PT Commons

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h1. Constant Contact sync for CiviCRM

This is documentation for this extension: https://github.com/cividesk/com.cividesk.sync.constantcontact.  I'm not getting paid to fix the bugs mentioned here or ensure the accuracy of what I'm saying, but I took these notes and I'm posting them publicly in case anyone else benefits from them.

* The extension works with Civi 4.6, based both on a statement from Nicolas and on my personal testing.

* After installing and setting up the API key, go to Custom Fields.  There are two new custom field groups associated with this extension; one for groups one for individuals.  Both are named "ConstantContact sync (by cividesk)".  Both groups have a custom field called "ConstantContact List Id".  In my install, the custom field for individuals was NOT set to "View Only", and the field for groups WAS set to "View Only".  These settings should both be reversed.

* This is a mostly one-way sync from Civi to Constant Contact.  However, Civi records certain data about the contact - e.g. its Constant Contact ID.  More importantly, if someone opts out in Constant Contact, it records the "opt out" checkbox in Civi.

* There's a scheduled job that does the actual syncing.  The extension will modify its run frequency based on some criteria - but you may want to run it manually yourself.

* I ran into a situation where my "last sync" time was incorrect, which was causing Civi to report that there was nothing to sync.  I fixed this by editing this line in ConstantContactSync.php from this:

<pre>

$last_sync    = CRM_Utils_Array::value('last_sync',                 $settings, '2000-01-01 00:00:00');

</pre>

to this:

<pre>

$last_sync    = '2000-01-01 00:00:00';

</pre>