4.4 Alpha 3 Release

Published
2013-08-28 21:51
Written by

The third alpha release of CiviCRM 4.4 is now available for downloading AND you can try it out on the 4.4 sandbox site!

We Need You to Try it Out!

Excited to try the new features in this release? Please do! Great software requires great testers, and you can help. You don't need to be super technical to participate in this way, but your participation will make a huge difference.

  • Download it and either do a fresh install or (better yet) upgrade a test copy of your existing database. Note that this is alpha software and should not be used on production servers.
  • Try to break it! Do all the things you normally do with CiviCRM, try out as much as you can think of.
  • If anything doesn't seem right, please let us know on the Release Testing Forum.

What's New In CiviCRM 4.4

» View the full list of improvements for 4.4

New Extensions for 4.4

Not all the good stuff in CiviCRM comes in the main package. There are also many extensions you can install. Here are some exciting new and updated extensions for CiviCRM 4.4. (Note that some of these extensions are not yet published on the extensions directory but will be available as part of the stable 4.4 release.)

  • CiviHR - A fully-featured Human-Resources management application for charities and non-profits.
  • CiviVolunteer - Recruit and manage a variety of volunteers for your events.
  • Webform Payments - The popular Webform Integration module now integrates with CiviContribute, CiviMember, and paid CiviEvents.
  • SEPA Direct Debit Payments - Allows CiviCRM users to setup an SDD compliant payment process for recurring and one-off direct debits.
  • CiviBooking - Now organisations can manage a group of resources (i.e. rooms, equipment, etc.) offering these to constituents for a fee.

CiviCRM is free, open source software made possible through contributions from people like you. If your organization benefits from using CiviCRM and from the great new features in this release, please consider making a recurring contribution to support the project.

Compatibility

CiviCRM 4.4 is compatible with:

  • Drupal 7
  • Drupal 6 (community supported)
  • Joomla 2.5 & 3.0
  • Wordpress 3.4 and higher

New Installations

If you are installing CiviCRM 4.4 from scratch, please use the corresponding automated installer instructions:

Upgrading to 4.4

If your site is highly customized with special code or theming for CiviCRM you will want to upgrade a test copy first and test your customizations. For everyone else, follow these simple steps to get yourself up and running with 4.4.

Contributors

Community support and engagement is the force that sustains and drives CiviCRM forward. This release would not have been possible without the incredible contributions of these people and organizations:

AGH Strategies - Andrew Hunt; Backoffice Thinking; Chris Burgess; Circle Interactive - Andrew Walker, Dave Moreton; CiviDesk - Nicolas Ganivet; CiviHosting - Hershel Robinson; Community Builders; Compucorp - Jamie Novick, Erawat Chamanont; Confluence - Frank Gomez, Michael Daryabeygi; Dave D; CiviCoop - Erik Hommel; Drupal Association - Neil Drumm; Electronic Frontier Foundation - Micah Lee, Kellie Brownell; Emphanos - Allen Shaw; Fuzion NZ - Eileen McNaughton, Peter Davis, Torrance Hodgeson; Giant Rabbit- Anna Heath; Jim Meehan; JMA Consulting - Joe Murray; Keith Morgan; Ken West; Korlon - Stuart Gaston; Koumbit - Samuel Vanhove; Lighthouse Consulting and Design - Brian Shaughnessy; Mathieu Lutfy; National Democratic Institute - Chris Doten; New York State Senate - Ken Zalewski; NfP Services (MTL Software Group) - Jag Kandasamy, Rajesh Sundararajan; Niro Solutions; Noah Miller; Orgis - Hans Idink; Palante Technology Cooperative - Jon Goldberg; Progressive Tech Project - Alice Aguilar, Jamie McClelland; Paul Delbar; Registered Nurses Association of Ontario; San Francisco Baykeeper - Eliet Henderson; Tadpole - Dana Skallman; Tallyfox; Tech to the People - Xavier Dutoit; Third Sector Design; Veda Consulting - Parvez Saleh; Web Access - Pradeep Nayak; Wikimedia Foundation - Adam Wight; Zing - Simon West, Andrew Tombs.

Comments

The list of changes above will be interest to some but for others some of the less obvious fixes will be as or more important. There is quite a lot of unde- the-hood improvement in 4.4  -  for developers the extended 'getoptions' functionality is great.

On the UI side here are some changes I'll be looking out for

  • html in pay later instructions (with WySIWIG) http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-10397
  • Billing fields on (most / all?) forms now prefill with is_billing or primary address if billing address doesn't exist. e.g. backoffice Credit card membership payments.
  • Display Contribution Information in Participant Report CRM-12791
  • Recurring Contribution dates now available from advanced search
  • Add limit criteria to scheduled reminders
  • Visual selection of "credit card type" on contribute/event forms (I like this one a lot) CRM-12515
  • Second degree relationship permissions CRM-11861
  • Fill in membership or contribution form on behalf of someone else (add cid=0 into the URL).
  • When filling in membership, contribution, event forms on behalf of someone else logged in user can select that person
  • Copy honor contact & custom data so follow up recurring contributions (Yay)  CRM-12524
  • Paypal express recurring transactions not recorded

Looks like recording paypal express recurring payments is not in 4.4 http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-12679