WP Issues CRM

NOTE: This CRM has served us very well and we are currently in the process of migrating it to the Azure/.NET environment. We do not intend to continue to evolve this WordPress/Linux version of it. If you are a current user and need assistance with migration options, please contact the author at 617-771-8274.

We built this constituent relationship management system to meet the office needs of elected officials and public and non-profit organizations that respond to large constituencies or memberships. However, it can support either office or campaign operations and is flexible enough to support a wide variety of organizations.

In addition to providing a clean, flexible and full-featured CRM, it offers a solid email client that automates recording and response to high-volume incoming email traffic. It now supports both the secure Gmail API and the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync API.

It uses the powerful classification tools of WordPress, but uses custom tables for high performance access to a large constituent database.

WP Issues CRM integrates with Two popular WordPress Form generators (Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms), supporting online fundraising and case-intake. Data acquired through front-facing forms is accessible through the high performance backend of WP Issues CRM.

It also integrates with Google Maps to allow geographical selection within found lists for downloading or emailing. It supports the configuration of boundary layers to enrich list maps.

WP Issues CRM offers special support for multi-site installations. A single central load of a jurisdication-wide database can supply regularly updated data for district slices of the database.

Email Automation

• Solves the repetitive incoming email problem that major email clients do not solve with typical “conversation view”
• Groups repetitive campaign emails for bulk handling using reply standards you define
• Automatically parses emails to extract street address and other essential information
• Logs emails, creates new constituent records and generates your standard replies — one click for multiple incoming emails
• Handles many variations of address format, achieving successful parsing for most incoming bulk traffic.
• Also facilitates quick turn around of bulk responses using your favorite outgoing snail mail or email list tool.
• Generate email messages to retrieved constituent lists
• Autoreply to repetitive incoming email based on trained subject lines

Form Interfaces

• Capture constituent and transaction data directly into WP Issues CRM from popular form plugins
• Eliminate duplicate data entry for case management
• Use a powerful backend database to track and support your online fundraising
• Allow new post creation on your front facing site without a login. You can allow anonymous posting or require users to identify themselves. Use the spam controls built into popular form tools.

Powerful, Transparent Upload Facility

WP Issues CRM now includes a flexible upload subsystem. The upload subsystem is designed to handle large uploads as in an initial setup and also to support frequent smaller uploads to reduce manual data entry.

Upload Features

• Handles common file .csv and txt file formats
• Learns your the field mappings for your repetitive file uploads
• Validates data transparently so that you can fix problems as they emerge
• Allows you to easily control the matching/deduping strategy and to test alternative approaches before finalizing your upload
• Allows you to add default data for an upload — so, for example, you can upload a list and identify all on the list as having attended signed a petition related to an issue
• Automatically breaks every task and the final upload process into chunks to minimize memory and packet sizes and avoid exceeding system limits
• Allows you to download files documenting the results of your upload to allow, for example, the manual completion of records that failed in the upload
• Allows you to automatically backout some types of uploads

Advanced Search

• Includes powerful general search facility for selecting groups of constituents and activities with complex definitions
• Download or review online with infinite scroll.

Storage Mangement

Includes a facility to show storage usage and to selectively purge interim files and dated external data. So, for example, suppose you initially uploaded your database from a voter list. Over time, you added information about contacts with voters. You could then easily purge all voters with no contacts and add a fresh voter list, matching to the voters that you kept to avoid duplication.

Design of WP Issues CRM

WP Issues CRM uses a fully modular object-oriented design. It is built around a data dictionary so that it is fundamentally flexible. It uses code recursively so that with a small code base it can offer broadly extensible functionality. Since version 3.0, it optimizes the balance of functions between client and server. We use this product ourselves on a daily basis and we are committed to continuous long-term improvement of it.