Salsa - Forum Topics

Need Dynamic Content for donate dates

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:18:06 -0400

Hi all, I am trying to send an email blast to inactive supporters and want to remind them of their last donation amount and date. I can make the dynamic content insert the salsa script for the last donation amount. BUT there is no set up for the salsa script for the date that donation was made. Does anyone know how to insert that into a blast email? Thanks!

Flag members for mailings?

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:08:47 -0400

We have a couple of Groups in Salsa that we send various email blasts to, such as Board Members, Media, State Legislators, etc. However, our largest group is titled 'Weekly Link,' that is basically our mass mailing list that receives updates about our organization. We've started to push to increase our membership numbers through this Weekly Link group. The issue we've run into is that the Weekly Link group contains everyone from people who attend our events to donors to business contacts. Many of these people have already donated to become members and do not like receiving an email asking them to be a member when they already are. Is there any way to flag/omit these members in the Weekly Link group so they are excluded from the mailings? It's a group of nearly 10,000 and with the membership campaign running, it would seem a burden to export our latest donations and compare and extract users from the group before every mass mailing. I'm just wondering if there's a simpler way. Thanks.

Second addresses - how to extract and use the data?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:54:00 -0400

How do we extract second addresses that have been created in the address tab of Salsa? A query only yields the first address listed, but the others (like secondary, billing, old etc.) don't show. I've been tinkering around in the reports module trying to get a list that way, but its terribly confusing and so far isn't accurate. I'm posting this on the forum so that the Salsa community can be informed as well.

.pdf ---------> e-mail blast?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:58:03 -0400

Is there a way to transfer a pdf directly to an e-mail blast and maintain images and formatting?

How do i make signup/action/donate forms look prettier?

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:28:20 -0400

Where is the documentation on how to make Salsa sign-up forms look different? I've seen some Salsa customer websites that have a totally different look-and-feel from the traditional Salsa forms and I'd love to know how they did it. I got inspired from Chris' blogpost on how to change the traditional "submit" button. http://www.salsacommons.org/o/8001/p/salsa/web/blog/public/entries?campaign_manager_KEY=8254 This is a good start to customizing signup/take action forms.

SeaMonkey for drafting & formatting emails

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:54:01 -0400

I have found drafting emails, including embedding links and formatting (for the most part), to go pretty easily if I do so in SeaMonkey in Composer mode. (I set it so that the default for returns is
as opposed to

which seems to render more consistently.) I can take 3 hours, including interruptions to draft, saving in between, and then just copy and paste the HTML-format into Salsa. SeaMonkey, by the way, is a free open source browser. It works for me. Thoughts? Responses?

Groups-Interests Tab - Support Mgt - Quick Groups

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:12:47 -0400

Here's an image of the current groups-interests panel: http://media.low.li/images/salsa/groups-interests.jpg How about reducing the size of the structure to be more like interests. Also allow us to add popular groups to a 'quick groups' tab that we can quickly populate, since most people are going to belong to a number of groups. http://media.low.li/images/salsa/groups-interests-2.jpg

On a sign-up page, how do I set the order of opt-in groups?

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:32:01 -0400

The order of the groups on the front-end bear no relation to the order on the back-end. Nor can I determine how to change their order.

Un-scheduling report exports

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:37:39 -0400

How do I turn of a schedule export? I get an email every week as the result of scheduling an export of a custom report. How do I make it stop?

Bulk Add Contact History Item To Found Supporters

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:52:05 -0400

I would like to bulk add a contact history note to about 50 supporters. This does not seem to be available from the query/export interface. Is there a way to do this within the interface?

Blobs - Stripping hard returns on import

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:01:02 -0400

I've got a legacy notes field with all sorts of gibberish in it that only makes sense when there are returns, tabs, etc. When I create a pipe-delimited import for legacy notes to existing supporters, all returns are stripped from the legacy notes. Is there a way around this?

sharable eblasts would make me really happy!

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:08:30 -0400

any idea when eblasts will be made social media shareable? seven months ago, I was told salsa was working on it... nothing yet... any idea when this will happen?

Support Table Fields List, etc.

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:45:43 -0400

Where can I find a list of salsa tables with their tables listed?

Member Management - specific member notes

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 23:01:00 -0400

I'd like to list notes about each member that doesn't fit into a tagging or grouping system. For instance, a reminder that this person has a daughter named Sue or that the organization receives letters of inquiry _only_ in early October, etc. How do I do this?

