Introduction

CiviPlus supports a wide variety of membership joining workflow processes including those that require members to apply via an application form to join the organisation. In the article here we describe how to create the Application Form itself, and in this article we cover how to create the actual workflow.

The CiviPlus Case Management module supports a number of different Case Instances, including Applications, Prospects and "generic" Case Management. Each instance has nuances that make it appropriate for a particular style of workflow, and not surprisingly we will be using the Applications Case Instance for this Membership Application workflow. You can read more about the different Case Instances in the article here.

Creating a Membership Application Workflow

In this article we will be creating a new Case Type to manage the application for Organisational Membership in CiviPlus which contains several elements:

Roles - The roles of internal and external users within the application process
Statuses - The stages that the application goes through
Activities - The Activity Types that the workflow needs
Custom Data - The data fields that are specific to a membership application workflow.
Reviews - An application review that can be added to the case

Follow the steps below to configure the new Membership Application Case Type

Step 1: Creating the new Case Type

Navigate to Administer -> CiviCase -> Case Types where you will see a list of the Case Types already configured in your CiviPlus system. Click + NEW CASE TYPE and complete the fields in the top part of the page:

Title - The name of this new workflow - "Organisational Membership Application"
Name - The automatically assigned internal name, you cannot alter this.
Instance - The Case Instance that will be used as the basis for this new Case Type. See the article here for more details on what this means. We will choose "Applications" for this new Case Type, since it is a Membership Application workflow.
Description - Optional, but always a good idea to enter something so that is is clear what the workflow is used for.
Enabled? - We want to use this new Case Type right away so will enable it.
Restrict to Groups - We could select one or more groups here to limit the choices when assigning an activity. In this example we will not apply any restrictions.
Restrict to Website users - We could decide to limit the choices when selecting an activity assignee to contacts with a user account on this website. In this example we will not apply any restrictions.

Now click SAVE and continue to configure the remainder of the Case Type settings.

Step 2: Assigning Case Roles

The roles associated with the case are configured in the Case Roles tab. A full description of how to configure this this can be found in the article here. For this Membership Application Case Type example we will use the following Role Types that have previously been created in CiviPlus.

Application Reviewer Is: The contact who will be responsible to reviewing the Membership Application.

Case Coordinator Is: This role is automatically added to all new Case Types and is typically used to say who is managing the case. As this Membership Application is being initiated via an online application form we need to uncheck the "Assign to Creator" option since we don't want the external user to be the manager of the case.

Billing Contact is: The online application form allows details of the person responsible for billing to be entered. This contact name is assigned to the role when the form is submitted.

Main Contact Is: The person completing the online application form is assigned to this role when the form is submitted.

Step 3: Assigning Case Statuses

The statuses associated with the case are configured in the Case Statuses tab. A full description of how to configure this this can be found in the article here. For this Membership Application Case Type we will use the following Case Statuses that have previously been created in CiviPlus:

Received - The Membership Application form has been submitted and a new Case created.
Under Review - The Membership Application is being reviewed.
Approved - The Membership Application is approved
Rejected - The Membership Application is rejected

Step 4: Assigning Activities

The Activities associated with the case are configured in the Activity Types tab. A full description of how to configure this this can be found in the article here. For this Membership Application Case Type example we will use the following standard Activity Types that come out of the box CiviPlus (refer to this article if you need to create new Activity Type(s) specific to this workflow):

Email
Follow up
Meeting
Phone Call

Step 5: Save the new Case Type

Now that you have configured the Case Roles. Case Statuses and Activity Types tab you should click the SAVE button and move on to adding Custom Fields and Review Fields as shown in the steps below.

Step 6: Adding Custom Fields to the Case

Typically you will want to collect some information that is used to support the Membership Application, and can create one or more sets of Custom Fields to hold this. You specify the data to be collected, and how it is grouped together and presented within the Custom Field configuration page(s) - visit this page for details on how to create Custom Fields for Cases.

For this example we will just use a single custom Field Set Name called "Organisation Membership", make it Used For the "Organisation Membership" Case Type and specify that the Display Style is "Tab".

Within this Field Set we will create a few Fields to hold information supporting the Membership Application:

Membership Type - An alphanumeric, multiple choice list of the membership types available.
Turnover - A monetary value representing the organisation's turnover.
Number of Staff - An alphanumeric, multiple choice list showing different levels of staff number
Certification Document - A file attachment field
T&Cs Agreed - A Yes/No radio button to say whether the Membership Terms and Conditions are accepted.
Application Notes - A free text field that can be used to hold notes about the application

Note that in this example all these fields are exposed on the Application Form and completed by the person requesting membership.

Step 7: Configuring the Case Reviews

For Case Types that are based on the Applications Case Instance, like the one we are creating in this article, you can configure the workflow to allow reviews to be created and stored in the workflow. These reviews are actually a special Activity Type, but they do not need to be added to the set of activities in Step 4 above.

Firstly, decide what fields you want to be included in the review. Navigate to Applications -> Manage Workflows and click edit on the Application Case Type.

From here you can add and remove the review fields that you want to be available on the review activity for this particular case type. Once you have the fields you want click the SAVE button.