filtering/Searching for Supporters seems very limited to only searching by "starts with." There seems to be no way to filter/search for supporters who, for example, share a domain name - e.g, @organization.com. Tools that allow criteria like "contains" (phrase) are very common and it's hard to believe Salsa doesn't have this capability. Is there some hidden trick to do this or are we out of luck?

Has your org moved from Raisers Edge to Salsa?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:55:43 -0500

Have any orgs moved their member databases entirely to Salsa from Raisers Edge? We're very keen to get all of our member info, email history, advocacy, online donations, etc, into one consolidated service, and it seems like Salsa can do it. Has anyone made the switch? Any pitfalls to be aware of? Anything RE can do that Salsa can't, and vice-versa?

What's going on with the donation page workspace?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:59:45 -0500

Hi there, I'm trying to edit an existing donation page that had a bunch of pre-donation custom text, but it appears that the workflow for donation page setup is undergoing some changes in Salsa and now my custom text is uneditable. And all of my donation pages that have a two-column display are now displaying in one column. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Can someone at DIA shed some light on the changes going on with donation pages? Thanks!

Use OAuth to stop asking for users' Gmail username and password

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:04:41 -0500

On tell a friend pages Salsa asks for the user's Gmail username and password to get to their Gmail contacts. This is an example of the password anti-pattern (http://adactio.com/journal/1357) and is a worst practice, the warning text on your form notwithstanding. My understanding is that Google now implements OAuth to give 3rd party services access to Gmail contact data in a secure manner. Please implement OAuth and stop asking for people's Gmail username and password!

Receive Email field in an export

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:59:15 -0500

Is there a list of codes for the "receive email" field and their corresponding descriptions? Obviously "1" is subscribed, but is there a place where I can see what "-27" or "-45" stand for when I export my data?

Letters-to-the-editor report

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:34:43 -0500

Is there a way to tell which newspapers supporters sent letters to the editor to? it is not included in the lte report.

Organizations as Donors, Members and Signers

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:25:02 -0500

Can Salsa/DIA treat an organization as a donor, signer or member? For sign-ons, we have been dealing with a set of really funky custom fields to track whether a person is signing on as "individual", "organization" or "both". (Then we need to remember to move that data into tags or groups so we can clear the field for the sign-on action) For donations, we don't really track it but should be able to. Many of our key relationships are with other organizations, including our main membership program which is ONLY for org's, not individuals. Does this sort of functionality exist? I remember seeing a Company tab once (I'm fairly new to salsa here) but then it disappeared! thanks, kazar

How to enter donations manually

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:21:51 -0500

How do I enter donations processed via other services? For various good reasons some of our donations are processed via other services. (Case in point, a Donate button on Facebook or Guidestar.org can only be processed via Network for Good) On a monthly basis I would like to manually enter donations received from our supporters that were not processed via DIA. Can someone point me to the help page for doing this? thanks! kazar

Backing Up Our Database

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:16:28 -0500

What's the best way to backup all the supporters and donor information in our Salsa database?

Who am I?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:15:39 -0500

I can't upload a photo to my profile. I get this You do not have permissions for the supporter_picture object

No More Supporters?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:32:48 -0500

What will happen when salsa hits 9999999 supporters?

Can We Email Target President?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:32:10 -0500

Is the targeting function working for the President?

Remove Household Dups for Mailings

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:30:23 -0500

Is there a query to remove household duplicates when exporting addresses for a mailing?

Autopop Date in Donation Window

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:29:01 -0500

When entering a donation, could the date fields in the donation window autopopulate with current info with option to change?

state level voter matching

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:29:30 -0500

Does DIA match state legislators to zip+4? Does it populate the zip+4 based on address, city,state?

Filtered RSS feeds?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:03:42 -0500

Can I filter the RSS feed for my website (for events, for example) based on a standard or custom field?

deduplication question

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:07:07 -0500

Can you merge contact history when running a batch deduplication?

Tweetmeme and SALSA?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:47:23 -0500

How do I use Tweetmeme in Salsa website pages? The script keeps changing...

Tell-a-friend email trigger

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:34:35 -0500

Does anyone know how to add an email trigger to a tell-a-friend page? It would be really great to be able to thank supporters who help spread the word.

Where did the rest of the radio button options go?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:48:35 -0500

Why are the radio button options for custom fields missing an option that would allow a user to have multiple selections? My old custom fields with this option still work. Why can't I make new ones? This is a major impediment for signup sheets. How do I get around it? Hey Look! That option exists for the Salsa developers in this form! Why can't we use them too?

Donation types

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:44:56 -0500

Is there a way to add additional choices of donation types. We're looking for an easy way to identify membership payments and sponsorships, specifically.

Build your list through change.org!

