training

You May Need Software to View These Training Videos

The Sumac training videos are mp4 files.

If you click to play a video and the movie starts to download and play, then your computer has what you need to view the training files, so skip this section.

If, however, the movie does not start, we recommend that you install QuickTime on your computer and try again. QuickTime can display mp4 files. You can view them using QuickTime, within your browser or by running the QuickTime Player.

Click here to download and install QuickTime.

Windows Media Player is an alternative to using QuickTime. Windows Media Player runs only on Windows computers. Figuring out which add-ons are required to enable different versions of Windows Media Player to play mp4 movies is complex, and we leave it to you and Microsoft.

Using These Training Videos

The video training is divided into lessons, each one about 10 minutes long. There is a description of the content of each section.

You can view the video. You can also download the script that was used to create the video.

Let us know how you use these videos. We will be adding more over the next few months, and would like to hear how we can make this training material more useful to you.

Lesson 1: Sumac Basics for All Users

This video describes basic skills required by all Sumac users.

• start and log on to Sumac
• use the Sumac Console to choose lists
• search for information in the Sumac database
• sort search results
  
• reorganize the list by adjusting column widths, and line heights
• choose which columns are showing in a list
• select items in a list
• edit items in a list and save them back to the database
  
• add new items to the database
• remove items from the database
• export records from the database to a file
• print records from the database

play the video (12 minutes)

read the script

Lesson 2: Communications

Communications are used to record every interaction with your constituency. Creating a communication record for each interaction helps monitor and analyze the effectiveness of phone calls, emails, events and other crucial rapport-building activities. This video describes how to use Sumac to:

• search for communications
• edit existing communications
• create new communications
• edit many communications at once
• relate sets of communication records to get insight into patterns of communications
  

Lesson 3: Single Contact Record

Sumac keeps track of your constituents – your clients, members and donors, audience, board members, staff, and other individuals and organizations. Sumac stores all the basic information about each constituent in a contact record. Additional related information, like communications and donations from a constituent are stored in separate records which are linked to the contact record.

In this lesson you’ll learn what is in a single contact record.

Lesson 4: Contacts List

Sumac keeps track of your constituents in contact records. You can access all your contacts through the contacts list. This video describes how to use the Sumac Contacts list to:

• expand a contact to see related information
  
• create a new contact
• create and modify households
• use Mail Merge to create a personalized document for each contact
  
• generate mailing labels
• review facts for many contacts
  
• send bulk email to many contacts at once
  
• eliminate duplicate contact records
• use Set Values to change many records at once
  

Lesson 5: Finding Contacts

Sumac enables you to find contacts meeting any search criteria. This lesson shows four basic techniques for finding contact records:

• use other lists to show contacts
  
• search within a single column in the contacts list
  
• use special searching capabilities of the contacts lis
• Search Builder
  

Lesson 6: Administrator Tasks

This lesson discusses the role of a Sumac Administrator. Most tasks that have to be done by a Sumac Administrator are in the Administrator menu, so this lesson looks at commands in the Administrator menu. It shows you how to:

• add users and specify their capabilities
• update licensing information
• unlock locked records
• manage lookup lists
• enter information about offices
• specify system-wide preferences
• back up the Sumac database.