by Ben | Apr 30, 2015 | Community Data, Community Products, Community Tactics, Twitter
The connection between your back office CRM or AMS and your online community is the most critical part of any community implementation. This post covers the need-to-know details about the data sync, the most important part of the implementation process. First, let’s define some terms: Data syncing usually means pushing data from your association management system (AMS) or your customer relationship management (CRM) database to your community platform. This basically ensures that when a member logs into the community, their profile information (whatever fields you have decided should sync) is already there pre-populated in their community profile. One-way and two-way data sync: Most community platforms I’ve worked with accept data from the AMS in a one-way data transfer. However, it is also possible for the data to flow two ways, so new data added by the member into their community profile fields are written back to the AMS, either immediately or in a periodic batch sync (usually overnight). Single sign-on. This functionality connects the AMS database to the platform database so that when a member is logged in to the organization’s website, they are automatically also logged in to the platform and don’t need a separate login. (Not to be confused with… “social sign on”, which is when a member can use their social media credentials (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to log in to the community.) Why data syncing is so important Usability: Single sign on is good for the member’s user experience – you know what a pain it is for a user to have to log in in the first place, and if they had to log in more than once, you’d probably lose them. Another usability example is a member updating...