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:34:31 -0500

Change.org launched its second annual "Ideas for Change in America" campaign this week and partners like you, me, and the Salsa-using nonprofit community can post ideas at www.change.org/ideas. Change.org says it will be giving nonprofits the email addresses of everyone who votes for their idea, so long as those users are not already signed into Change.org and do not opt out, so there's list-building potential for everyone: the first Ideas for Change in America last year drew more than 7,500 ideas and 650,000 votes. To participate, all a nonprofit has to do is submit an idea for a policy or program they want to see changed or implemented, and encourage supporters to vote for their idea. After the last round of public voting in February, Change.org will host an event in Washington, DC announcing the 10 winning ideas and presenting them to Obama Administration officials and then promote said winners and their sponsoring organizations to more than 1 million members and 15,000 bloggers in Change.org's universe. Questions? Here's the FAQ. Want to learn more about managing all these supporters? Please join us February 4, 2010, 4-6:00 pm Eastern at our DC office for an in-person workshop on our new Supporter Management Package. RSVP for the training! and be sure to stay for our Happy Hour afterwards! RSVP here!

reports via API and normal function options

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:03:58 -0500

Trying to do custom reports via the API, and have a couple questions. 1) is it possible pass user variable parameters through the API, like a date range? 2) for the predefined "normal function" options like "1 day ago", "1 week ago", "in the last week", etc., are there any definitions for these? The text alone is ambiguous, and I would need more concrete details on what they do before using them.

Custom Fields in Email Triggers

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:16:17 -0500

is there a way to add custom fields into an auto-response email trigger?

Filter email blasts by template?

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:36:04 -0500

How do you filter email blasts by template used? In List Email Blasts there are dropdown menus 'Show rows where [Template/Template KEY] begins with XXX' but when I enter either the name (for Template), the template number or template num with # before (for KEY) I get zero results.

Graphing email stats

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:16:58 -0500

It would be so useful to have a simple visual representation of the basic email stats - line graphs of say, open rates, click-thrus, unsubscribes, etc. This could obviously get really complicated really quickly (allowing us to create custom graphs, for example), but even just the basics listed above would make those stats so much more usable, and help us understand changes over time.

Moving Through Supporters Easier

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:34:54 -0500

Putting in a "Next" and "Previous" buttons in supporter profiles so that one is able to move through supporters much more efficiently.

where's that darned list of field names?

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:04:05 -0500

where's that darned list of field names? and, how do I get an individual auto-response to list the groups that a supporter has joined?

Salsa Rookie

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:28:40 -0500

How do you add a new admin. account? - salsa rookie

How to Delete all Supporters at Once...

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:42:30 -0500

How do you delete all supporters at once?

Targetting action emails?

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:36:16 -0500

In Wired for Change, how do I target a specific group to receive emails? like the labor committee of the Maine legislature?

Recurring donations don't provide an "end date", why not?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:38:57 -0500

Why doesn't Salsa provide an end date for recurring donations? I know I would never make a recurring donation if I couldn't put an end to it! And if the recurring donation is entered on the back end, it doesn't show up in recurring donation reports, but just sits there without the opportunity to remind the organization that the person is suppose to provide a check for the donation. Please explain or provide a solution.

Bouncing from Blasts

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:19:32 -0500

I have created an email blast and wonder how I can select a group but exclude a few members of that group before sending out?

Country names and abbreves

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:22:30 -0500

Where can I get a complete list of the country names/abbreviations (i.e., over 200 total countries) that Salsa uses when a new supporter record is added?

How do I take someone out of a chapter?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:32:44 -0500

Hello! I am new to using the chapter tool in salsa, and am having some difficulty. I created a couple test chapters and added a few supporters to each. I realized I had added someone to the wrong chapter, but couldn't figure out how to take that person out. I ended up deleting and recreating the chapter, but then the person's name didn't appear at all in the list of possible members. Any advice? Thanks!

Show the "Thousands Marker" in Store Item Prices?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:36:25 -0500

Does anyone know if you can add a thousands comma (i.e. $1,000 vs. $1000) in a store front? http://www.seedsofpeace.org/tickets FYI, I created a store to sell tickets for an upcoming event because the current event module doesn't allow for repeat purchases.

Efficiently moving thru supporters

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:08:14 -0500

If I am trying to go through all of my supporters individually (about 1400), is there a way that I can go from one supporter page to another without going back to the main list of supporters?

Make the text template honor the TemplateBeginEditable/TemplateEndEditable tags

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:01:30 -0500

I think the new Auto-Generate Text from HTML feature in the e-mail package is awesome. What would make it awesome-er: If the Text template honored the template tags. If you're using an uneditable HTML template, your contact and unsubscribe info is likely in the uneditable part not between the editable template tags (unless I'm doing something completely different from everyone else). If you've got that same information in your text template in a similar place, using the auto generate from HTML blows it all out because the text template doesn't recognize the TemplateBeginEditable/TemplateEndEditable tags and loads everything in your text template. I like awesome-er. Awesome-er is..well, awesome.

Friendly sign up links

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:27:36 -0500

Is there a way to create a "friendly" link for sign-up pages (e.g. www.organization.org/signup)?

Conditional Redirects?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:50:56 -0500

Is there a way to add conditions to redirect pages? (Preferably without creating a content page -- I'm hoping to do it for events). For example, if an email submitted is not in the database, I want to send them to a more robust sign-up page to allow them to add more groups without putting them on the events page itself. If they are in the database, they can go to a tell-a-friend. Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Thanks!

"soft bounces"

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:10:56 -0500

What is a "soft bounce"? I can't find it in the glossary. Thanks!