First you must create an account at denveropenmedia.org or have one created for you, which allows you access to civiCRM. This will need to be given administrative access to be able to work within civiCRM. When you login to denveropenmedia with your username and password a new webpage should appear with a “civiCRM” link located at the top of the page. Click that link to access the civiCRM program; once you’re in, you’re ready to start.
Of course, to do a mass mailing you have to have a mass-list of people you want to mail to. Perhaps you’ve been assigned to create a mass mailing to existing people already in the civiCRM database? i.e. someone in the organization has entered a list of people (and their corresponding information- addresses, etc.) and either put them into a “group” listing or a “tag” listing (that groups or tags people according to a certain criteria).
NOTE: Because civiCRM is a web-based administration tool, it is subject to web-based rules and limitations. Therefore, when trying to extract/export (instruction in later step) a list of existing people from civiCRM, by sorting by name (not the whole group or whole tag group!), you’ll be tempted to simply click the checkbox option next to each name you wish to include in your mailing--webpage by webpage. However, once you go to a new page on the civiCRM website (i.e. clicking “next page”) to checkbox more people- the previous checkboxes you clicked on the previous page will not be recognized in your final extraction or export list. It’s a waste of time.
Steps for creating a group or tag and entering new or existing contacts (individuals, etc)
1) Once you’re in civiCRM – anywhere in the program- there is a link called “CiviCRM Home” located in the left margin, click that (if you’re not “home” already)
2) Now, on the right side, you have a margin with “Menu” & “Shortcuts”, in the Menu box at the bottom, click the “administer civiCRM” link.
3) On this page are a series of groups of icons, in the “Configure” group click on the “Tags” link
4) This will show you all the tags that have been created previously. If you don’t find a tag that fits the description of the people you want to mail to, or what you’re mailing, then click the “>> New Tag” link at the bottom of the page.
5) Name the tag, give it a description, and then save it.
Now you’re ready to start adding new or existing individuals, households or organizations with them “tagged”.
1) Click “civiCRM Home” link again (in left margin)
2) In Shortcuts click the “New Individual”, “New Organization”, or “New Household”
3) Now empty fields appear on the page you have to simply enter in all the data you have for that entry (being mindful on the required fields like primary phone number). NOTE: when putting data into the “website” field be such to include http:// at the beginning of your entry, otherwise you will have to re-due that field and resave the page.
4) Also, you have the option at the bottom (before saving) to include notes, demographic information, and more importantly, checkbox the “tag” you want this entry to be included into. If you forget to checkbox this your mailing for this tagged group will be a disaster.
If you’re not adding new contacts but you’ve created a tag and want to include existing contacts in the tag you’ve created:
1) Click “CiviCRM Home” again
2) Click “Find Contacts” in top left margin
3) Your given several options, which will be handy for other executions, however, in this case simply click the “search” soft button at right
4) All the entries for individuals, organizations, etc, come up. You have to go through each page a find the people you want to include (unless you have a list)
5) When you find them Click “Edit”. That field’s page will appear again. Go to the bottom and Click the tag you want.
6) Or if you’ve been give a list of existing people to add to the tag, in the “find contact” page put in the persons data/name into the field and Click “Search” and then do step 5.
Now you have all the people you want to do mass mailing to properly tagged. Your ready for the next step: exporting tags.
1) Always go back to “civiCRM home”
2) Click “Find Contacts” and go to the last option in the “Search Criteria” page. Find “Tagged” and click the scrollbar and scroll to the tag you want, select it, and Click “Search”. All the entries for everyone you tagged should come up on the following page
3) Just above the entries you have two options; :selected records only and “all ### records”. Click the circle for “all ### records”.
4) Now just above that is a scroll bar for “more actions”. Scroll to “export contacts”, select it. It should appear in the scroll bar now. Click “GO” box next to it.
5) New page appears with the options “export PRIMARY contact fields” or “Select fields for export” Click “Select fields for export” circle. Then Click “continue>>” soft button.
6) Fields to Include in Export File: “select record type” several times depending on how many fields you need: i.e. first name, last name, address, city, state, postal.
