CiviCRM version 5.56.0 is now out and ready to download. This is a regular monthly release. Upgrade now for the most stable CiviCRM experience:
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 5.51.x (the next one is CiviCRM 5.57, which is currently the RC/beta, which we strongly encourage to test).
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 donate.
What's new in CiviCRM 5.56
This version has the usual tweaks to improve the user-interface (often not listed below because too minor, but they add up and make a difference!). This version also adds a lot of really obscure technical things so that SearchKit and FormBuilder are more flexible. So as a user, it might not be really obvious, but for developers, it means that both those extensions are now maturing enough that they are addressing more obscure use-cases.
If you have not tried it yet, have a look at the "Admin UI" core-extension (Administer > System Settings > Extensions). It replaces many old admin interfaces with SearchKit, which in turn fixes many old usability issues (such as ordering items). It also makes it trivially easy to customize those admin forms.
- FormBuilder: Add server side validation for afform (dev/core#3760: 24110), Add support for ReCaptcha v2 (24860), Support editing new element types added by extensions (24862)
- SearchKit: Add modulo operator to math function (24830), Improve icon handling (24873), Expose SearchSegment fields as filters (dev/core#3929: 24810), Change Rewrite field to textarea (dev/core#3893: 24822), Add generic controller for ApiBatch action, which allows extensions to define simple batch actions without the need for any javascript code (24758)
- CiviMail: Make mailing name and campaign editable in place on Find Mailings (24698), Simplify the Mailing menu options Draft/Sent on new installations (24824), Allow bounce threshold to be 0 for bounces that you want to ignore like vacation auto reply (23910)
- Admin Interface: Converts the 'Administer Location Types', 'Administer Financial Accounts', 'Profiles', 'Profile Fields', 'Administer Payment Processors', 'Financial Types', 'Relationship Types' and 'Assigned Financial Accounts' screens to use SearchKit for those using the AdminUI extension (24722, 24715, 24709, 24725, 24730 and 24759)
- Geeky: Add previous before and previous 2 fiscal year search options (24752), Use API4 to get message templates, makes it easier to alter with hooks (24789)
- Api4: Add DATEDIFF to calculate days between two dates (24875), Add Job Entity to Api4 (24747), Queue ClaimItems API - Optionally return the "run as" (contact ID/domain ID) (24761 and 24805)
- Joomla: fix cron issue (dev/joomla#41: 24796)
- Code: Improves PHP 8.2 compatibility (24849, 353, 24868, 24859 and many others)
Big thanks to Andie Hunt and Alice Frumin from AGH Strategies for putting up together release notes. If upgrading from a very old version of CiviCRM, see the version-specific upgrade tasks.
This release was developed by the following code authors:
AGH Strategies - Alice Frumin, Andie Hunt; Agileware - Justin Freeman; Business & Code - Alain Benbassat; CEDC - Laryn Kragt Bakker; Circle Interactive - Dave Jenkins, Pradeep Nayak; CiviCRM - Coleman Watts, Tim Otten; CiviDesk - Yashodha Chaku; Coop SymbioTIC - Mathieu Lutfy, Shane Bill; Dave D; Fuzion - Toby Messerli; Jens Schuppe; JMA Consulting - Monish Deb, Seamus Lee; John Kingsnorth; Megaphone Technology Consulting - Jon Goldberg; MJW Consulting - Matthew Wire; N.O.U.S. Open Usefull and Simple - Bastien Ho; Supertemplates UG - Nicolás di Rago; Robert J. Lang; sebalis; Squiffle Consulting - Aidan Saunders; Third Sector Design - Kurund Jalmi, William Mortada; Wikimedia Foundation - Damilare Adedoyin, Eileen McNaughton; Wildsight - Lars Sanders-Green.
Most authors also reviewed code for this release; in addition, the following reviewers contributed their comments:
Artful Robot - Rich Lott; Australian Greens - John Twyman; Christian Wach; Freeform Solutions - Herb van den Dool; Humanists UK - Andrew West; Joinery - Allen Shaw; Lighthouse Consulting and Design - Brian Shaughnessy; Mikey O'Toole; Nicol Wistreich; rainersalal; Responsive Development Technologies - Thomas Nilefalk; Richard van Oosterhout; Tadpole Collective - Kevin Cristiano; Wikimedia Foundation - Jack Gleeson.
What's next?
- We are looking at making SearchKit and Flexmailer mandatory in 5.57 (which will also be the next ESR). Flexmailer has been long-slated to become ‘the one & only) and Eileen has put up a PR for the last feature parity gap.
- We are also looking to drop support for PHP 7.2 - with the 5.57 ESR being the last version with support.
- How should we deal with reply addresses?
- Time to finally kill off “Tell a Friend”?
This is only a short sample. For more, subscribe to Eileen's dev-digest.
New Extensions
- Member eCard - Provides Google Pay and Apple Wallet integration for membership cards. Work in Progress. By Mathieu Lu - Coop SymbioTIC
Support CiviCRM
We are committed to keeping CiviCRM free and open, forever. We depend on your support to help make that happen.
- Make a donation or contribute to a Make it happen campaign.
- If your organization wants to support our work, please become a member today.
- If you are a CiviCRM service provider, please become a partner.
CiviCRM is community driven and is sustained through contributions, good vibes, solidarity, and financial support from its community. Help CiviCRM do a world of good.
