Salsa Rules! A New Drupal Module for Democracy in Action

One frequent request we get from clients is to integrate their Drupal web site user profiles with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system so that their users' information can be used for email messaging and other purposes.

We've worked with a variety of CRMs including CiviCRM, SalesForce, Avectra netFORUM, Convio, and Democracy In Action's Salsa.

Salsa has a focus on advocacy activities including creating and signing petitions, generating letters to the editor, and fundraising. so it's a natural fit for a lot of our work with nonprofits, NGOs, and other public policy organizations.

When built EarthDay.org, we created a social networking site for users to register and commit to the cause, and at the end everything had to flow into Salsa to serve as one master list of events, petitions, and individuals for the Earth Day Network. 

In order to make the process as flexible as possible, we based our work on the Drupal Rules module, adding actions to create Supporters, Events, Petitions, Campaigns and Groups from nodes in Drupal.

Below is a screencast showing some of the potential. I take you through the process of creating a new user with a Content Profile node and creating a Supporter in Salsa. Then, I create an Event in Salsa from one in Drupal and have a user register for that Event. The result is that having their Supporter record is correctly associated with the Event in Salsa.

This new module is available on drupal.org at www.drupal.org/project/salsa_rules. I hope you find it useful to your work.