Blog posts by Eileen

We have a couple of customers who have been asking to be able to set-up recurring contributions against pledges. This seems to be a possibly contentious improvement so I'm looking for feedback on it.

Update 2: Based on some thoughtful input, we've integrated the requirement for multiple membership blocks INTO the price set functionality. Each price set field option can be linked to a membership type - opening up all the power and flexibility of price sets to both online and backoffice membership signup. You can read the details here in the issue tracker.

 

Update: This 'Make it Happen' has been fulfilled and we are beginning development. You can review detailed specifications:

Membership Price Sets Multiple Membership Blocks

Thanks to the sponsors for making it happen!

International Society for Bayesian Analysis - Merlise Clyde Green Party of NSW Australia Fuzion - Peter Davis and Eileen McNaughton Lighthouse Consulting and Design - Brian Shaugnessy Bristol Exploration Club - Henry Bennett Anon (field for recognition not filled out)

 

The target for the 'multiple contact subtypes' Make-it-Happen has just been reached thanks to a great bunch of donors.

 

Thanks to

A customer recently asked Fuzion  if the little contact search box in the top left corner could be made available on all their drupal pages and that it link to the contact's Drupal page.

 

Re-using the Civi-search box seemed a bit too difficult but there was a fairly easy solution to this request using existing drupal modules - finder + views (plus features to deploy).

 

I recently had a requirement to set up a CiviCRM install so that whenever an event (or specific types) was created an organic group would also be created. When someone registered for that event they would be added to the organic group and if they were registered as a teacher they would become the manager of the organic group.

 

The focus of this blog is on the code implementation of this requirement using rules integration. I wanted to see if it could be done by rules & if that would set a useful precedent. The two aspects of Rules that where the crux of what I was trying to do were not implemented in the CiviCRM Rules module so I will describe them in some detail.

Rumour has it that certain, ahem, consultants have been known to, on occasion, miss setting up the occasional CiviCRM cron, or not notice when the cron stops working on upgrade. Such consultants could wind up with egg on their face over crons. Somewhat less culpable are the CiviCRM newbies who didn't know their event waitlists wouldn't work or their memberships wouldn't roll over without the right cron.

 

It seems like time to give people a quick update as to what api v3 is about. API v3 will be shipping with CiviCRM 3.4 and basically it's like v2 but more so. Well, it's like bits of v2 api and all the other bits have been changed to be like those bits... make sense?

 

CiviCRM 3.4 and 4.0 go into feature freeze in about two-three weeks with the expected final stable version around the end of March. 4.0 will support Drupal 7 and Joomla! 1.6

 

Lots of people and organisations have stepped up and contributed to 3.4 and we current have 4 new features sponsored through Make-it-Happen that will be included:

 

Rules integration, Multiple contact subtypes, Upsell / change membership type, Permissioning integration with Joomla 1.6 ACL, Personal Campaign Pages - offline contributions, Integrate CiviCampaign with CiviEngage, contributions, events and mailings, and a few holdovers from 3.3.

 

In some ways choosing Open Source software is like making a bet on humanity. We choose to believe that without contract or obligation individuals, organisations and businesses will work together to produce something that benefits all of us. With CiviCRM it feels like we've upped the odds to double or nothing because the organisations that use CiviCRM represent some of our noblest causes (and some that we may not agree with) but parting with funds from cash-strapped or deserving organisations to fund shared development is a lot harder than spending money out of a business account.

 

In my mind contributing back to Open Source projects that we benefit from and CiviCRM in particular is both a moral and a practical obligation. If we want it to be there for us we have to be there for it. For those of us who may have limited funds Make-it-Happen is a great way to make our bet on a scale that is appropriate to us or our organisation.

 

Going into 2011 community funding via Make-it-Happen and direct sponsorship is going to be the key driver behind the remaining 3.x releases. Release 3.4 and 4.0 are both expected early in the new year with 3.4 being the last release that will support drupal 6 and 4.0 supporting drupal 7. Obviously supporting two versions of drupal will put pressure on the CiviCRM core team and the duration of that double support will depend on the community.

 

However, right now it's the time for us to think about what initiatives we want to support into release 3.4. There are some ongoing and some new intiatives up for sponsorship.