nptech.info

The reason I post these is because 1) I think they might be helpful resources, and 2) you can get a feeling for what I’m working on, or thinking about (or wishing for.) For instance, the reason there are so many links about Amazon is that we are now beginning a project that uses amazon in earnest, with some others possibly on the way.

• PolicyTool for Social Media
• List of Nonprofit, NPO, NGO Websites Using Drupal » The ENGINE Blog » ENGINE Industries: Atlanta, Georgia Web Design
• AboutUseCaseMaps < UCM < Foswiki
• multi-mechanize – Project Hosting on Google
• Online Backup from Backblaze
• Data Robotics, Inc.
• EC2StartersGuide – Community Ubuntu Documentation
• Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Amazon EC2 API Tools
• Migration Tips | Acquia
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
• EC2 and Ubuntu – Alestic.com
• WordPress › SyntaxHighlighter Evolved « WordPress Plugins

Although it’s not often used in nonprofit settings, the Drupal module (or, more correctly, a large suite of modules) called “Ubercart” is a pretty amazing tool if you need to create a shopping cart system. We’ve implemented it for organizations that want to sell fees for events, sell items, and take donations. It doesn’t have many of the strengths of CiviCRM, but it has a lot of useful features if you want to sell things, or combine selling things with taking donations, memberships and selling event tickets.

A while back, I’d heard of the Ubercore initiative – a group of developers working to bring Ubercart to Drupal 7 (there was quite a delay between the release of Drupal 6 and the availability of Ubercart for Drupal 6.)  That initiative is now called “Drupal Commerce. (other site here.)” It is basically meant to be a rewrite of Ubercart for Drupal 7. It looks to be something to watch. Gregory Heller of CivicActions wrote an interesting conceptual piece on the integration of Drupal Commerce and CiviCRM that’s worth a read. (By the way, there is a module done by DharmaTech that integrates CiviCRM and the current Ubercart.)

• Yammer : Enterprise Microblogging
• Git – SVN Crash Course
• Pivotal Tracker – Free Lightweight Agile Project Management & Team Collaboration, from Pivotal Labs
• Force.com Web Services API Developer’s Guide
• SOQL SELECT Syntax
• AIM Implementation Guide
• gokubi.com » Blog Archive » Using Sites to easily publish data out of Salesforce
• DrupalMad developer :: Add-ons for Firefox
• Maintaining a Drupal module using Git | drupal.org
• Make Your Mark – On the Web. On the World. – Val Nelson

You don’t hear me talking much about social media. One of the reasons is that there are a number of really good bloggers out there who know the field far better than I’ll ever be able to. I would argue that Beth Kanter is the best social media blogger there is in the nonprofit space. Her careful writing about the strengths and weaknesses of social media, the in-depth knowledge of strategy and approach, her on-the-cutting-edge understanding of trends and issues and how they relate to the work that nonprofits are doing has been an incredibly important resource to the sector. If someone asks me about social media, I just say “ask Beth!”

And, it’s her birthday! A big bunch of us are blogging today to talk about what she’s contributed, and also to let people know about the charity she’s been working with for a while, now, the Sharing Foundation. She’d like folks to donate in honor of her birthday.

Beth, thanks for the expertise and intelligence you’ve lent to the nonprofit sector for quite some time now! And thanks in advance for all the great upcoming posts in 2010 and beyond that will help me sound intelligent when I talk about social media. :-)

It’s taken me a while to write this blog post, mostly because I have been working hard at various things (like building a business and building new websites.) This is the last installment in my CRM/CMS integration series, that started almost a year ago (wow!) And I’m skipping Joomla/Salesforce Integration because there isn’t any publicly available documentation or code about the integration that PICnet did with Joomla and Salesforce, called J!Salesforce.  [update: see Ryan's comment below.]

So what is the state of Drupal/Salesforce Integration? It’s not as mature as the Plone/Salesforce integration, for sure, but it is coming along nicely. There are several contributed modules:

• salesforce – main module, with API, node, and user integration possibilities. This module provides the basic salesforce API connection (via SOAP), and includes field mapping, and basic import/export
• sf_webform – Makes integration with webforms in Drupal fairly easy. Web-to-lead is quite nice and flexible with this module.
• uc_salesforce – Provides integration with ubercart orders
• parser-salesforce – Integration with FeedAPI – pulling data from salesforce into drupal nodes via FeedAPI  (I hope to start maintaining this module)
• sf_import – Import Salesforce objects into Drupal nodes (will be folded into the main salesforce module)

All of these modules are in alpha or beta, although I know for a fact that some of them (or versions of them) are working in production sites. There are a fair number of bugs that need to be fixed before there is a stable release. There are a bunch of outstanding issues that need a lot of work (like caching, for instance). There are two other modules that are related, but don’t use the main salesforce api module – one for ubercart, and one for web-to-lead (called salesforcewebform). That module has a stable release, but only provides the ability to integrate between Webforms and leads, not other objects.

Right now, the salesforce module allows for integration of contact, lead and campaign objects only. so that’s another big area that could use some work.

There is a good screencast done by one of the folks (Jeff Miccolis from Development Seed) who has worked a lot on this project.

I’d say that in a year, we’ll have a good solid module release, providing lots of features for integration between Drupal and Salesforce.com.

One of the great things about the nonprofit technology field is the collection of nonprofit organizations that provide what is often called “Intermediary” services to other nonprofits: information and resources that help nonprofit organizations do the work they do in the world,  by helping them make good technology decisions.

I’ve been involved in one way or another with a number of these intermediary organizations. One of them, Idealware, is an organization whose goal is to provide the sector with unbiased, analytically developed reviews and information about software that nonprofits use in their everyday work. This is incredibly important stuff, and it’s darned hard work – I know, I’ve been involved in doing a bit of research for Idealware.

If we don’t have this sort of research in our sector, nonprofits won’t have the kind of analytical approach to software available – it is much needed. As you might imagine, funding this sort of work doesn’t come easy – they need our help to be able to continue to provide great research.