Thinking through your case management system
As with 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. Unlike other components within CiviCRM which you may begin working with out-of-the-box with minimal initial planning, the case tools require construction of a configuration file which must be present in your system in order to use the tools.
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 multi-step 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 multi-step processes...