[Plone-NGOs] Member management [pulled from Costs thread]

Martin Aspeli optilude at gmx.net
Tue Jan 9 20:56:31 UTC 2007


Ben Rudder wrote:
> 
> On 9 Jan 2007, at 16:27, Martin Aspeli wrote:
> 
>> I think bulk member management is something Plone core should grow. 
>> Perhaps you're interested in sponsoring that?
>>
> 
> I agree with you that it would be good to have more core membership 
> management tools, but I've seen some of the developer threads on this, 
> and it seems a fairly heated issue (maybe some are yours Martin)

I don't think it's a heated issue. It's possibly not one where quite so 
many people feel the investment in the out-of-the-box story is justified 
since many people would customise anyway.

> The argument seems to be that Zope is a CMS, not CRM suite, and that 
> there are some CRM tools that can be bolted on.

Yes, that is true, but that doesn't mean bulk loading members and having 
a bit more useful member metadata wouldn't be useful.

> The problem for our little project is that we couldn't afford the cost 
> of any major new application development, so started with what we first 
> needed in CRM, which is basically just a group mailing and alerting 
> facility, and extra member data fields. At some point we will no doubt 
> have to reconsider this (possibly doomed) attempt to step-build our CRM 
> requirements, and I do wonder if this is an issue that NGOs will 
> confront more commonly than commercial developments.

membrane makes this pretty easy if you're a developer. Look at the b-org 
tutorial.

> Oh, :-) and how terrifying do you think it would be as a semi-technical 
> to "sponsor" such a thing, even if I had the slightest clue how?

We can work with you to find out how best to channel funds, though. It's 
important not to rush into it.

Martin





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