Introduction
There are a quite a number of settings that allow you to configure the behaviour of the "My Organisations" section of self service - lets break these down one by one so you can setup this area of the portal exactly how you need.
1. Selecting who can manage an organisation
The first (and one of the most important) setting is the "Organisation manager relationship". With this setting you can configure the CiviCRM relationship types which will give the users the ability to specify who can manage the Organisations.
The first step will be to create the required relationship type in CiviCRM. You can do this following the handy guide here: https://guide.civi.plus/en/articles/9506696-relationships. Then you can configure for this relationship type to be the organisation manager.
Note that you can add multiple relationship types that denote who is the manager is.
For example, you may configure a new relationship type in CiviCRM called "Branch Secretary of". By configuring the organisation manager relationship to be "Branch Secretary of" any contact who has this relationship to an organisation will be able to manage that organisation.
You may want to combine this with your signup forms in order to allow users to specify who has this relationship so you don't need to assign this manually.
2. Selecting which contacts are considered members of the organisation
Next there are a number of settings that allow you specify which contacts will be considered members of an organisation:
Setting 2a: Organisation member relationship - This field is a list of CiviCRM relationship types that enables the display of the 1st degree related contacts of the organisation selected in Setting 1
Setting 2b: Second degree member relationship - This field is a list of CiviCRM relationship types that enables the display of the 2nd degree related contacts to the contacts found from the first degree relationship above. This may be useful if, for example, you have regions and then branches. You can setup a regional manager to see both the branches and everyone in the branch.
Setting 2c: Membership types - Select the membership type that contacts need to have to be displayed. Note that only contacts with a membership "in good standing" (i.e. with a status which is considered to be "current") will be shown.
3. Allowing organisation managers to email organisation members
You can configure the portal so that Organisation managers can email organisation members directly from within the portal! This is great if, for example, you want to allow branch managers to email branch members in a GDPR compliant way.
To enable email sending you will first need to ensure that the "Send mass mail with Views: Send e-mails to a list created with Views" permission is assigned to the "Authenticated user" role. This will allow users with the relationship from (1) above to send emails to members of their organisations.
If this is not enabled on your site (and users cannot see the "Send e-mail" button below), please contact the CiviPlus helpdesk or your account manager to get this enabled for you.
The My Organisations settings page also provides additional configurations for Email sending so the Administrator can restrict/allow certain users to be communicated via Email, and specify bulk email templates to be used for members and Administrators.
Opted-in contacts - This setting allows the Administrator to restrict Email sending to only members who are part of a specific CiviCRM Group / Smart Group. The Email address of Members who are not part of the Group will not be displayed on Organisation details page. You may want to allow users to opt-in to this group as part of the edit my details form in your portal.
From email location type - CiviCRM supports multiple location types and a user can have multiple email addresses added in CiviCRM for each Location type. This setting allows the Administrator to specify the Email Location Type that should be used for sending Emails. If left blank, the primary email address of the sender will be used.
Approved email sending domains - This settings allows the Administrator to specify the email domains from which the user can send emails. This is an additional setting that helps to avoid sending emails from domains that are not approved. Note that in order for an email to be sent successfully the email domain configuration here must match one of the domains configured for email sending for your site as setup here https://guide.civi.plus/en/articles/9639315-getting-started-for-sending-mailing.
Bulk members mail template - This setting displays a list of Pre-viewable Email templates that can be used for sending emails from My Organisation page.
Admin notification template - This setting displays a list of Pre-viewable Email templates that can be used for sending emails from My Organisation page.
A few more useful tips:
Note: The templates displayed on the above fields can be created/modified by editing the templates at: Structure -> Previewable Email Templates. You can set default headers and footers and branding for your emails there.
Organisation managers can only email contacts who have "opted-in" to communications - i.e. are in the group as specified in setting 1 above.
4. Allowing Organisation Managers to edit the details of the organisation they manage
You can also configure the portal to allow organisation managers to edit the details of an organisation they manage.
To enable organisation managers to edit details of organisations you will first need to ensure that the "Edit my organisation details: Update the organisation details in self service portal" permission is assigned to the "Authenticated user" role. This will allow users with the relationship from (1) above to access the webform as configured below to update the details of the organisation.
If this is not enabled on your site (and users cannot see the "Edit" button as per the screenshot above, please contact the CiviPlus helpdesk or your account manager to get this enabled for you.
Configurations:
Once the permission above is enabled you can specify a webform to use to edit the organisation details using the setting below:
Setting | Description |
Edit Organisation link Webform link | Specify a webform that an organisation manager can use to update the details of the organisation.
CiviPlus ships with a basic webform called "Edit Organisation Details" that can be configured to show any fields that you would like an organisation manager to update about an organisation from the portal.
To edit your webforms navigate to manage webforms via the user menu. Please note that the Organisation to be edited must be contact 1 on the form.
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5.1 Allowing Organisation Managers to add, remove or manage members
Overview
Next there are a number of configurations that will allow you to determine whether an organisation manager can add, remove or manage members of an organisation.
To enable organisation managers to add, remove or manage members of organisations you will first need to ensure that the "Manage my organisation members: Add or remove users relationship to organisations." permission is assigned to the "Authenticated user" role. This will allow users with the relationship from (1) above to send emails to members of their organisations.
If this is not enabled on your site (and users cannot see the "Add new" button or "actions" buttons as per the screenshot below), please contact the CiviPlus helpdesk or your account manager to get this enabled for you.
How does this work in practice?
This ones a little complex so we'll do our best to explain it step by step!
When you click the "Add new" button you will be presented with a webform (as configured in setting 3 below). This webform will automatically add the relationship type in setting 1 to the contact you have added on the webform.