Trouble with crediting Organizations rather than individuals

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:46:45 -0400

Is there a better way to track support and donations from ORGANIZATIONS? Our org. gets lots and lots of donations and support from Organizations, but the system won't display the name of an organization like it does for an individual. This is a serious issue considering it's very easy to duplicate an organization and, more importantly, because I can't accurately credit the gift to the org, which makes a number of other tasks unnecessarily complicated. HELP PLEASE!!!

How do I add an Unsubscribe link to my template

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:43:43 -0400

Hello, How do I add an unsubscribe link to my email template? I tried using the instructions, but they mention something about an unsubscribe button in the template tool which I don't see.

Salsa actions and the iPad...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:28:11 -0400

I'm considering creating an optimized action page for display on iPads. Has anyone else done this? Any thoughts you could share, or lessons learned?

Segmenting a group?

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 13:22:16 -0400

Hello! We have a group of supporters who downloaded a recent guide we released and we're planning to send these supporters a fundraising ask today. Is there any way to "filter out" people from the group based on when they downloaded the report? (We'd rather not send the fundraising ask to people who only downloaded the report a couple hours ago.) Is there any way to do this? Thanks for your help! -Maggie

how do i create an email as a webpage?

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:53:09 -0400

how do i create an email as a webpage?

Problem with adding sign-up page to Facebook fan page

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:01:34 -0400

I'm trying to follow the great advise from Dave at Salsa on adding a sign-up page to our Facebook page, but I'm having some trouble. I keep seeing an empty rectangle at the top middle of the screen, and some text that reads, "This template does not have a valid content TemplateBeginEditable tag." When I try to add elements of our designed template to the blank template I set up, it pulls in the middle third of our website, with the sign-up page. I've left the app live so that someone can see it (and hopefully help!): http://www.facebook.com/getequal?sk=app_131773450250837 Any suggestions? I don't especially want to leave this live for long, though I've hidden it on the apps menu, so not many folks are going to see it...

Remove "daily transaction restriction" for testing donations/orders

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:34:00 -0400

When I'm testing a donation or storefront, I use the "all-1s" method as outlined in your documentation: http://salsacommons.org/o/8001/p/salsa/website/public2/page?reference=Merchant%20Gateway%20Accounts%20-%20Troubleshooting Testing donation pages and storefronts often involves many pieces, including thank-you pages, trigger emails to the donor and the organization, tell-a-friend functionality, connecting it to an actions workflow, etc. If I test this more than four times, I get the following message: Due to daily transaction restrictions, your current IP address(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) has been blocked from making transactions. Please wait 24 hours before trying again. If you feel this is not correct, please contact the organization. This is an absurd restriction to place on transactions being done for testing purposes. Please remove this unnecessary restriction when testing transactions.

Wordpress, Salsa and Gravity Forms

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:48:30 -0400

solution for getting supporters from Wordpress to Salsa using gravity forms.. https://github.com/henare/gravityformssalsa

Email blast bounce emails

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:01:37 -0400

Is there a way to mark email addresses that bounce from email blasts as inactive?

Timestamps for tags and group assignment

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:19:05 -0400

Is there a way to get a timestamp from a supporter profile of when they were added to a group and/or assigned a tag?

Slow Query download

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:09:33 -0400

I am trying to export a query for two days now and it never seems to come into my email. What is going on? It is really holding me up on progress I need to be making on my projects. Thanks!

Sending emails to new "greedy" smart group members....

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:38:10 -0400

Is it possible to send an email to people when they get added to a smart group? We just set up a greedy smart group and what emails sent to folks as they get added. We set up an autoresponse, but its not working.... Any suggestions?

Tracking TOTAL supporter numbers over time.

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:16:53 -0400

How do a track my supporter count over time? I know there's a sticky I can use to see how many supporters I've ADDED each month. But I'm looking for something different -- the TOTAL cumulative number, over time. That's because we have deleted and deduped some supporter records, so our numbers have dropped from time to time.

Email blast with iphone or tablet ... Can't paste into content field

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:55:56 -0400

I was disappointed that I can do everything to get out an email blast on my iphone, EXCEPT paste into the content window. Kind of important step! I thought maybe it was just something the iphone couldn't do, but I got a droid tablet and discovered the same problem. So it must be the wysiwyg that isn't allowing it? Has anyone toyed with this or discussed it before...I searched commons but couldn't find anything.