7) Once you have the “field mapping” you need, Click the “Export>>” soft button, don’t click done.
The entry list you compiled has not been exported to an excel file on your hard drive. On the Mac drive I used it automatically saved as “CiviCRM_Contact_Search.csv”
(Remember, if you select “selected records only” you have to individually checkbox each entry you want to include for exportation, BUT when you go to “next page” the previous page is not recognized)
Say you have a tagged list, you’ve done a mass mailing, but you’ve added new entries to the tagged list and you do want to export them (rather than hand addressing each mailing).
1) The default page listing for entries is about 50 per page. Scroll to the bottom of page of the 1-50 entry listing. You have the option for “Rows Per Page”, Click “100”.
2) Now you can checkbox only the entries you want to export, HOWEVER, you have to export them per page. That is, when you find x amount of entries on the page of 100 you have to do the export steps listed about- for each page.
3) They’re exported to an excel file that is usually automatically saved to the desktop. For each 100 page you do an export for there will a corresponding excel file. You have to copy and paste all the files and consolidate them into one file. Or, at least, this is the only way we figured out how to do it so far.
4) SO: you still have to do step 1-7 above, but for each page. NOTE: for step 7 also Click the “save this field mapping” box, name & description…this will save you some time.
Now that you have exported from civiCRM you are ready to begin the process of integrating the data into word for mailing labels or for letters or any other use. CiviCRM does provide an option for creating mailing labels, and it might also have one for letters, but we could not get it to work properly (repeated errors…if you discover how to do it please write a “how to” document).
Steps for MacWord once you’ve exported from civiCRM
Mailing Labels
1) Open the Word program. Select “New Blank Document”
2) Select “Tools” from the toolbar. Scroll down to Data Merge Manager and select. A new “palette” or box appears next to the blank document.
3) Under Main Document Click “Create” and then select “Labels”
4) A new box appears with the option of selecting the brand and model number of the labels to use. Find out what brand and model you use and select them., Click “OK”
Your blank document should now have rows & columns of boxes that read “Next Record”, with the top left box empty.
5) In Data Merge Manager go to “Data Source” and Click “Get Data”. Then Click “open data source”. Find where your export file was saved (and as what) select it and Click “open” and then Click “OK”.
6) It gets tricky here. “Field Delimiters” box opens up. Fields are separated by commas so in first field delimiter scroll and choose comma. For record choose (enter), which is already the default. A new box should appear where you choose which fields to include in the word document (first name, last name, etc) and where you want them placed in the document (what line, etc). But if the box does not appear (errors of somekind)…
7) Seek assistance from another staff member.
8) Once you do get the “field delimiter” sorted out and the fields dropped into the box and placed the way you want them Click OK.
9) Now each box in the document should appear to have the generic field names (first, last, address, city, state, postal) in each box. Click “ABC” under the preview in Data Merge Manager. All your REAL data should be in each box
10) You can scroll through each page by clicking the soft arrow buttons in Preview.
11) Then go down to the Merge option in Data Merge Manager and choose either “print merge” or “merge to document”. Make sure your labels are in printer (face down) before choosing “print merge”. Of course, if you plan on saving the labels you’ve created chose “merge to document” first.
And your labels have been created.
Say you have a letter you’d also like to include. First you have to make a template letter. If you do it business style the person’s or organization’s name, address, etc will be in the top left hand corner of the letter. So it’s just like making labels. Redo all the steps above for your letter, except
1) when you get to Merge Field in Data Merge Manager you have to Click and drag each field (i.e. first name, last name, etc) over to the letter AND you have to make sure it’s in its proper placement.
2) Then finish the same steps as above, Preview the document(s) / letter(s), merge to document and print document.
The rest is manual labor (folding, stamping, addressing)
MORE TIPS
Make sure your labels and your letters are in the same order
The programs will automatically arrange labels and letter according to how they were entered into CiviCRM (chronologically entered data). It might be best if, when you export the data, open the data file and alphabetize it- it’s less confusing in the long run and it helps with sorting or finding duplicate entries.