CiviCRM on Joomla: How to allow multiple users to add contcts, etc?

Question

I'm new to CiviCRM and am setting it up for the first time. I've got it installed on Joomla 3.4, and most of it seems to be working OK.

What I'd like to be able to do is to provide logins to a group of people so that any one of them can log in and add contacts and contributions, run reports, etc. However, the only interface I've found to this functionality is through the admin back end to the Joomla site, logged in as the Joomla admin.

I've tried adding a CiviCRM menu item for logged-in front-end users, but there's no menu item type that provides the CiviCRM access I'm looking for. I was hoping that Dashboard would be it, but it's just a report of parameters specific to the logged-in user.

I've created an administrators group and assigned the admin ACL to it, but logging in as one of those users is no different.

I'm probably going about this the wrong way, but it seems like the kind of functionality that should be available... I'm just not sure how. :/ And I don't want everyone to log in as the Joomla admin!

Thanks!

Answer 1

With CiviCRM on Joomla you do need to use the administrator backend for that functionality (unlike on Drupal). The frontend functionality is limited as you've discovered.

You can create a Joomla user group for these CiviCRM users and assign them the ability to login to the Joomla backend, but grant access only to the CiviCRM component. The steps would be something like:

• Create a Joomla user group for these users, with group parent "Public" (Users > Groups > Add new group)
• Give the group "Special" access (Users > Access levels, click Special) This step in setting up Joomla permissions doesn't make sense to me, but without it users will see an empty Joomla administrator dashboard - it's a bit of a gotcha
• In System > Global Configuration, Permission tab: select the CiviCRM group and change "Site login" and "Administrator login" to Allowed
• While still in the Permission tab, change from global to the CiviCRM component (select CiviCRM under COMPONENTS on left side) and grant permissions as required to the group (there are a lot of them)
• Create users and add them to the group

Now this group will be able to log in to the Joomla backend but will have a limited menu (System, Components > CiviCRM, Help) like you see at http://joomla.demo.civicrm.org/administrator/

These are the basic steps to get you started; you can also look at using CiviCRM roles.