Anonymous Donations

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:30:03 -0400

How can I mark a donation as anonymous?

"in memory of" problem

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:00:12 -0400

When a donor uses the default "in memory of" field for one donation, then leaves it blank for a later donation, the "in memory of" data from the first donation is not cleared by the second one. Is there a way to force the form to accurately overwrite the old data with the empty field from the second donation?

Is there a way to credit one supporter with a "soft credit" when they convince other supporters to donate?

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:28:10 -0400

Is there a way to credit one supporter with a "soft credit" when they convince other supporters to donate? This is a feature in Raiser's Edge that we used to use, so when a supporter would email their friends and ask everyone to donate to us, we would be able to code the resulting donations as being generated by the original donor. Any tips or advice would be appreciated, because we don't want to lose this information.

SOS! custom recipient help needed!

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:36:51 -0400

How do I transfer a supporter group into a 'custom recipient' group?

Google Apps Marketplace

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:23:15 -0400

Google Apps Marketplace: have you considered this type of integration for your clients? Many organizations use Gmail as their email server and this could have potential to all Google powered devices.

Tracking Campaign Manager activity?

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:11:37 -0400

Is there a report or query I can generate that shows the activity of a particular Campaign Manager: members added, email blasts created, contact history entered, etc?

CSS or HTML tweaks for petition page?

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:55:26 -0400

Hello Everyone! I was wondering if anyone can share how they tweaked/customized their petition pages. I'm looking for some inspiration for ours. :)

Text-only vs HTML Alert Stats?

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:39:26 -0400

Anyone know how to view how many supporters received an alert in the text-only version vs. those who received the full html?

Creating a template from a banner image?

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:28:44 -0400

I created a template from a banner image and it looks great on the preview and on some email hosts. But, when I send a test to my gmail account, the banner doesn't show up. Any suggestions?

Tag permission problem

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:59:47 -0400

We are trying to make sure that 600 of our 9000 records only receive email blasts from our Small Business organizer, not our general email blasts. We need to tag them so that only he has access to them. But this is the opposite of how Tag permissions work. Help?

Thank yous for recurring donations

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:14:11 -0400

Does salsa send a thank you message every time a recurring donation is processed?

Creating an auto-responder for an API form

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:36:44 -0400

I'm trying to create a auto-responder for a new sign-up form. The sign-up form auto assigns the user into a specific group, and can be used by new or pre-exisiting supporters. I want to send a thank you email for anyone that uses the form I built via the API. What criteria should I use for my Send Condition?

Checking validity of email address domains

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:23:43 -0400

It would be great if Salsa had a script to check for invalid domains. For receive email, there is a status called Inactive - Null MX (The domain is not valid). But I never find any records marked that way, so it looks like there is no automated way to check domain validity now besides sends & bounces.

Hey Salesforce users

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:28:55 -0400

Anyone out there have a decent system for importing Salsa donations into Salesforce? We're considering a full-scale Salsa/SF integration, but want to know if there are more affordable options out there. For instance, we're wondering if SF's Demand Tools might do the trick.

Update to email summary page

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:04:07 -0400

It would be helpful if the email summary page (https://hq-salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/hq/email/summaryList.jsp) was sorted by date sent, instead of date created. It's difficult to see patterns over time when emails are shown out of order from when they are sent.

How can I tell which donations resulted from an eblast?

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:36:54 -0400

We are able to see the total donor conversion count and sum of all donations on the eblast summary, but I can't figure out how to list the specific donations that occurred as a result of clicking a donate link in an eblast. I would also like to include this information when exporting lists of recent donations.

Salsa events and social sharing

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:27:09 -0400

How do you handle events and social sharing? As I see it, the benefit of a Salsa events is that you get email signups. The benefit of a Facebook event is that you get a lot more sharing from your supporters, plus the additional exposure when their RSVP shows up in their feed. "Facebook connect" inside Salsa events is nice, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Letting people RSVP on Salsa events with their Facebook account is cool, but not the same as creating an event on Facebook which then makes it easy to invite Facebook friends. It doesn't look like Salsa event RSVPs show up in a user's Facebook feed either. How do other groups do it? Thinking out loud, it seems like creating dual events is the way to go. Is there an easier/better way?

