Cividesk Community Contributions in 2019

: 

Cividesk is very proud to have contributed more than 500 hours to CiviCRM's open source initiatives in 2019! 

Cividesk strongly advocates for community participation and collaboration to continuously maintain and improve CiviCRM. In addition to servicing a wide range of clients from many different sectors of the non-profit world, we pride ourselves on being involved in a range of ongoing CiviCRM projects. The wide variety of our client-base and the projects we work on has exposed the Cividesk team to virtually every functionality that CiviCRM and its related extensions have to offer, affording us the opportunity to develop new and improve existing features that not only meet the specific needs of our clients, but that also have a broader applicability that extends to the CiviCRM community at large. Every month, our team makes a dedicated effort to contribute our work back to the CiviCRM community. 
 

Here are a few of the ways we contributed in 2019:

  • Code Reviews
    When someone from the community proposes a change to CiviCRM or any of its included extensions (be it a bug fix or an improvement), they are invited to contribute the modification back to the community in the form of a pull request (PR). PRs must be thoroughly reviewed and tested by trusted community members before the CiviCRM Core team will approve a merge into the CiviCRM core source code. Cividesk not only engages in active review of community contributed PRs to minimize redundancy and ensure the integrity of CiviCRM, but we also make significant contributions. 
     
  • Bug Reports, Patches and Improvements
    With our widely varied client-based and exposure to the vast range of functionality offered by CiviCRM and its related extensions, Cividesk is well situated to discover and fix illusive bugs as well as identify areas in need of improvement.
    In 2019, Cividesk contributed over 40 bug patches and improvements back to the CiviCRM community.
     
  • New Feature Development
    When working on new or customized features that have the potential to benefit a wide range of CiviCRM users, we seek input from other developers in the CiviCRM community. If the applicability of a feature is wide enough, we develop a generic version that can be contributed back. The CiviCRM Core team then decides if the feature should be merged directly into the CiviCRM core source code, or if it should be offered as a separate extension. New features that have a narrower application are often contributed as extensions.
    Some of the extensions that Cividesk developped in 2019 include Discount Price for Members Only, Event Listing by Type, and Contact Dashboard Settings.1
     
  • User Training
    We provide monthly CiviCRM online training to all users who need to learn how to use all the functionality of CiviCRM, refresh skills, train new staff or expand their use of CiviCRM. Anyone can review our training curriculum and class calendar from which you can click on a given class to view additional information and register.2
    In 2019 Cividesk has trained more than 550 users on CiviCRM.
     
  • Case Studies and Customer Stories
    You will find a large variety of case studies and customer stories on civicrm.org that describe the successes (and sometimes the challenges) of organizations who have been implemented CiviCRM. Case studies and customer stories can be a very helpful resource for organizations who want to learn more about CiviCRM and how it has been implemented by other organizations. We regularly interview our customers and write customer testimonials about their use of CiviCRM.
    In 2019, Cividesk has been proud to contribute case studies about MAHJ, a French museum, RTF, a faith-based foundation, TFT, a golf youth development organization, and FACC-New York, an international chamber of commerce. 
     
  • Global User Forums
    Cividesk continues to be very active on CiviCRM StackExchange, a forum where you can ask and answer questions related to CiviCRM. We are very happy to help CiviCRM users from organizations all over the world troubleshoot their issues or simply answer questions. Being active on StackExchange helps us learn about needs and challenges from various users.

 

1. These extensions are in various stages of development and are not yet available to the wider public. If you are a Cividesk client and are interested in one of these extensions, please contact Virginie at virginie@cividesk.com.
2. Online public training classes are included in our service plan. Cividesk clients need to register from the Desk.

Category: 
Community Giving