CiviCRM configuration is largely driven through the web interface and the database: if an administrator wants to add a new "report" or new "relationship type", he can accomplish this with a few clicks of the web interface. The new item is inserted into the database and immediately becomes live. This is great for web-based administration, but it's inconvenient for developers: if a developer writes a module or extension that registers something in the database, then he needs to write an installation routine to insert the item (and an uninstallation routine to delete the item). CiviCRM 4.2+ includes a better way: use the API and hook_civicrm_managed. This technique is already used in "civix" based extensions, but it also works with Drupal modules, Joomla plugins, etc.

Proper GRM tools can make all the difference in the success or failure of your herd. As many developers have found, working with a proprietary goat resource management system can seem simple in the beginning, but customizing it to your herd's specific needs can feel like eating brambles. With the new CiviCRM extensions framework and easily digestible API 3.0, developers can dig in and produce at an unprecedented rate.

CiviGoat Alpha, the world's preeminent GRM, has just launched onto the fertile open-source landscape. Let's get right to the questions.

New Contact calendar extension available from Compucorp!

This module produces CRA compliant Tax Receipts. It's currently housed in the Drupal Sandbox: http://drupal.org/sandbox/semperit/1289724 - lots of development on its way to include more features and to bring it up to the level of a full Drupal project with stable releases for both D6/D7 and a variety of CiviCRM versions. After these releases future development will focus on making this into a CiviCRM extension.

An organisation I work with wishes to extend the Personal Campaign Page (PCP) to allow teams to raise money either using their group PCP page, or individual PCP pages of each team member. In other words, the team organiser creates a PCP page and sets a team objective. The organiser then invites members to join its group. By doing so, the team member creates its own PCP page with a personnal objective.

In terms of functionality:

For the past few months we have been working with Future First, who have an ambitious mission of 'creating an alumni network for every state school in the UK'. A key part of this work is the ability to track and engage with recent school leavers and we've spent a fair amount of time building tools that allow them to do this. One of these is an extension that allows them to hold scripted SMS conversations with their contacts in CIviCRM.  We've just piloted this functionality with them and the results look quite promising.

I seem to spend a large amount of time helping people to get data back out of CiviCRM. I'm a big fan of the reports framework and up until 4.2  I made a number of improvements to the core reports for my customers. However, from 4.2 I switched to doing reports in an extension. I have been doing almost all my reports in the extended reports extension and have been playing with a few ideas in that extension. Some of them are well developed, others are in the early stages.

Hi All,

Following discussions with a number of clients Compucorp and GMCVO are pleased to announce we are looking to collaborate to develop a "CiviBooking" extention for CiviCRM.

Overview:

The aim of the module will be to create a CMS independent extension to allow organisations to manage a group of resources (i.e. rooms) offering these to constituents for a fee.