By | Kristina Rigina

The preservation of our planet and the well-being of its inhabitants heavily depend on maintaining a clean environment. Yet, numerous challenges, such as pollution, global warming, greenhouse gases, and other factors, pose significant threats to both human health and the Earth’s ecosystem. Human activities continue to degrade the environment, jeopardizing the very existence of life on Earth.

In order to address these issues and promote environmental conservation, Agiliway was contracted to develop a comprehensive platform for one of the world’s largest environmental protection organizations. The objective was to create an advanced system that would facilitate efficient process management, seamless communication with team members and donors, prompt information distribution, and access to the latest news ecology, natural world preservations, and human impact on the environment.

Adding New Solutions and Features

Given the complexity of the project, our primary focus was to advance the platform management and tailor the functionality to meet the diverse needs of the users.

Agiliway’s software development team was entrusted with enhancing the user experience and augmenting the administrative capabilities of the existing platform. Through close collaboration with the client, we conducted an in-depth analysis and proposed several solutions to address existing requirements prioritizing the most urgent ones. The following enhancements were implemented to improve the system:

• Upgraded to a newer version of the Symfony framework;
• Revamped the user interface for each field during the petition signing process;
• Enhanced the user interface for improved usability and smooth navigation;
• Developed a donation option that utilized an iFrame to construct a customizable form with a unique URL;
• Optimized database performance to reduce page load time when navigating between different sections;
• Resolved language switching issues for enhanced accessibility;
• Introduced a feature for streamlined management of signatories and petitions;
• Implemented an email confirmation feature for petition signatures;
• Updated the questions list that appeared after signing a petition;
• Enhanced database functionality to anonymize donation data after six months, ensuring sponsor anonymity while preserving the visibility of donation amounts and purposes.
• Streamlined the import of participants from Excel, enabling comprehensive data archiving and CSV file generation using the jQuery library.

To optimize the platform’s operational capacity, our software development team utilized the following technologies: Back-end: PHP; Front-end: Webpack, jQuery; Database: MariaDB; Deployment: Capistrano

How NGO Project Management Benefits from CiviCRM Functionality

Effective internal project management is vital for organizations across different sectors. Managing multiple tasks, projects, and globally dispersed teams presents significant challenges.

Based on the partnership with CiviCRM and leveraging its extensibility, the implementation of various modules to address our client’s specific project management needs was proposed. Among the major advantages we provided were

Extension for Effective Communication

A robust extension to expand CiviCRM’s functionality was developed, providing a comprehensive task manager that enables the creation and tracking of tasks, subtasks, comments, and more. By customizing existing CiviCRM instruments, we tailored the extension to align with the client’s unique business logic. Since its implementation in 2020, this extension has been widely adopted within the client’s CiviCRM.

The current functionality of the system enables the assignment of tasks to team members, tracking project status and workflow, generating detailed project reports, and facilitating communication and request management within teams. In addition, the solution helps track membership activity, including the actions of contributors and donors within the organization.

Google Email Synch

An automatic email synchronization feature was implemented, ensuring that any emails sent to the website’s email address are synchronized with CiviCRM, creating corresponding case entities. This integration allows website administrators to communicate within CiviCRM without the need to switch back and forth between email clients. Additionally, functionalities such as viewing, forwarding, replying, replying to all, and autosaving drafts were integrated into the system, providing administrators with convenient email management capabilities.

Payment System Integration

To support the financial needs of the NGO, our team undertook the task of integrating a robust payment system capable of accepting payments from multiple cards and other financial services. The system serves as a mediator between CiviCRM and the client’s organization, ensuring seamless compatibility and providing comprehensive donation information to the accounting team.

This integration was initially designed as a supporting service between CiviCRM and various payment systems, streamlining data processing and configuration. Given that earlier versions of the client’s system allowed for the creation of recurring payments but lacked prearranged scheduling options, our primary focus was to develop functionality that would enable the updating and synchronization of recurring payments with all related data in CiviCRM. Consequently, we created a form that automates the updating and synchronization processes, minimizing manual efforts.

Value for the Client

The implementation of various enhancements, including the UI, functionality, and framework upgrades, fixing bugs, and expert communication provided by Agiliway, resulted in significant improvements to the website. The updates have empowered our client to solve the project management issues for NGOs, both internally and externally, with a simpler UI. Administrators can now manage petitions more efficiently, while users are motivated to actively participate in environmental protection initiatives. In essence, Agiliway successfully achieved its objectives.

In conclusion, through the implementation of advanced administration and visualization features, Agiliway has significantly improved the management capabilities of NGOs. The platform enhancements, along with the integration of CiviCRM functionality, have streamlined internal processes, fostered effective communication, and facilitated project management.