Almost every week folks ask whether there is a CiviCRM Book they can read to help them learn about all the cool things that CiviCRM can do. Thanks to a grant from the Information Program initiative of the Open Society Institute - we will soon have just that (a big tip of the hat to the Information Program Project Manager for making this happen!).
We will be writing the book using tools and techniques developed and hosted by Floss Manuals - whose mission is to provide quality manuals about how to use free software. Adam Hyde, the founder of the Floss Manuals project will be guiding a team of CiviCRM users, integrators and core team members through the process of creating the book during a 5-day Book Sprint to be held during the week of May 4. The team will also have editorial support from Andy Oram who is an editor for technical publisher and information provider O'Reilly Media, specializing currently in open source technologies and software engineering.
The finished book will be available as a free PDF download from the Floss Manuals site. Those who want a printed hard-copy book can purchase it for a nominal fee from the Floss Manuals store. Check out the How to Bypass Internet Censorship manual for an example of a finished product.
Blog posts by Dave Greenberg
Keep up-to-date with blogs from the core team, working groups, developers, users and champions worldwide. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates by email. We also have an RSS feed.
März 27, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM
The team has released version 2.2.1 with approximately 30 bug fixes and improvements. Notable improvements include:
Events: Provide a Drupal block which lists upcoming events
Mailings: allow users to cancel a running mail job
Contributions: re-introduce summary contribution information in search results
Pledges: support pay-later mode for pledge payments
You can review a complete list of 2.2.1 changes on the issue tracker.
März 19, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM
There are many places in CiviCRM where lists of records are presented... when you search for contacts, you get a list of contact records; when you go to manage events, you get a list of events; etc.
Kurund blogged recently about prototypes for improving usability for these record listings (we call them "selectors" internally)... and we got a lot of good feedback from that post.
Kurund and Amit on our team have now put up another iteration - which we'd love to have folks look at and comment on:
» Contact Listing
März 12, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCase, CiviCRM, Drupal, Joomla
After more than 5 months of design, development and QA - the team is thrilled to announce the release of CiviCRM 2.2 Stable. You can download the release AND / OR try it out on our public demo site.
2.2 features a number of exciting new features, including...
Personal Campaign Pages - add donors and constituents to your fundraising team
Soft Credits for contributions
CiviCase - Case management for human service providers (with thanks to Physician Health Program - British Columbia)
Simplified configuration option for CiviMail
Allow multiple custom field values for a given contact (e.g. "List the schools you attended, degrees earned and graduation dates")
Powerful new hooks for integrators and developers who need to extend and customize existing features
.... and 400+ additional improvements and bug fixes
You can find Release Highlights here.
A big round of applause is due to all the folks who downloaded, tested and submitted bug reports during the 2.2 release cycle. The alpha and beta packages were downloaded more than 4,000 times . Several hundred bugs and "improvements" were reported by community members and fixed by the team during the release cycle.
März 5, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCase, CiviEvent, CiviCRM, Drupal, JoomlaThe fourth BETA release of version 2.2 - including CiviCase, Personal Campaign Pages, Soft Credits, Multi-value Custom Fields, cool new hooks for developers, and more - is now available for download. This release includes approximately 25 bug fixes. as well as some community-requested improvements: Allow a user to register multiple participants using the same email address, and allow additional participants to be added without requiring email addresses for them. Make it easier to explore CiviCase by including sample case types with configuration files in the codebase distribution (learn more...). You can also try out these sample case types - "Housing Support" and "Adult Day Care Referral" on the public 2.2 demo. Configuration option to "turn off" the double-opt-in process when users subscribe to a mailing list via a Profile form. Ability to Send Bulk Email from the Find Members search screen. New hook to discount event fees when a user is registering multiple participants (e.g. you get a 5% discount for each additional person you register). Option to completely replace CiviCRM dashboard content using the Dashboard hook. You can use the automated upgrade script to upgrade from 2.1.x OR from any previous 2.2 alpha or beta release. This release will be fully upgrade-able to any additional beta versions as well as 2.2 stable. Please help ensure a quality stable release by downloading and testing 2.2 beta against a copy of your site and data.
... If this is your first look at 2.2, check out the 2.2 Roadmap for a good overview. Or you can review a compete listing of new features, improvements and bug fixes on the issue tracker.February 26, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM, Drupal, Joomla
The team has released version 2.1.6 stable with approximately 10 minor bug fixes.
NOTE: Due to a technical glitch - we are "skipping" 2.1.5 the release label. You can upgrade directly from any prior 2.1 release.
Download You can download CiviCRM 2.1.6 from our download page. Select from the civicrm-stable section. The filenames include the 2.1.6 label: civicrm-2.1.6…. Be sure and download the correct version for your CMS (Drupal / Joomla!). Select the Drupal download for Standalone upgrades. Upgrading You can upgrade directly to 2.1.6 from 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.2 or 2.1.4. We've also made a few changes to simplify the upgrade process a bit. Upgrade instructions are available on the wiki for Drupal, Joomla and Standalone. If you're still running CiviCRM 2.0 - "making the move to 2.1" has gotten a bit easier as well (we've eliminated a few steps in the upgrade). Of course you'll still need to upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 or Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5. This could be a good time to look at requirements and support for any other components / modules you're using. Complete upgrade instructions for 2.0 sites are on the wiki for Drupal and Joomla!.February 26, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCase, CiviCRM, Drupal, JoomlaThe third BETA release of version 2.2 - including CiviCase, Personal Campaign Pages, Soft Credits, Multi-value Custom Fields, cool new hooks for developers, and more - is now available for download. This release includes approximately 40 bug fixes., as well as some improvements in the personal campaign page functionality under Joomla! We've also integrated a Configuration Checklist which should make it easier for site administrators to complete initial configuration tasks on new installations. You can use the automated upgrade script to upgrade from 2.1.x OR from any previous 2.2 alpha or 2.2 beta 2. This release will be fully upgrade-able to any additional beta versions as well as 2.2 stable. Please help ensure a quality stable release by downloading and testing 2.2 beta against a copy of your site and data.
... If this is your first look at 2.2, check out the 2.2 Roadmap for a good overview. Or you can review a compete listing of new features, improvements and bug fixes on the issue tracker.February 12, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM, Drupal, JoomlaThe second BETA release of version 2.2 - including CiviCase, Personal Campaign Pages, Soft Credits, Multi-value Custom Fields and more - is now available for download. This release includes approximately 20 bug fixes, as well as some improvements in the personal campaign page and custom data / multiple records features.
February 10, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRMWe've been talking internally about the idea of a Community Advisory Group for CiviCRM. We're thinking that the project has grown to the point where there is sufficient momentum and a large enough community of users, integrators and developers to sustain and benefit from a group.
Some of our goals for the group are:
February 5, 2009
By Dave Greenberg Filed under CiviCRM, Drupal, TrainingI will be giving an informal presentation on CiviCRM and Drupal on February 19th at 5:30pm in Santa Clara, CA. If you're using CiviCRM with Drupal (or are considering it) - and you're in the Bay Area, it would be great if you could join us.
