Blog posts by Dave Greenberg

Two key usability goals for the upcoming 2.3 release are: Reduce the number of "clicks" needed to move around in CiviCRM Allow sites to optimize CiviCRM navigation for the way they use it We've been working hard on the new navigation system - and it's now ready for folks to try it out on the 2.3 sandbox. Login as usual with: user = demo password = demo ... and click CiviCRM on the Drupal navigation block.

The Craigslist Foundation held their annual Non-profit Bootcamp this Saturday in Berkeley. This event brings together more than 1,500 people who are "passionate about changing the world". The opening keynote speaker was Arianna Huffington - who shared some wonderful stories about the importance of volunteering in improving our own lives along with the lives of folks we're helping. I had the opportunity to participate in a panel on "Future Tech", along with Peter Deitz from Social Actions, Rayma Raghavan from YouTube, and Marnie Webb from Techsoup / NetSquared. Their was a nice turnout for the session (maybe 125+ folks). My goal was to get the audience excited about investigating open source tools by explaining the benefits of the open source model and the alignment between open source development and non-profit process and values. Of course I also spread the word about CiviCRM and some of the cool implementations folks are doing. You can download my presentation slides from our wiki. Feel free to re-use, re-mix etc. :-) You can also read some more about our session, as well as some of the other happenings at the boot camp on Beth Kanter's blog.

This month's Community Advisory Group phone conference focused on the usability improvements which are being implemented for the 2.3 release. The advisory group was responsible for making usability the top priority for this next release, and they've been quite involved throughout the 2.3 release cycle - identifying pain points, suggesting new approaches, and helping to prioritize the issues. I had asked group members to review the key change areas and if possible also gather end-user feedback from users inside their organization or clients. Overall the feedback was quite positive - and we also got some excellent suggestions. You can check out the meeting agenda here - including a list of areas we reviewed. I've also added a section listing some of the recommended changes from the group. We'll be posting detailed blogs on most of the key changes in the coming weeks. This ongoing dialog with a consistent and committed group of users and consultants has been enormously helpful for the project.

Greetings and Salutations :-) As some of you may already know, the existing "Greeting Type" feature in CiviCRM is pretty broken. You can't use it to specify a greeting for either email or printed / postal communications (no token or export support). In addition, as described in Tony Guzman's recent blog on Better Household Management - it's not designed to support a number of key use cases. So... Tony and the folks at Dharmatech have been working with us to figure out a flexible WORKING solution which can handle the simple cases ("Dear Dave") as well as the more complex cases ("Dear Dave and Bob", "The Honorable Scout Conberg", etc.). If you haven't read Tony's blog yet - start with the Greetings and Salutations section there. Then, if this is an issue that affects you - check out the details of the proposed implementation in the issue tracker.

Folks gathered this past Monday evening for the first-ever San Francisco CiviCRM Meetup. We had a decent turnout - especially given the short notice (we wanted to squeeze this in before our India colleagues had to return to Mumbai). We started with the usual introductory rounds - nice mix of backgrounds ranging from CiviCRM newbies to experienced users and consultants. Tomasz Finc from the WikiMedia Foundation then gave an awesome presentation about how they are using CiviCRM for fundraising and donor management. (Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit which operates Wikipedia along with a number of other projects dedicated to creating and supporting collaboratively edited reference projects.)

The team has released version 2.2.5 with approximately 31 bug fixes and improvements. Notable fixes and improvements include: Discount Support for Online Event Registration using hooks (more) Enable Joomla / Standalone to use the mighty power of hooks You can review a complete list of 2.2.5 changes on the issue tracker.   Download You can download CiviCRM 2.2.5 at our download page. Select from the civicrm-stable section. The filenames include the 2.2.5 label: civicrm-2.2.…. Be sure and download the correct version for your CMS (Drupal / Joomla! / Standalone).  

The Book Sprint is over - and we met our goal: Zero to Book in 5 days. Reflecting on the process, I am incredibly moved by the dedication and commitment which everyone on the sprint team brought to the process. People came together with a rich mix of experience and perspectives - and an amazing spirit of collaboration. It was a personal honor for me to be a member of this incredible team! You can read the book online (in your browser) at: >> http://en.flossmanuals.net/civicrm and you can download a PDF version of the complete book by clicking the Make PDF icon in the upper left corner of that screen. I am quite hopeful that this book will be a great resource both for current members of the CiviCRM community and for people who are evaluating whether CiviCRM might be a useful tool for their organizations. Please post your feedback and suggestions on the Documentation and Book section of the community forums.

Several members of our core team just got back from a 3 day CiviCase meetup in beautiful Vancouver, Canada - hosted by Physician Health Program - BC (PHP-BC). Our main goals were: Get face-to-face feedback from PHP staff who are using CiviCase about what's working and what needs improvement in the existing implementation. Do some code sprints to get some quick wins for implementation within the current release cycle (2.2.3) Review the list of candidate features for Phase 2 in order to get a better understanding of the requirements, and discuss a range of implementation "solutions". Prioritize the Phase 2 list and come up with a scope of work and specifications for the 2.3 release. The PHP-BC staff did a fantastic job of welcoming us, arranging logistics for housing and meeting space, and keeping us well fed (they hosted several incredible lunches and dinners)! We built an agenda that allowed us to get in-depth feedback on the current version, and then follow-up with time to code and share improvements and/or design ideas.

Penguin Day is coming to San Francisco on Saturday, April 25, 2009, right before the NTC. The agenda includes several CiviCRM-related sessions - both for folks just checking out CiviCRM, and for experienced users / developers. Several members of the CiviCRM core team and our new Community Advisory Group will be in attendance as well as - so it's a great way to make "civi-connections". You can register now at the Penguin Day site.  

The team has released version 2.2.2 with approximately 25 bug fixes and improvements. Notable fixes and improvements include: Joomla! 1.5.10 - fix problems with the CiviCRM installer for the latest Joomla! release. Drupal - load civicrm.css using drupal_add_css() to improve performance Event Price Sets - specify default values for price set field options (radio button, select, checkbox fields) You can review a complete list of 2.2.2 changes on the issue tracker.