CiviCRM 5.42 Release

CiviCRM version 5.42.0 is now out and ready to download. This is a regular monthly release.

Upgrade now for the most stable CiviCRM experience: https://civicrm.org/download

Users of the CiviCRM Extended Security Releases (ESR) do not need to upgrade, as there are no ESR-specific bug-fixes or security issues at the moment. The current version of ESR is CiviCRM 5.39.x.

We are committed to keeping CiviCRM free and open, forever. We depend on your support to help make that happen. We thank all our partners, members and ESR subscribers, who are regular financial contributors. If you can, please take a few moments to donate.

What's new in CiviCRM 5.42

This version changes the database schema, has changes to the API, as well as the usual bugfixes and minor feature improvements.

• Contact Edit: Hide email signature blocks for contacts that do not have a user/CMS account (dev/user-interface#38: 21103)
• Print/Merge document: Option to rename the file before downloading (dev/core#2121: 21006), Change the default PDF file name from "CiviLetter.pdf" to use the Activity Subject, if available (21220)
• Group Listings: Add 'Edit Group Settings' button at the top of the page (dev/core#2546: 20135)
• Scheduled Reminders: Display more activity tokens in the selector dropdown (21091)
• Contributions: Improve logging of errors for "Failed to update contribution in database" (21243), Contribution Summary Report: Adds "Contribution Recurring" as a filter, column and group (dev/report#63: 20168)
• Dedupe: Add support to dedupe based on the websites of a contact (dev/core#2770: 21168)
• Logging Detail Report: Show the words not the numbers. Improves logging by displaying more context. (dev/core#2691: 20907)
• Tokens: ongoing cleanup around token code and the Token Processor, for PDF Letters and for Scheduled Reminders. Have a look at the full release notes for more information.
• APIv4: Adds the Membership entity to APIv4 (dev/core#2634: 21106)
• SearchKit: Add placeholder to token select (21172), Add grid display layout (dev/core#2776: 21194), Add download CSV action (21328), Add links to admin table and refresh after popups (21343), Use a SearchKit display to display searches (21270), Add random sort option (dev/report#75: 21177), Add image field handler (dev/core#2781: 21300), Allow tokens in menu button text (21217), Add a quick Export task (dev/core#2732: 21320), Fix anonymous access to running search displays (21752)
• FormBuilder: Support file uploads (21150), Allow setting the location type (address, mail, telephone) to a specific value (dev/core#2703: 21254), Add setting to store submissions in a new database table (21105)
• Drupal9: Fix getUsername function call (328)
• As usual, a ton of tiny tweaks and fixes that make CiviCRM more fun to use, and the source code more entertaining to read and improve. This humble editor often struggles to decide what is relevant to include in the above short summary. Feel free to give us a shout on the CiviCRM chat.

This is only a short overview. You can read the full release notes here (it includes all Gitlab and Github references, with much more information). Big thanks to Andie Hunt and Alice Frumin from AGH Strategies for putting up together release notes. Planning a big upgrade? Check out the version-specific upgrade tasks.

This release was developed by the following code authors:

AGH Strategies - Alice Frumin, Andie Hunt; Agileware - Justin Freeman; Australian Greens - John Twyman; Benjamin W; CiviCRM - Coleman Watts, Tim Otten; CompuCorp - Debarshi Bhaumik, Lisandro; Coop SymbioTIC - Mathieu Lutfy; Dave D; Fuzion - Jitendra Purohit; Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe - Patrick Figel; JMA Consulting - Joe Murray, Monish Deb, Seamus Lee; Joinery - Allen Shaw; Megaphone Technology Consulting - Jon Goldberg; MJW Consulting - Matthew Wire; Nicol Wistreich; Skvare - Sunil Pawar; Tadpole Collective - Kevin Cristiano; Third Sector Design - Kurund Jalmi, Michael McAndrew; Wikimedia Foundation - Eileen McNaughton; Wildsight - Lars Sanders-Green

Most authors also reviewed code for this release; in addition, the following reviewers contributed their comments:

Black Brick Software - David Hayes; CiviCoop - Jaap Jansma; Joinery - Allen Shaw; Lighthouse Consulting and Design - Brian Shaughnessy; redcuillin

What's next?

• Do you organize virtual events with participants from multiple timezones? Timezone support for Events needs review (hat tip to Francis and Justin from Agileware).
• A major change in tokens will happen in CiviCRM 5.43. Please help test the RC.
• CiviDiscount has moved to Gitlab and is looking for a maintainer.
• In profiles and other forms, should CiviCRM ignore or apply the global CMS setting to allow or not creating new accounts? Join the discussion in this PR.
• Flexmailer will be installed by default on new installs from 5.43. We would dearly love to make it required and rip out the problematic code it replaces but we still haven’t fully resolved the challenges around some sites having it in their extensions directory as well as it being in the core code base. From 5.43 we will be nudging for flexmailer to be installed using status checks.
• We plan to ‘leap’ the UI for editing workflow message templates by eventually replacing the core screen with a screen in a core extension. The new UI has preview functionality as well as multilingual functionality. The plan is that it will be in 5.43 as a hidden extension which we will unhide after a bit of testing/ stabilisation/enhancement and eventually work through the steps of unhiding, install on new installs & eventually make required so we can rip out the old code.
• Batch processing: core team is currently scoping out some funded work with Greenpeace (Germany) to improve the api / developer functionality for batch processing (dev/core#1304). This won’t have any end user functionality initially but at some point it could be used to make imports batches (rather than fail when you close your browser)

For more, subscribe to Eileen's dev-digest.

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• Make a donation or contribute to a Make it happen campaign.
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