At this point, we have our arms around the contact record, can navigate through the system, and now can conduct crazy searches to our heart's content. However, now that you've triggered a search and have the records you're looking for, what do you do next?
Sometimes, you'll conduct a search to find a specific record, and then navigate to the contact and perform some work on their data. However, more often you are searching for groups of records and want to perform bulk actions on either the full or partial result list.
CiviCRM accomplishes this through the action drop-down options. After conducting a search, select the All X records radio button or Selected records only (if you want to manually choose records from the result to take action on). This will enable the actions drop-down list. Choose your desired action and click on Go to continue.
As you can see from the list of options, there is no shortage of actions you may take. We will review them briefly, grouped according to the type of the action rather than in alphabetical order.
CiviCRM provides two actions that are useful for postal mail, and two that are useful for e-mail:
- Mailing Labels: Print contacts to
PDFusing the mailing label options set at Administer | Configure | Global Settings | Address Settings. - Print PDF Letter for Contacts: Use this option to generate merge letters directly from the system. You will want to create a basic template that mimics the layout in your word processor. Once created, you can generate letters, insert placeholder tokens as merge fields, save letters as templates, and print them to a
PDFfile. - Schedule/Send a Mass Mailing: If CiviMail is enabled and configured, you may generate a bulk mailing directly from the search results. Choosing this option will trigger the bulk mailing wizard and walk you through each step.
- Send Email to Contacts: If you have a small set of records you're working with and don't need the full functionality of CiviMail bulk mailing, you may simply send the contacts a basic e-mail using this option.
After finding and selecting a number of contacts, you may want to make it possible to conveniently retrieve or act on the records later.
- Add Contacts to Group: Adds selected contacts to a group
- Remove Contacts from Group: Removes the selected contacts from a group
- New Smart Group: Saves your search to a dynamic smart group so it can be retrieved later using the same criteria
- Tag Contacts: Adds a tag to the selected records
- Untag Contacts: Removes a tag from the selected records
CiviCRM allows you to add two types of relationships to contacts from the standard search results listing:
A couple of actions on multiple contacts involve creating related records for each of the selected contacts:
- Record Activity for Contacts: Creates an activity record and associates it with multiple contacts at once. One helpful use of this option is to record mailings. Let's say you run your search and want to export the records for delivery to a mail house. After running the export, add an activity to the same result list to record the details of the mailing, for example, "Volunteer Solicitation Letter", with an attached copy of the document used for mailing.
- Add Contacts to Event: Registers the selected contacts for an event. The only limitation of this action is that you have to select a single set of registration options to apply to all contacts selected. You are also not able to record payment details in bulk.
Several actions operate directly on the contact records, allowing you to merge, update, delete, or undelete them:
- Batch Update via Profile: Profiles are collections of fields that you've defined in the system. You may use profiles to edit up to 100 contact records simultaneously.
- Merge Contacts: Trigger the deduplication/merge tool using the selected records. You will be redirected to a page where you can review the records and choose the fields that will be merged from one record to the other.
- Delete Contacts: Move the contacts to the trash (if this system is enabled).
- Delete Permanently: Completely remove the contacts from the system.
- Restore Contacts: If you've searched for deleted (trashed) contacts, you may use this option to restore them in bulk.
- Unhold Emails: Remove the On hold e-mail status for selected records.
The following two actions support doing something with contact records, rather than changing them:
- Map Contacts: If geocoding is enabled on your site, you may create a map with the selected records pin-pointed on it.
- Export Contacts: Inevitably, you will need to conduct searches and export the results to a
.csvfile (comma-separated values) to be used for various purposes—sending to a mail house, conducting calculations on the data, merging letters, transferring to someone via e-mail, and so on. The export records process consists of two steps:- Choose the export type—default primary fields or your own selection of fields. You may save export mappings (collections of fields) for reuse at a later time.
- If you've chosen to select your own fields, you will be shown a grid where you choose the contact type, field, and relevant field parameters. At the bottom of the page, you can save the export mapping, update an existing one, and export the list to
.csv. When defining your field selections, remember that the field will only export data if it is appropriate to the contact types in your search results. For example, if your search results contain only individuals, any household fields defined in your export will be empty. Also note that there are options to export related records. For example, if I would like to retrieve the State value for the organizations associated with people through the employer relationship, I can do so using the "related contact info" options toward the bottom of the field list. - When exporting records, you may merge records with the same address or merge household records. The former option will identify contacts with the same address and merge them into a single record. The latter option will look for records in your result list that are part of a household, and export the household record instead of the individual contact records. Both of these options will help prevent sending multiple mailing pieces to the same address, reducing your mailing costs. Note that these options do not impact the records themselves; they only impact how the export file is generated.
You will find in many cases that after triggering an action, you can return to the search result list and trigger a follow-up action. The record activity example above is a good example of where this can be helpful—after exporting your records for a mailing, perform a second activity action to record the mailing details.
Note
FPAGM has an upcoming Board Meeting and must notify the Board members about the logistical details. They use the simple search to retrieve all contacts which are a part of the existing Board of Directors static group. From the action list, they choose to send an e-mail to all the records in the result list. The e-mail contains information about the location, time, parking details, and a copy of the agenda as an attachment.
In addition to the direct benefit of reminding the Board about the meeting, FPAGM values the fact that a record of the e-mail is attached to each contact as a completed activity. This provides a historical record of communication with the Board, and may be helpful should one of the Board members claim that they did not receive the reminder.