Around July last year, I wrote a blog post about a few user interface changes that might go unnoticed to most (covering versions around 5.55 to 5.65). Here are a few more changes that have been introduced in versions 5.75 to 5.80.
The "Delete Contact" button is now under Actions
Once prominently displayed as one of the main action buttons at the top of the contact screen, it wasn't exactly something that was used so often. Starting CiviCRM 5.78, it is now tucked in the "Action" menu:
Custom Fields: "Is Searchable" becomes "Optimize for Search"
When creating custom fields, administrators had to make a big decision: is a field searchable? This historically meant two things: the field was then available in reports and search, and it had a database index on it to speed up the search. This often caused a lot amount of confusion and there was a 4 year old bug report about it.
It was therefore decided to always display custom fields in the Advanced Search and in Reports. This is also how newer extensions such as SearchKit works. The option therefore becomes only about search optimization.
Large organisations with too many custom fields should consider disabling unused custom fields or using SearchKit for more efficient search interfaces. New in CiviCRM 5.75.
Tell-a-friend is not enabled by default anymore
Tell-a-friend is a feature that could be enabled on Event and Contribution forms. People could enter up to 5 emails in order to send information to their friends. Because of various limitations, this feature was rarely used. It therefore cluttered the Event and Contribution administration.
On new CiviCRM installations, the "tell a friend" feature is not enabled by default anymore. For existing installations, if the feature was not used, it is automatically disabling during upgrades. For those that did, the feature is kept active, but a Status Check is displayed to administrators, informing them that the feature is being deprecated (it might be moved to an extension, if there are still some people using it). New in CiviCRM 5.76.
Manage duplicates
In the Contacts menu, the "Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts" menu item was renamed to just "Manage Duplicates". The functionality is the same. It just has a less redundant name. New in CiviCRM 5.77.
Disable Households
Starting CiviCRM 5.79, it will be possible to disable Households from the "Manage Contact Types" settings. This was previously possible using the API Explorer, but not exactly user-friendly. Households are still enabled by default, for now.
Search pagers and navigation tweaks
The Advanced Search and other core search screen display some navigation items both at the top and at the bottom of the results. In many cases, the information is redundant and overwhelming. A bit of cleanup was done:
You can see more before/after screenshots on the Github pull-request.
Advanced Search "Search Settings" and "Search in Trash"
The Advanced Search had two "Search Settings" panel at the complete top, which displays settings that not many people use (a first set for search operators, and a second set for search result display settings).
The "Search in Trash" checkbox was renamed to "Search Deleted Contacts" and moved into the main panel. The rest of the "Search Settings" were combined into a single panel, and tucked away into a "Search Settings" display with its own icon:
A few tweaks were also made so that the Advanced Search is more usable on a mobile device.
What's next?
There are some much bigger changes coming up, such as a new default theme, that hopefully will be announced soon. In the mean time, if you notice some clutter, redundancies or vague help texts, drop a note in the user-interface chat or ping me in a Gitlab issue. They're small issues, but they add up!
A big thanks to the many people who participated in the conversations around those changes.
Comments
Thank you. Nice improvements.