Improving Administration and Visualization Features for NGOs Management

Life on Earth largely depends on the environment. However, many problems are harming both human health and the earth’s ecosystem. It is relevant to everyone who lives on the earth, not only the environment. In addition, pollution, global warming, greenhouse gases, and many other things are their key causes. The environment is constantly being degraded by human activity, which ultimately leads to the loss of the ability for life on earth to survive.

The platform the Agiliway team was hired to build aims at urging people not to destroy the environment but, instead, to contribute to its recovery by making donations, starting petitions, etc. Since our client is one of the world’s largest environment protection organizations, it was crucial for the to have an advanced platform to manage all of their processes, communicate with their team members and donors in order to deliver information swiftly, and keep in touch with all the latest environmental news.

What we did to advance the processes on the platform

Since the project is very complex and consists of several major components, it was decided to focus on the platform management as well as improve the functionality for the users’ needs.

Improvements for the users

The Agiliway software development team was contracted to enhance the platform, create a better user experience, and add functionality to the administration side of their present platform.

The Agiliway team performed an analysis and made suggestions for updating the platform, taking into account all the requirements and flaws that were present at the time, in collaboration with the customer. Therefore, the following solutions were implemented by the Agiliway team to improve the system:

• A newer version of the Symfony framework had to be updated first, per the client’s request.
• While signing petitions, we redesigned the user interface for each field and made changes to each of them.
• It was difficult to understand how everything is used both inside and outside of the projects, so the UI has been changed to be more user-friendly.
• Created a function for donations, after which an iFrame was used to construct a form and input the website’s URL.
• When navigating to other pages, there was a 5-second lag. The result was that database optimization was carried out.
• Corrected the possibility of switching to other languages.
• Developed a feature for easier handling of signatories and petitions.
• Added a feature to the petition that allows for e-mail confirmation of signatures.
• Updated a list of questions following the signature of the petition.
• Developed a chance for the database’s donation data to become anonymous after six months because it contained sponsor information. Donations can be seen for their amount and intended use, but the sponsor is kept anonymous.
• The import of all participants created in Excel has been updated to allow for the archiving of all data, including the date of signing and other specifics. Once the server had created a table, it returned it to the front end after Ages had sent it a request. Utilizing the jQuery library, a CSV file was produced.

To improve and optimize the operating capacity of our client’s platform, the Agiliway software development team used: Back end – PHP; Front end – Webpack, and jQuery; Database – MariaDB; For deployment – Capistrano.

CiviCRM functionality for project management of NGOs

Internal processes management is a crucial aspect of the daily operations of an organization regardless of the area of its activity. Handling multiple tasks and projects as well as multiple people located worldwide is a major challenge.

Since Agiliway has been partnering with CiviCRM and has drastically extended the existing scope of functionality, we offered our client the implementation of a variety of modules that cover all their needs.

In order to fully satisfy the need for optimization of the internal project management, Agiliway software development analyzed the existing system used by the client and singled out two major tasks to be performed.

Extension for establishing effective communication channels within the organization

Written for expanding the functionality of CiviCRM, the extension is a task manager that helps to create tasks, and track their status, subtasks, comments, etc. The implementation of this solution demanded the use of existing CiviCRM instruments and their customization to correspond to the scope of activities envisaged by the client’s business logic. This extension has been widely used in the client’s CiviCRM since 2020.

The scope of functionality of the system today allows

• creating tasks for the team members;
• checking the status of a project and its flow;
• project reporting;
• ensure prompt delivery of the messages and requests inside the teams;
• tracking membership activity (contributors/donors’ actions in the organizations).

Google e-mail synchronization

Every e-mail sent to the website e-mail is automatically synchronized with CiviCRM, i.e., a case entity is created. Following this, website admins continue communicating with the client within CiviCRM without opening their e-mail every time. View/forward/reply/reply all functionality for e-mail was added. In addition, an autosave option was implemented which allows website administrators to save their e-mails as drafts.

Integration of the payment system for the contributions

To support the needs of the NGO, another task was to integrate the payment system that allowed accepting payments from multiple cards and other financial services. The system had to become a mediator between the CiviCRM and the client’s organization; be fully compatible with the CiviCRM; provide all the information regarding the donations in the CRM to the accounting team.

This part was initially considered a development of supporting service between CiviCRM and different payment systems to simplify data processing and their setting.

Since the earlier versions of the client’s system allowed the creation of recurring payments but didn’t have an option of prearranged scheduling, the main task was to develop functionality to update these recurring payments and synchronize all the related data with the CiviCRM. For this reason, a form was created that performs the updates and synchronizations automatically.

Value Delivered

Website changes brought about considerable gains after UI design, functionality upgrades, framework updates, bug fixes, and consultation with Agiliway experts.

These updates give our client the ability to simplify the project management process for NGO organizations both internally and externally with a more user-friendly UI. The administrators’ work needed to be more successful, for them to handle petitions more quickly, and from the user’s side to motivate them to protect the environment. Therefore, Agiliway’s purpose was accomplished successfully.

Contact Agiliway if your organization is searching for a solution that will meet all of your needs, and our experts will provide you with suggestions on how to increase the value of your enterprise.

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