Thinking through your case management system

As with the other areas of CiviCRM, your implementation of the case tools begins with planning. In fact, the planning and configuration step is absolutely essential for working with cases.

However, before we dig into that process, let's take a step back and understand what case management is and how it differs from activity records.

In the opening section, we described a case as the management of a multistep process, surrounding a single theme, issue, or project. In essence, a case is a container for activities and relationships—a mini CRM within CiviCRM. Each case surrounds a single theme, issue, or project attached to one or more constituents. Within this container, we track case activities (our multistep processes), roles (the staff and key players involved in case resolution), and relationships (internal or external contacts who are involved in the case or connected to the contact). By grouping these various pieces of data in a case record...