The contact on the webform will be notified that they have been added to the group (and if they don't have an existing user account they will also be invited to setup a new user profile in the portal).
Organisation members can then manage members and add additional roles using the "manage" option from the actions dropdown, or remove members by clicking remove.
Clicking remove doesn't delete the contact from your database, but instead will set the base relationship type and any other assigned relationship types, to have an end date of today and make the relationship inactive, and hence the member will be removed from the list of organisation members and will remove their permissions and access to features in the my organisations section of the portal!
Configurations:
Great! So armed with all that information lets configure the Manage Members section of the portal:
| Setting | Description |
1 | Base relationship type | This is a single-select list box with all active CiviCRM relationship types and allows Administrators to specify the relationship type that users will be given when they are added to an organisation and the same relationship type will be disabled when they leave or are removed from an organisation.
Note! The base relationship type should be one of the relationship types configured as an Setting 2a: Organisation member relationship above in order for any contacts added to be shown in the list. |
2 | Relationships that an Organisation administrator can add or remove from contacts | This is a multi-select list box with all active CiviCRM relationship types and allows Administrators to specify the relationship types that an organisation administrator can add or remove from members of their organisation.
Note: Do not include the relationship type from setting "Base relationship type" otherwise users may be removed from the group unintentionally. |
3 | Webform link for adding new members to organisation | This is a single select drop-down list box with all published webforms available on the site and allows Administrators to select the webform to be used when Organisation Managers are adding a new member to the Organisation. This webform will be used when user clicks on “Add New” button on Organisation Details - Members Tab. |
5.2 Delegating access to specific tabs of the organisation
Another useful feature of the portal is to allow organisation managers to delegate access to specific tabs on the organisation so that they can perform tasks on behalf of the organisation manager. For example, perhaps a finance manager should be able to view details of the membership and download invoices, or an administrator should be able to access certificates for insurance purposes.
A finance manager may only need to see the membership and invoices tabs, but should not be able to invite or manage other users.
You can configure access for the following tabs:
The Certificates tab
The Membership tab (not to be confused with the "Members" tab which is only and always accessible to Organisation managers)
The Invoices tab (note this this one works a little differently - so do read carefully!)
To enable users to view a certificates tab and to allow organisation managers to delegate access to this tab the "View Organisation Certificates: Ability to view the organisation certificates." permission should be assigned to the "Authenticated user" role.
To enable users to view a membership tab and to allow organisation managers to delegate access to this tab the "Access Organisation Membership: Access to view organisation membership." permission should be assigned to the "Authenticated user" role.
If this is not enabled on your site (and users cannot see the tabs as per the screenshot above), please contact the CiviPlus helpdesk or your account manager to get this enabled for you.
Note that access to organisation invoices is granted via the CiviCRM setting: "Allows a contact to download invoices from a related contact" which can be found on the CiviContribute Component Settings at CiviCRM > Administer > CiviContribute > CiviContribute Component Settings and does not require any additional configuration here.
Configurations:
Once you have assigned the relevant permissions you can then decide which relationship types grant access to the relevant tabs using the settings below:
| Setting | Description |
1 | Relationship types that can view organisation membership | Specify the relationship types that users should have to view Membership of an organisation.
Note: These users will also then likely be able to renew memberships or apply for any add-ons you have configured via the self service portal Membership configurations. |
2 | Relationship types that can Access Custom/Temporary Certificates | Configure the relationship types of an individual to the organisation that can access and download custom or temporary certificate documents.
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6. Allowing your members to apply to join an organisation, and remove themselves from an organisation
Alternatively, rather than putting all the responsibility on Organisation Managers to invite users to join their organisations, you could instead configure the portal to allow members to apply to join organisations.
Similarly you can configure the portal to allow users to remove themselves from an organisation.
Button shown when user has permission “Request to join” | Action available when user has permission “Remove myself from Organisation” |
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To enable users to request to join organisations you will first need to ensure that the "Apply for Organisations: Ability to apply to become a member of an organisation." permission is assigned to the "Authenticated user" role*. This will allow all portal users to apply to join organisations.
To enable users to remove themselves from an organisations you will first need to ensure that the "Remove myself from an organisation: Ability to remove self from the list of members of the organisation." permission is assigned to the "Authenticated user" role*. This will allow all portal users to remove themselves from organisations.
If these permissions are not enabled on your site (and users cannot see the "My Organisations" section of the portal or the ability to remove themselves, please contact the CiviPlus helpdesk or your account manager to get this enabled for you.
*Alternatively you may want to consider configuring so that another subset of your portal users has access to this functionality. Unfortunately currently CiviPlus administrators cannot create new roles but if you would like to explore this please do not hesitate to contact us and we can help with the configurations.
How does this work in practice?
When a contact applies to join an organisation, a new "inactive" relationship of the type as set in the “Base relationship type” settings will be created in CiviCRM between the user and the Organisation selected.
An email will be sent to all users holding an active relationship with the Organisation of type “Organisation manager relationship“ settings to approve or reject the application.
A new "Manage Requests" section of the members tab will also show a list of the contacts who have applied for access:
4. Under the actions dropdown the organisation manager can then decide whether to approve or reject the application.
5. If the application is approved, the relationship will be made active and the member will move from the requests to the main list of members.
Configurations:
Great! So armed with all that information lets configure the how users can apply to join an organisation:
| Setting | Description |
1 | List of Contacts that the users can apply to join | The “List of Contacts that the users can apply to join” settings need to be set with a CiviCRM group so that the users can request to join one of the Organisations within the selected group.
Only include contacts (presumably organisation) that you want to allow users to see in your database. |