Does 3yr old "last modified" field in supporter table = moribund member?

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:47:18 -0400

When is the "last modified" field updated in supporter table? i.e. what action triggers such an update? I'm looking to safely remove people -- and wondering if people fit that category whose "last modified" date is 3 years old.

Need efficient way to set multiple actions to "inactive" ?

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:25:28 -0400

Is there a way to set multiple action statuses to "inactive" all at once? As opposed to going to each individual action page, then going to restrictions and finally setting status for "inactive". I need to clear our old action from the last few years so that people who stumble across an old page aren't sending an out-of-date auto-letter. I'd like to know the most efficient way to do that. Any ideas? Or, do I need to approach each action page individually?

Storefront item links

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:35:52 -0400

Is it possible to change the link text for items on the storefront? Instead of "Show Details & Purchase," I'd like it to say "Show Details & Register".

Sending fax through advocacy campaign

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:00:44 -0400

How to send a fax blast. I have selected "fax" from the pull down menu as the method to send the letter to the target but have been test running it with my fax number and am still receiving emails but no faxes. Any suggestions?

WILPF, US Job Posting

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:39:22 -0400

JOB POSTING: July 1, 2011 Consultant Position: IT Coordinator and Web Communications Specialist Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section Boston, MA Founded in 1915, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is the oldest, continually active women’s peace organization in the world, with sections in 37 countries. WILPF exists to “bring together women of different political beliefs and philosophies united in their determination to study, make known and help abolish the causes and legitimization of war.” Toward this goal, WILPF members engage in a number of specific projects, issue committees, and national campaigns, evolving and changing over time. Information about these activities is available on line at www.wilpf.org. Position Summary The IT Coordinator and Web Communications Specialist is responsible for the organization, updating and maintenance of the website; technical support of electronic communications; editing and production of monthly E-newsletter. This position provides problem solving and trouble shooting for the website and IT systems on both an ongoing and emergency basis. Terms: Part-time, contract position, approximately 7-10 hrs per wk on average, $30/hr. Available some evenings/weekends and on emergency basis. Telecommute possible. Immediate start. Job Responsibilities 1. Website 1. Maintain the current Drupal website, updating materials as needed and posting new content as requested. 2. Work with WILPF leadership to support website redesign and implementation, ensuring user friendly organization and visual appeal 3. Support diverse group of constituents in maintaining individualized sections of website 2. IT 1. Oversee relationship with hosting service, ensuring timely response to problems 2. Maintain internal communications systems 3. Advise WILPF on appropriate upgrades and/or changes to IT services 4. Ensure that reliable system backup procedures are in place, including offsite storage of key data files 3. Database and E-communications 1. Assist with oversight of web-based database, fundraising and e-activism system using Salsa platform, ensuring smooth operation of donation and communications infrastructure 2. Technical support of production and disbursal of e-communications, including rapid response political e-actions 3. Responsible for editing and production of monthly E-newsletter; from soliciting and compiling contributions; coordinating communication between authors, staff and Board; to formatting and production maintaining regular monthly timeline. Technical Skills: Required: * Experience working with a Drupal website, including pages, menu structure, content types, taxonomy, views, users, roles and module updates. * Knowledge and/or experience with other open-source website platforms and ability to advise WILPF on benefits and drawbacks of each * Proficient in HTML * Understanding of PHP coding * Ability to interface with vendors about highly technical issues * Awareness of IT trends and development to identify technologies that will be of benefit to WILPF in areas of software, hardware, communication technology, office productivity and social media * Excellent written and verbal communication skills * Copywriting and/or editorial experience * Ability to work with and support a wide range of users from a wide range of backgrounds with varying levels of technical expertise. * Ability to be available on short notice to address any urgent issues that may arise * Flexibility and willingness to work in a dynamic environment where priorities can change quickly, with a commitment to positive, proactive communication * Comfort with collaborative working relationships, ability to remain open to new approaches and opinions Desirable: * Experience with Democracy in Action or other Salsa online organizing platforms * Experience at transitioning website platforms * Knowledge of and commitment to WILPF’s mission WILPF is an equal opportunity employer. To Apply: No phone calls, please. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, please apply promptly. Please e-mail a cover letter that describes your interest in the work of WILPF and your qualifications for the position, include your resume, 2 writing samples and the names of two professional references to: employment@wilpf.org, Subject line: Web/IT Consultant Search