AFTA Drupal Development Case Study
Drupal Development
About the Americans for the Arts
The Americans for the Arts (AFTA) is the nation's leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education. Their mission is to build recognition and support for the extraordinary and dynamic value of the arts and to lead, serve, and advance the diverse networks of organizations and individuals who cultivate the arts in America.
Executive Summary
AFTA was leveraging NetForum as their Association Management System, and was looking for a technology partner to help them integrate their Drupal front-end website with NetForum. AFTA was looking to implement an Art Services Directory functionality on their Drupal website that allowed end users to quickly find all types of arts organizations throughout the United States, based on different search criteria, including geolocation. Pumex was also requested to implement several other enhancements to their Drupal platform, which included UI/UX changes, implementation of a Donations/payments functionality (using Salsa API) and integrating different datasets with their NetForum AMS.
Pumex worked with AFTA stakeholders to understand their specific requirements for their front-end website and was able to successfully implement the requested functionality on their Drupal website utilizing integrations with different services, including NetForum xWeb API, Google’s Geolocation API and Salsa’s Donation API.
AFTA was looking enhance their Drupal website experience by implementing an interactive search functionality within the Arts Services Directory, wherein users could search for organizations not just by the traditional search fields, but also by zooming in on a specific location on a map. AFTA had previously tried implementing this functionality with a different vendor without success. Once Pumex successfully completed this project, AFTA was looking to implement a new donations module by leveraging SalsaCRM’s donation module within the Drupal website, and then integrating the payment information with the NetForum AMS database.
Considering that AFTA’s membership data resided in their AMS system, NetForum, Pumex had to build custom integrations within Drupal to push/pull data via the NetForum xWeb API. Pumex build an additional organization interface on the Drupal front-end through which organizations could subscribe to be displayed in the Arts Services Directory search results and assign roles for individuals who had access for the organizations directory listing. Pumex was also able to successfully implement Google’s Geolocation API to display the directory listings on a map interface, allowing for users to zoom in/out, display pins with the organizations information and contact the organization from within the map. Pumex also successfully implemented the SalsaCRM’s donation module with the Drupal website, also creating an admin module on the Drupal backend where AFTA staff could approve a donation prior to pushing the data into the NetForum database.
Current and Future Results
All UI/UX, Arts Services Directory and SalsaCRM donations integration projects were completed on time, in budget, and to client quality expectations.
Pumex is currently working with AFTA to determine enhancements and changes required on their Drupal website when AFTA upgrades their AMS system from NetForum to Nimble.
Future Plans
Pumex is continuing to work with AFTA from a CTO/CIO consultation perspective to help them take their technology to the next level. Pumex is also working with AFTA to cleanse and migrate all their data from NetForum AMS to Nimble CRM utilizing Pumex’s proprietary Unity Data Sync platform.