New 2.2 Alpha Release Now Available

We are excited to announce that a second Alpha release for 2.2 is now available for download, AND to try out on our sandbox site. We are working hard on making upgrades as painless as possible by providing an automated upgrade to this latest release FROM ANY VERSION of 2.1 as well as from 2.2 Alpha 1. The upgrade procedure (links below) is the same regardless of whether you are upgrading a test copy of your current 2.1.x site OR your 2.2 Alpha site. If you are waiting for / planning on using any of the new features in 2.2 - DON'T WAIT to test the release and the functionality you need. Investing time now to review and test these features is the best way to ensure that the final release is solid and meets your needs. For non-developers who are looking for ways to give back - you can also contribute significantly to the project by testing the upgrade process against a copy of your 2.1 data, as well as running your regular tasks on an upgraded site. NOTE: This release is marked Alpha 3. Alpha 2 was withdrawn almost immediately after it was made available on Sourceforge. So don't worry about "missing a release". If you happen to have grabbed Alpha 2 yesterday and installed it - we recommend you install Alpha 3 on top of it now - and run the upgrade script as described in the documentation linked below. 2.2 Alpha 3 provides more than 30 improvements and bug fixes on top of Alpha 1. Highlights include:

• Pledge and Soft Credits Import - When importing contributions, you can tag contributions as "pledge payments", and assign soft credit to another contact (learn more...).
• Expanded Drupal Views Integration - Including support for Contacts, Events, Participants, Contributions and Activities (thanks to "Maluco Marinero") and Relationships (thanks to "Danila D")
• Personal Campaign Pages - Improved campaign page layouts and usability / flow improvements for supporters. Added email notifications to admins and supporters for each part of the process.

... 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.

Download

You can download CiviCRM 2.2 Alpha 3 at the "civicrm_latest" download page. The filenames include the 2.2 Alpha label: civicrm-2.2.alpha…. Be sure and download the correct version for your CMS (Drupal or Joomla). For standalone installs, download the Drupal version. System requirements for 2.2 are the same as for 2.1: PHP 5.2.x, MySQL 5.x with INNODB enabled, Drupal 6.x OR Joomla 1.5.x.

New 2.2 Installations

If you are installing CiviCRM 2.2 from scratch, use the installation instructions linked below:

• Drupal Installation
• Joomla Installation
• Standalone Installation

Upgrading from 2.1.x OR from 2.2 Alpha 1

If you are upgrading an existing 2.1 site (working with a copy of the site, of course) or a 2.2 Alpha 2 site, we have provided a browser-based database upgrade script. Test-driving the upgrade process with a copy of your live data is a great way to increase your karma. You help both your organization / clients AND the project as a whole by uncovering any issues with the upgrade - and the team will do our best to help you diagnose and fix any problems. We will continue to provide an easy to run browser-based upgrade, so you can easily upgrade your test site over the course of the 2.2 release cycle (alpha -> beta -> stable). Instructions for upgrading are here:

• Drupal Upgrade
• Joomla Upgrade
• Standalone Upgrade

Reporting Issues and Bugs

We look forward to getting your feedback on the release in the coming days. If you have questions installing, upgrading and / or using 2.2 features - or you're seeing a problem and you're not sure if it's a bug - please post your issue to the 2.2 release testing section of the community forums. Include as many specifics as possible about the issue or question. Bugs should be reported via our issue tracking system. Please select 2.2 in the ‘Affects Version’ dropdown. You will need to register as a user – this ensures that we can follow-up with you on your bug reports if necessary. Please ensure that the bug you’ve found is not reported already by checking the open issues listing.