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SFDO-Community-Sprints / NPSP-Data-Import

Work on ways to make the NPSP Administrator's Guide to Importing Donor Data easier to use and follow.
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Doc Outline for Developers / Partners / Community Sprinters #3

Open melissabarber opened 5 years ago

melissabarber commented 5 years ago

What sort of resources and information would partners need for using the new Advanced Mapping feature in Batch Data Import?

sebastianocostanzo commented 5 years ago

Purpose of this outline

We are trying to structure the documentation we are refreshing in a way that is useful for developers , partners, techies to understand the considerations they need to make when integrating their own products, custom implementations, community projects.

A similar sprint project tried to address a similar issue for data import, here it is for reference: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1H-5OXdgl-sZRQ5C4pZyHiOFcJvAhaG9H . This project highlighted some concerns the developer/partner and customer community has about integrating with NPSP and what's missing in the current product and its documentation.

Gaps in the current documentation

There are currently two docs in the power of us hub that address the NPSP data import tool, added to files: NPSP Advanced User's Guide to Importing Data and NPSP Administrator's Guide to Importing Donor Data. Those docs are great for documenting the basic the use cases for importing data into NPSP and creating batch data import templates but they fall short of addressing the automation of imports via API integration, which could prove beneficial for partners, developer and integration enthusiasts. There is a section in the advanced guide called "Additional Automation Using Custom Apex Code" but

  1. it suggests that the only way of creating automation is via Apex "This feature requires Apex coding and should only be used by a developer"
  2. there is no mention of an API that can be used by a system integrator to programmatically start the batch process, like this one from Portland Sprint project .

This content currently lives in a section called import data, there is no section in power of hus hub that explicitly mentions integration in the title and includes the topic of programmatic integration using the Import tool (there is one integration section but it's called integration and general administration and it seems to lump together topics that have little to do with APIs and programmatic integration)

Suggestions for improvement

  1. Create an explicit section for integration in power of us hub
  2. Create content for developers that shows them what to do to use NPSP Data Import tool, an example from the previous sprint Sprint Project: Data Capture Standards for NPSP (Tutorial - Test Data Import Technology)
  3. Update documentation to include create an infographic to depict how the NPSP Data Import Tool works, what NPSP Data Import and NPSP Data Import Batch do
  4. Add some "developer use cases" or ways to use Data Import process like this one: https://mighyforce.dreamhosters.com/2018/11/npsp-data-import-stories/ .
  5. Create content (blog, knowledge article) that introduces the developer to the advantages of using NPSP Data Import as opposed to inserting records one at the time, [this](: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qVyD8fOmD8kIrI1-I7QnNnnJ8H-FxvkX_iDNAEXqBXU/edit#heading=h.36sklz3ebg5j) might help represent the benefits of using the tool (from Portland Sprint).
  6. Create content (blog, knowledge article) that introduces the developer to the considerations of using NPSP Data Import in regards to async vs real time integration.
  7. Create content (blog, knowledge article) that introduces the developer to the considerations of using NPSP Data Import and advertise that custom objects are going to be available in Import tool.
  8. Data mapping automation capabilities (?)