Integration with CiviCRM
Danyl Strype
Public
Seen by 82
The NZ Pirate Party is now using a free code package called CiviCRM to store and manage our member information. Our Loomio group is open to all financial members, and it would be great to integrate it with Civi so that when new memberships are approved, they are automatically invited to our Loomio group, and when memberships expire and are not renewed, that member is automatically removed from our Loomio group.
The Council of Permaculture in NZ are also using Loomio and Civi, and it would be great if when new Council members are added or retiring ones removed from Civi, members are automatically added to or removed from our Loomio group.
There may be other organisations using both Loomio and Civi who could benefit from the reduction of admin tasks and uncertainty of who is entitled to participate in a given group. It may also encourage existing Civi users to try Loomio, or vice-versa.
Richard D. Bartlett Sat 22 Mar 2014 2:48AM
@strypey do you think you could find someone at Civi to start the conversation with?
Danyl Strype Sat 22 Mar 2014 8:57AM
@richarddbartlett I have emailed Peter from Fuzion, who do Civi support, with the same integration idea. I'll let you know if he responds.
In the meantime, you could try starting a conversation about it at:
http://forum.civicrm.org/
Richard D. Bartlett Sat 22 Mar 2014 10:25PM
Cool thanks @strypey - let's see if there's energy there for a collaboration.
At the end of 2014 I'd like Loomio's report card to get top marks for "plays well with others" :P
vivien maidaborn Wed 26 Mar 2014 9:23AM
Yeah, I loved that phrase and so much easier to say than interoperability!!
Danyl Strype Sun 30 Mar 2014 11:38PM
I introduced Peter and @richarddbartlett by email, and Peter has handed over to Chris, another Fuzion staffer. I assume Richard will follow up with Chris and feedback to the Loomio devs and maybe update us here too? Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help push this along (keeping in mind my net fast starts in a month ;)
Richard D. Bartlett Sun 30 Mar 2014 11:45PM
Thanks for the intro @strypey - I've just come back from a week with a virus so I'll be following up when I get through my backlog :)
Chris Burgess Mon 31 Mar 2014 5:10AM
Hi Loomio! First post. I emailed this to @richarddbartlett and @strypey and I'm reposting here. Also, I think I abused "McDonald's Theory" below.
--
I’m going to McDonald’s Theory a quick reply and we can build from there.
CiviCRM is a PHP app, Loomio is a Rails app. The best way to interact with CiviCRM is via its exposed API, and I don’t know the best way to interact with Loomio but I’m going to presume it has a REST API.
(CiviCRM refers to its API a REST API, but this is a baseless rumour. The API can be addressed via HTTP but it sure ain’t REST.)
To subscribe to CiviCRM events (eg membership renewal, expiry) you could implement a CiviCRM “hook” and then CiviCRM could (say) trigger an HTTP update to Loomio to flag a member as being valid / expired etc. If you know Drupal, CiviCRM has re-used a lot of the hook approach to event notification / observation.
To query CiviCRM from Loomio, you could use the API over HTTP to look up a contact (probably by email or other known “unique” identifier), then query the API for the info you required.
That covers a couple of means of getting data back and forth, so it’ll do for kick-off :)
Nāku noa
Chris Burgess Mon 31 Mar 2014 5:38AM
Since I'm on Loomio here and not in email, I did a quick look around for API this side - it looks like this may be a feature to come in Loomio? Or I'm misreading the community / docs (I'm new, be gentle).
https://www.loomio.org/d/oxrIkqaW/flexible-membership-authentification-api
Seeing this post above, I realise that sync between CiviCRM and Loomio might be approached via the underlying User Framework (UF= CiviCRM terminology for "whatever CMS you're running CiviCRM as a plugin within"). Ie, it may be more approachable to do Drupal UF syncing (solved problem) and then have Loomio talk to Drupal. There are probably more Drupal sites than CiviCRM sites, so this may be an easier integration path to crowdsource. It's also more complicated as it introduces a third component.
Deleted account Fri 4 Jul 2014 12:20AM
I'm quite interested in this.... we are currently looking at converting our Civi data to be useful for an in house developed communication tool that I feel doesn't have the functionality of loomio (especially granted the continued development of loomio).
If i can argue that this would be simple I think the case to push the use of loomio could be strengthened.
We also work with Fuzion... so it would be interesting to know if there have been any developments on this.
Robert Guthrie · Fri 21 Mar 2014 11:25PM
I know the green party also uses Civi.
It would be great to work with an admin from one of these teams, I could see this being a really easy task. Just need an expert Civi person and some guidance from us.