CiviCRM Access Control (ACLs) Demystified

by | Feb 18, 2011 | Uncategorized

I have always found CiviCRMs ACLs (Access Control Lists) system to be a bit of a mystery and a setting them up right to be a black art. In most standard demployments of CiviCRM, fiddling with the ACLs is almost completely unnecessary, but in larger organizational deployments there is often a requirements about protecting some data, or a group of contacts, from some set of users. Recently I ran up against such requirements, and dove pretty deep into the ACL system. In this post, I share what I have learned (or re-learned) and some of the questions I answered for myself in the process. Background On CiviCRM Permissions and Access Control CiviCRM has an extensive list of permissions that can be managed through Drupal’s permission system. This is often enough to meet an organization’s needs. These permissions allow you to grant access by user role to various modules, and functions, like “View All Contacts” and “Edit All Contacts”, or “View All Custom Data” (these will be the two specific types of permissions I talk about below). Some of these permissions are perhaps not named as well as they should, which has caused confusion for me, and some clients I have worked with. For example “Access CiviContribute”: you might think that you should grant this permission to anon and authenticated users, if you want them to be able to make donations, right? WRONG. This permission gives access to CiviContribute! In the sense that you can access contributions and other information. There is a separate permission for “Make Online Contributions” CiviCRM has an Access Control System (CiviCRM > Admin > Manage >...

Foundations Choosing Open Source: The Annenberg Foundation Selects Drupal

by | Feb 9, 2011 | Uncategorized

On the heals of our recently released survey that looked at foundations and their websites, I spoke with one of our clients, John Theodore, a Technology Officer at the Annenberg Foundation, about their choice to go with Drupal for their website redesign. The Annenberg Foundation, founded in 1989, provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. They have a number of web properties that serve different aims and programs. The Foundation decided to begin migrating their web properties from a variety of mostly proprietary or home-grown systems to Drupal in 2010. The work is ongoing and CivicActions is working with the Foundation on the project. Why Open Source? John admitted to something of a bias against proprietary systems based on the Foundation’s experiences as well as his own personal history as a developer and vendor. Proprietary systems often don’t communicate well with each other and thus become their own silos. Vendor and support options are also more limited for proprietary systems. Annenberg decided they wanted to explore open source to leverage the broader community and to be able to own their technology and manage it over time. As John said, “We spent a lot of time researching… reading the websites for the open source projects… you get a heck of a lot of information sitting out there on the web about these things, way more than [for] any of the proprietary systems.” Strategic Value of Open Source John sees Annenberg’s decision to choose an open source content management system as an expression of their organization’s mission, as he told me: “The mission of the Annenberg foundation is...

New Study On Congressional Staffers’ Attitudes Towards Citizen Advocacy

by | Feb 3, 2011 | Uncategorized

An interesting study came out last week reporting on congressional staffers’ attitudes towards Citizen Advocacy.  For the report by The Partnership For A More Perfect Union, the organization surveyed 260 congressional staff on their opinions towards communication with constituents via both electronic and traditional mediums. I won’t rewrite the great summary of findings on the Partnership’s website, but I will draw some additional connections and insights from theirs, and other recent work on the subject. In December, The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study about Americans and Twitter. The Atlantic gleaned five interesting facts from Pew’s Twitter report, I will share just one: Just 6% of all Adult Americans use Twitter (18 million people), or 8% of all (American, adult) internet users.  The Partnership’s study revealed that: 51% of senior managers and communications staffers responded that Twitter is either Very Important (12%) or Somewhat important (39%) for  communicating the Member/Senator’s views and activities to constituents. Which is more than thought the same of an MOC or Senator’s own Blog (10% Very, 29% Somewhat Important). Local media came out on top with 100% of respondents identifying it as Very or Somewhat important (80% Very, 20% Somewhat). 42% of senior managers and communications staffers responded that Twitter is either Very Important (4%) or Somewhat important (38%) for understanding constituent’s views. 42% of senior managers and mail staffers responded that comments on social media sites had a lot of positive influence or some influence (1% a lot, 41% some) on swaying an undecided Member/Senator’s decision on an issue. Compare that with a visit to a Washington office (97%) or a district/state office...