2020 Website Training

The ARCS IS Committee hosted several on-line website overview and training sessions for new officers and Chapter Site Administrators. The recordings of these sessions are available for review. 2020 Website Training Sessions. If you have responsibilities or interest in the ARCS website please review any or all of the sessions.

Guide to Website Help Resources

Below are documents and videos designed to help you get started managing the ARCS website for your chapter. Items that are links will download an associated .pdf. If you have questions please email members of the Information Strategies Committee for help at is.help@arcsfoundation.org. Currently ARCS is referring to both Database Administrators (who focus on member, scholar and donor data) and Content Editors (who focus on editing public web pages) as Chapter Site Administrators. The following sections are organized around these two different areas.

Chapter Database Administrators

• Data Administrator Overview: This one hour video is an introduction to managing ARCS contacts, memberships, scholars and awards using CiviCRM. The accompanying Power Point slides may be downloaded here.

• Contact Management: This document outlines how to create new contacts, edit existing contacts including adding groups and tags.

• Cividesk Training: ARCS received a customized set of training sessions from our vendor. There are four sessions: Contact Management, Event Management, Membership Management and Awards, Reports, CiviMail and Price Sets. An excellent place to start your introduction to CiviCRM. Slides and videos from the training provided by Cividesk.

• Scholar Data Entry. We have a new process for entering scholar data. Instead of entering scholar contact information and awards one at a time on the website, simply download and fill in this spreadsheet. The first tab of the spreadsheet has instructions for filling in the scholar data. Send the completed spreadsheet to is.help@arcsfoundation.org and we will bulk import the data for you. This has proven to be a huge time saver especially for those chapters with larger numbers of annual awards.

• Scholar Data Management. Diane Might of the (Phoenix, Utah) has shared the detailed manual for creating and maintaining scholar data in the ARCS database. Click to download the .pdf manual.

• Calendar for Database Administrator website updates: For suggestions on when to make updates to your member and scholar data please download this document.

• National Newsletter Tag. If you have contacts in your CiviCRM database that you would like to receive the email version of the National Newsletter, just following the directions in this document to add the "National Newsletter" tag to their contact record. Remember, all scholars and members automatically recieve the newsletter so this tag is just for other contacts like donors, university administrators, potential members, etc.

• Membership Documentation. Diane Might of the Phoenix chapter has graciously shared the documentation she has prepared for the Phoenix chapter on all things related to membership. There are six chapters:

  • Membership Management Basics
  • Update Online Membership Contributions
  • Manage Membership Renewals
  • Manage Membership Loging and User Accounts
  • Create Board Group for Transition Email
  • Reconcile Web Contact Data and Hard Copy Roster Data

  Although your chapter may have slightly different processes the information for using the CiviMembership and CiviContribution modules is very detailed and very helpful.

• Mosaico Mail System. The new Mosaico mail system is available for all chapters to use. Get started creating attractive, responsive emails by viewing the video and/or reading the documentation.

• The website contains a built in calendar. All CiviEvents defined for your chapter will appear on the calendar visible on the My Portal when a member logs in. Here are the directions for customizing the colors for your events and instructions for how to place your chapter events on the National calendar.

Chapter Content Editors

• Content Training Sessions: As part of the migration, sessions were held on how to edit public pages that were migrated from the old site and how to create and edit new custom panel pages. This page contains the links to the videos and slides for these sessions. If you are just getting started with content editing, watching these videos is a great place to start.

• Website Content Editing Overview: This is a video of a session for Chapter Content Editors covering how to use Drupal to update content on the ARCS Website. Covers the WYSIWYG editor, updating panels and layouts, how to create articles and control where they are published. Also reviews other content types: Media Galleries, Internal Ads, Featured Scholars and Scholar pages. This is the link to the video. Here are the PowerPoint slides.

• Adding current scholars: We have a new way to easily add scholar pictures and bios. Look at this page of Oregon scholars to see how these pages look. Here is a youtube video that shows how to create this type of page: How to create a scholar page.

• Add videos to any of your web pages by following these easy instructions. Note that if you want to use the ARCS Youtube site to host your video, you will need to contact is.help@arcsfoundation.org for the password.

• Keep your website fresh with easy to create news articles. The easiest way to add content to your website is using "News Articles". Download this document for instructions on how to easily create fresh content using articles.

• Calendar for Content Editor website updates: For suggestions on when to make updates to your chapter website public pages please download this document.