In the coming weeks, you can expect a series of changes going into the development pipeline to support the CiviCRM-Drupal 8 integration. Individually, these will seem unrelated and disjoint - they may not explicitly reference “D8”. I wanted to spend a moment to discuss the concept which ties them together: the clean install process, which will make Civi-D8 an equal member of the Civi CMS club and a good base for continued development and maintenance.
This work on D8 stabilization has been made possible by the generous funders of the Civi-D8 Official Release MIH. If you’d like to see more topics addressed, please consider contributing to the MIH.
What do you mean by "clean" install process?
A "clean" install process is a set of steps for building a site in which CiviCRM comes in a direct fashion from source-code with a bare minimum...
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Two aspects of CiviCRM’s broad roadmap involve improving the user interface and adopting a flexible form builder, both of which are well underway. In some cases, there’s overlap in the end product in that work on one or the other results in an overall better user experience. That’s the case with work that’s currently underway that addresses CiviCRM’s export interface.
By applying some of what the Core Team has already been working on with respect to Form Builder, we’ve been able to overhaul the export interface such that it’s significantly more flexible, allowing users to reorder fields with ease. The work has been funded graciously by the Wikimedia Foundation who’s been keen to address both UI improvements as well as flexibility in the form layer.
The new export interface will ship as an extension, though at a...
Read moreThe CiviCRM core team have looked at this and are now in a position to complete the work to make this an official CiviCRM release. This means they will make changes so
- CiviCRM can easily be installed with Drupal 8
- They will ensure CiviCRM works with Views in Drupal 8
- Going forward future CiviCRM releases will be tested with Drupal 8
Any money raised by the Make It Happen which is not spent on the initial work will be used to support future work on the CiviCRM Drupal 8 integration as needed.
How can we find a user-friendly way of creating templates for serial letters and other mass communication? Is it possible to integrate CiviCRM with open-source online applications to facilitate the creation of office templates for our users?
This has been bothering us for some time, because many of our users find it hard to set up and work with templates in HTML format. So we started a proof of concept to check possible options… and we found an answer!
After the server version of libreoffice unfortunately turned out to be unsuitable, we found a feasible solution using the open-source office suite ONLYOFFICE, and created an extension to plug it into CiviCRM.
In a first draft version of the extension “onlyoffice”, you will be able to ….
- Install ONLYOFFICE on a CiviCRM server and use its comprehensive functionality for document management.
- Display files created with ONLYOFFICE in CiviCRM ...
We came down to the wire with CiviTutorial, having less than a day to go before the Make It Happen campaign funding its development was set to expire. In the end, we had 24 awesome donors pitch in to fund the extension and make CiviTutorial a reality.
The Core Team is very happy to see this effort funded. Work began on CiviTutorial at the Governance Summit in September. As the group discussed improving the adoption and useability of CiviCRM, Coleman not only listened, he started on an idea that blossomed into a prototype of CiviTutorial. After a demo and review, summit participants gave the greenlight and indicated that CiviTutorial would be a very positive development.
Expect a release of CiviTutorial soon, in the meantime...
Huge thanks to the long list of supporters that made this happen!
... Read moreThe Civi Summit was a great event - full of lots of nice surprises. One that stands out for me was that what started out as some wishful thinking - namely having the ability to provide on-page tours/tutorials - ended up with us being able to beta test a 'proof of concept' before we left.
While some amongst us (ahem) were sampling the whiskey and fine IPAs late in the evening along to the strumming of the musically-able folk, others remained focussed on their laptops - and in Coleman's case this meant getting us a working prototype of a tour/tutorial system for civi pages.
This will give us all the ability to create user guidance on the screen, with settings to determine which Group members get which tutorials, whether they can skip/defer and come back to them later, multi-language/translation options and lots more.
You will even be able to daisy-chain your tutorials together so a new user can take themselves on a very quick but comprehensive tour of the many...
Read moreThe recent DevCamp in New Jersey presented several sessions on new developments in CiviCRM land as well as showcased several of its inner workings. One session presented by Core Team member Tim Otten stood out for me: Form Builder. If you’re like me, you listen to folks like Tim with a great deal of respect and appreciation for what they say (and do). That doesn’t necessarily mean you understand everything he says, but you know enough to know that what he’s saying is probably right and well thought out! Occasionally, you do understand it though.
I’ve had one of those moments, and I wanted to report back to the rest of the world. As you might be aware, we kicked off a Make It Happen campaign to flesh out a working prototype of Form Builder. In the Make It Happen campaign we talk...
Read moreLast month I made a proposal for a client to integrate CiviCRM with Outlook 365. This proposal was rejected because the client did not go for an e-mail migration to Outlook 365. So the need for this plugin was gone.
The plan was that this integration would do the following:
- all the contacts in CiviCRM exposed to the outlook address book
- all the groups and the group membership exposed as groups in the outlook address book
- above would be done with the restriction that you can only see the contacts and groups which you are allowed to see when you login into CiviCRM
- outlook address book is read only. Meaning that changes should be made in CiviCRM and become visible in outlook
I made a guesstimate that development including testing and documentation takes between 12-24 hours of development.
My own investment would be that I need probably 8-16 hours of learning before I can develop a plugin...
Two months ago, I launched a Make It Happen campaign to build a System Administrator Guide with the goal of migrating the installation, setup, and upgrade documentation out of the wiki and into a beautiful guide on our new documentation platform. Amazingly, the MIH campaign reached its $2,000 USD minimum in only 4 days — which meant I could get to work right away!
Now I've completed this content migration and am excited to share the System Administrator Guide with you, in all its glory...
https://docs.civicrm.org/sysadmin
Thanks
Before you thank me, join me in thanking these partners and community members who made this project happen by backing the campaign:
- Nubay Services
- Seamus Lee
- Eileen McNaughton...
Are you a system administrator who installs, configures, upgrades, or integrates CiviCRM?
Have you noticed how awesome the new User Guide and Developer Guide are, but felt sad that the system administrator docs have been left out of the party, languishing in the wiki?
Your time has come! A System Administrator Guide will soon be on its way! ... hopefully...
I've just launched a Make It Happen campaign to build the System Administrator Guide. If I can raise $2,000 USD by October 15th, I will migrate the installation, setup, and upgrade documentation out of the wiki and into a beautiful guide on our new documentation platform.
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