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CiviCRM 5.3 release

Published
2018-07-05 16:52
Written by
dev-team - official CiviCRM announcement
This latest CiviCRM 5.3 release is now ready to download. Please also note the important information for the upcoming security release.
 

RELEASE NOTES:

Big thanks to Andrew Hunt from AGH Strategies for putting up together release notes for this version. 
The release notes for 5.3 can be accessed here.
 

SPECIAL THANKS:

Complete list of 5.3 contributors (it's a huge team!) can be found here. Thanks to everyone involved!
 
 
This version includes:
 
  1. Database schema changes
  2. API changes
  3. Configuration changes
  4. New features
  5. Bug fixes

 

WHAT'S NEW IN CIVICRM 5.3:

  •  Core CiviCRM updates:

Better & more configurable dedupe lookups when adding a contact. When saving a new contact if an existing contact was found with a similar last name saving the form would be blocked. This change makes it so that the settings for what to dedupe new contacts on are more robust and so that the by default new contacts are dedupped by first name, last name and email. More details here.
 
Remove AdvMulti-Select custom field type. This change removes the Advanced Multi-Select widget (which has been deprecated since 2014) as a custom field type. More details here. 
 
Use checksum to access user dashboard. This change allows contacts to access the user dashboard from a checksum link ex: /civicrm/user?reset=1&id=<contact_id>&cs=<contact_checksum>. More details here. 
 
Upgrade Smarty to 2.6.31 to solve issues on PHP7.2. The Smarty templating engine has been updated. More details here. 
 
Extend fiscal year relative options to better match other periods. Filters for fiscal year can now handle relative dates for previous single and multiple fiscal years. More details here. 
 
Adjust creation of markup for Open Flash Chart. This avoids problems that can be triggered in certain environments by the <html>, <head>, and <title> elements coming in a row within the chart markup. More details here. 
 
 
  • CiviCase
Add inplace edit for timeline name. The name of a case type timeline can now be edited from within the tab header of the timeline editing screen. More details here. 
 
  • CiviContribute
Move soft credit item count to an object property so it can be modified via hook. This makes it simpler for an extension to modify the hard-coded number of rows available for recording soft credits on a contribution. More details here. 
 
  • CiviMail
Add pre/post hook for CRM_Mailing_BAO_MailingJob. This change adds a mailing job delete function with pre/post hooks. More details here. 
 
  • CiviMember
Add 'membership start date' as an option when creating Scheduled Reminder based on Membership. When setting up a scheduled reminder for a membership this change adds an option to send the scheduled reminder based on the "Membership Start Date". Additionally, when setting up a scheduled reminder for an event this change adds the options to schedule the reminder based on the "Registration Start Date" or "Registration End Date". More details here. 
 
Recurring Contribution Information on Membership Modal. When viewing the details of a contact's membership, you can now see information about any recurring contribution series that auto-renews the membership rather than just the payments themselves. More details here. 
 

Important notice for next release 

Starting from version 5.0, we have been publishing two releases per month. The upcoming 5.3.1 release will be a security release and it has been scheduled to be delivered on 18th July. Please be prepared to update your sites.
 
Since the latest 5.3 release contains a few notable improvements and changes. We encourage you to help with the release feedback by updating your installation to the latest and report any issues to the community before the next security release.
 
As always, you can also help by participating the fixes to any of the outstanding issues.
 

NEW INSTALLATIONS

If you are installing CiviCRM 5.3 from scratch, please use the corresponding automated installer instructions:
 

 

Filed under
Release announcements

Comments

Hello dev-team,

thank you very much. I think announcing security updates is a very good step so people can be better prepared. I'd like to suggest adding a severity assessment of the security flaws to further improve the release process.

Regards,
Martin

Post says 5.3.1 will be available today (7/18) but not available yet (2:20 EDT). When?