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<Cross posted from Advomatic.com The code blocks will be easier to read there.>

Sometimes after launching a new site our clients find that there are fields and features in CiviCRM that they don't use.  We are working with a client that wants to remove all fields and features that aren't useful in order to simplify their user interface and make it easier to use.  This includes things like SMS features, email signatures, and demographics.  There are also several fields that they wanted renamed to be more consistent with the legacy system that they migrated from.  To fulfill this requirement I used a combination of template overrides, and CiviCRM's translation system.  

First up I should point out that if you do want to go down this path you need to make clear to the client that this will take a fair amount of effort up front (hopefully less for you now that you are reading this recipe).  Additionally, if/when you upgrade CiviCRM these customizations will need to be reviewed at the very least, and possibly even re-done to some extent.  So while this customization will make things more usable for CiviCRM administrators, it will add cost to both the initial site build, and to ongoing maintenance.  

This feature has been sponsored by the New York State Senate. The issue spec is on the issue tracker.

I am very glad to have opportunity to work on this feature and sharing my thoughts and experience for same :) . This feature is added in trunk and scheduled for version 4.2 release

It has been an amazing Code Sprint in London this week. Lots done in the week, including GiftAid module fixes to work with Drupal 7/CiviCRM 4.x branch. CiviMobile, CiviCRM testing, Documentation.

Thanks for Katy for arranging the work space in CAN Mezzanine. Thanks to the members of the community who participated in the event and a big thanks to Lobo and Kurund from the core team for making the sprint a success.

Hi,

The code sprint in London has finished yesterday. It's always a pleasure to see old civi friends and meet new ones. Thanks to Michael and Katy to have organized it. Time for a quick update of what I've been working on with the most obscure title I could find. My focus has been on usuability to make civicrm easier and faster to use.

We're wrapping up the London code sprint today. We've done a decent amount of book review, which will stand us in good stead when we get to Woolman and we've also made some minor improvements to the books at book.civicrm.org.

Books now have a 'breadcrumb' which show you what section you are reading and they also have proper titles, which should make them more visible when people are googling for help.

The team is excited to announce the second stable release of version 4.1  - with support for Drupal 7, Drupal 6, Joomla 1.7/2.5, and Wordpress 3.3. You can download the release now from Sourceforge.

We're doing a fair amount of work on the book review at the London sprint. It would be cool to have others involved (remotely or in person).  If you want to help out then

Batch entry of gifts (checks, cash, etc.) is a much requested "missing feature" in CiviCRM. Thanks to a generous sponsorship commitment from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we are about to launch a Make-it-Happen campaign to implement this feature for the next release (4.2). We've spent some time discussing requirements with folks at EFF and several other organizations, and we've reviewed analogous functionality offered by several of the proprietary donor management products. The purpose of this post is to share the draft specifications for the feature and solicit feedback from others in the community.

The goal is to provide a streamlined interface for data entry of batches of contributions and membership payments. A simple batching concept will be introduced to provide verification of count and totals. The feature will use a grid-style input form with the columns controlled by a selected profile. This will allow sites to add or remove non-required fields in the grid (e.g. add custom contribution fields, add or exclude premium fields etc.). The current plan is to have a separate flow / input grid for batch entry of contributions vs. membership signup / renewal payments. This will help reduce the number of columns required for each type of input.

It's the code sprint next week here in London, at CAN in Old Street, and hopefully we'll have quite a few people coming along to join in for all or some of it. Lobo and Kurund are coming over, which we're excited about :) On Thursday, after a hard day's sprinting, we'll be rolling round the corner to The Book Club for a bit of a hang out.

If you've recently upgraded to CiviCRM 4.1, you'll need to upgrade your webform_civicrm as well. Versions 2.3 and below are not fully compatible with Civi 4.1. Version 2.4 is, and will be released in the next couple of days, especially if I get a few comments on this post from people who have sucessfully tested it! The latest -dev is stable and working, so please feel free to download it and try it out on your 4.1 site!