Introduction

This training consists of a number of building blocks that you, as a trainer, can use during the training.  The overall goal of the training is to get participants to start moving their learning process in the world of open source software and CiviCRM.

The idea is not to distribute as much information as you can: far too much information that most will not remember or need at this time. On top of that, it does not help reaching the overall goal.

The training has been developed upon the idea that participants need help and coaching to take the next step from where  they are at the beginning of your training and will, by the end of the training, have been equipped to use the community and all the other resources to further develop their skills and become members of the community themselves.

Because we generally do not know beforehand what skills or knowledge participants have, you will be required to start finding that out so that you can decide on the building blocks for the training. One of the ways you could do that is by dealing with context and content during the introduction of your course. You will find a description for a way to run your introduction in the first session below.

CiviCRM developer training

Rationale

User organisation’s that intend to- or have implemented CiviCRM are likely to want to make modifications to standard functionality in CiviCRM. Examples could be to develop custom functionality or develop synchronisation functionality to other applications through hooks or the CiviCRM API or to develop access through mobile phones / tablets. Either service providers or user organisation staff may want to be able to do that themselves, rather than call in the help from an external consultancy company. The training will cover the initial principals of the tool and the available tools for developers to start modifying the software.

It is not intended to train people in advanced modifications, though depending on the trainer’s skills, some in-depth activities might be possible.
Duration of the training can vary from a couple of hours for the basic principles to 2 days creating a working example. It depends on the group of students and their needs.

Overall training goal

The developer training aims to provide a number of basic skills to enable participants to start modifying CiviCRM functionality and to explain which tools are available to help them do so (the api, hooks and Smarty stuff, as well as the IRC / forum / etc options).

By the end of the training participants will:

1. be able to start customizing CiviCRM’s default functionality
2. know which options they have to get help during their learning process after the training.

   Learning points

Participants will be able to:* change a template;

• use a hook to customize CiviCRM functionality;
• use the API in templates, hooks, PHP and Ajax/jQuery (including with the REST);
• know how to install CiviCRM from svn;
• know how get help using IRC, the forum, the manuals and the wiki.

Minimum required skills:# Basic PHP and MySQL knowledge

Session 1. Introduction

Rationale

It is important that both trainer and participants know what to expect from the training, and that the training needs of the participants are discussed so that the training can be tailored to those needs.

Objectives

Objectives for this session are:

1. participants know what to expect from the training and get to adjust their expectations
2. trainer knows participants expectations and uses that information to decide on use of building blocks and plenary or individual sessions.

Building block structure

API building block

Introduction to the CiviCRM world