Creating a test constituent account in your Neon CRM allows you, a User, to view Neon pages through the eyes of your constituents. You can also use a test account to practice different Neon functionality without impacting your actual constituent data.
For example, you might practice importing different types of data or running an account batch update using your test account before performing the import to update any important account data. Once you are comfortable with the process, you can proceed with the task using your real constituent data.
View Your Constituent Login Portal With Your Test Account
Set Up Your Test Account
To create a test constituent account, navigate to the Quick Add button and select New Individual.
Next, enter a First Name and a Last Name for your test constituent account. Adding a valid Email Address to your test constituent account is helpful to test your System Emails and Campaign Emails.
Select the left-side arrow to Show More.
Scroll down to the bottom of the pop-up to the Login section. Enter a Login Name and Password. Ensure you choose a Login Name that is different from your User email address. Then, select Create Account.
To see your front-end pages as your constituents do, use this login information instead of your system user information when you next log in to your system. We recommend that, if you are testing your front-end pages with your constituent account, open the test account in a different browser window than your system user account. This allows you to view both sides at once, i.e. the system user side and the constituent side.
Test Transactions Using Your Test Account
You may wish to test what it is like to register or donate on public pages as a constituent, and/or you may wish to see how the system email in response to these actions appears to a constituent. You can find links to the new account form and donation form under Forms & Pages > Forms.
To test out transactions without actually paying, you will want to make your event or membership registration free while you are testing. Alternatively, particularly for donations, temporarily allow for deferred payments so you do not have to actually pay during your test; you can elect to send in a check later. Read more about deferred payments here. Remember, the transaction is not complete until that check is marked received on the account.
To create a fake transaction and payment on the back end as a system user, or to mark a deferred test from the front-end as complete, add a payment to a transaction using tender type Check and mark it as received. (You will need to log back in as a system user to do this.)
Ensure to delete the test account's individual registration/donation/membership when you are finished so it does not cause confusion in your actual attendance/donation/member count. No refund is necessary because there was no real payment.
Create a Test Email Audience Using Your Test Account
You can also use your test account to test out emails in Neon. For example, you can create an email audience that contains only your test account so you can send yourself a Campaign Email. This way, you can test out your Campaign Email and make sure that it is to your liking prior to sending out the email to your constituents.
To create your test email audience, navigate to Emails > Email Audiences and then select New Audience.
On the New Audience pop-up, enter an audience name in the Name field and then select Create Audience.
To add your test account into the audience, click Add Recipient in the Recipients section.
Enter the applicable information on the Add Recipient pop-up and then select Save.
Your test email will now appear in the Recipients section of the Email Audience. You may select the three dot Action Menu in the upper right corner of the page and then select Send Email Campaign to send a test campaign email to the test account.
View Your Constituent Login Portal With Your Test Account
If you are encouraging constituents to log in, we recommend that you log in with your test account so you can see the Portal through the eyes of one of your constituents.
You can now take a look at a number of features of your Neon system in the same way that your constituents can. For example, you can go through the process to submit a donation to your organization.