Custom Fields for Specific Individuals

Question

I'm entirely new to CiviCRM and setting it up for the first time for our church.

One of the needs is to record information for Weddings. This will mean that against the record for a Bride or Groom (or both) we will need to record custom information e.g. date of wedding, deposit paid, calling of Banns (we're in the UK), organist booked etc. etc.

I think we can do this by setting up a group and attaching custom fields to the group. but we also want this information to be searchable so that we can report on all wedding booked in 2017 or send an email to the vicar 2 months before the wedding to remind them to make contact with the couple.

We will also need to record similar types of information for baptisms and funerals, but this will probably follow the same structure as for weddings.

Any advice on how this can best be handled within CiviCRM?

Many thanks,

Sandy

Answer 1

I would say: have a look at Events. You'll find a lot of functionality.

You could create an Event Type "Wedding", where you can have custom fields only for "Events" of type "Wedding".

The same can be done for "Baptisms" and "Funerals".

Emails 2 months in advance would be easy.

Answer 2

I will offer an alternate solution. create a custom Activity Type for Weddings and put the fields on that.

Then do the same for Funerals, Baptisms etc. One Activity Type for each.

The Activity can then be associated with as many people as necessary

Answer 3

Do you want to just record the wedding info somewhere, or are you wanting to use Civi to manage the wedding workflow?

You could use CiviCase to define the series of actions that are needed from the initial contact with the church up to the wedding day and those would function as a checklist of tasks and timeline.

(It's a possible enhancement for a church I'm working with - originally motivated by an "organisationally challenged" curate!)

CiviCase takes more setting up than a custom Event or Activity type and it's not the best starting point for someone new to Civi so you might want to try one of the other options initially or get some help.

Answer 4

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've looked at recording the Wedding information as an Activity and that seems fairly straightforward.

I can also see how we can generate a Scheduled Reminder to the minister two months before the Wedding to remind them to make contact with the wedding couple.

Taking this a step further I'm trying to see if there is a way to auto-generate a scheduled reminder direct to the couple based on specific data in one of the custom fields? For instance if they don't live in our parish it would be great to send them an email automatically three months before the wedding date to remind them to arrange to have their Banns called in their local church.

I can's see a way to do that with either Activities or Events - am I missing something? Do I need to look at CiviCase or another way of recording this data to make this form of automation possible?

If I can I want to try to avoid starting to do things one way and finding it is too limited and having to restart with a different structure!

Thanks for any help or advice.