CiviCRM

I have a client who wanted to display some google maps using data stored in CiviCRM. I looked at the various projects that mash up CiviCRM and Google maps and the GMap module looked like the right place to start, but the location/civinode/views mix that looked promising didn't pan out. I also noticed the discussion around 'mapthing' below, but that seemed to have died.

CiviCRM 1.6: A Free and Open Source eCRM Solution

We are pleased to announce the latest release of CiviCRM – version 1.6.

Special thanks to the dedicated folks who contributed to this release by testing the alpha and beta revisions — and to everyone in the community who provided new ideas, feedback (especially critical feedback), and patches.

CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalised, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.

We are happy to announce that our 1.6 Alpha release is now available for preview and testing on our servers. We'd like to get as many folks trying out the new features as possible over the next week. This will help us move quickly to a downloadable Beta release - which is currently scheduled for November 29.

You can login to the sandbox at:

http://sandbox.trunk.civicrm.org

User - demo
Password - demo

Highlights of the release - and things we especially like folks to try out are:
* Ajax-based suggestive search in the Contact Search box (left column)
* Dynamically loaded sections in Advanced Search and Contact View Screens

We've started documenting the technical details and mysteries behind CiviCRM in our blog. You can check out details at http://civicrm.org/blog. A complete listing of all the articles is on our wiki at: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+Architecture+Blog

Feedback, comments, critique is more than welcome and much appreciated :)

lobo

Check out the new CiviCRM web-site at http://civicrm.org .... !

We've re-designed and re-organized the site from the ground up, and we hope folks will find it easier to locate resources and learn about the project...

The new site includes a Professional Services directory, and we encourage you to check out the listings if you need technical resources to implement or extend CiviCRM...
http://civicrm.org/professional

We'll be using the Team blog to post interesting news and updates as to what's happening on the project here...
http://civicrm.org/blog/1

We've also collected some of your "success stories" and have them rotating on the front page. Let us know if you want to add your story to the site...

We are happy to announce that our 1.5 Beta release is now available for download. This release includes CiviMember - a new membership management component, significant memory and speed optimizations, and Search Builder - a new tool for building complex search queries.

Other release highlights include:
* Log and display who last updated a contact and when
* Include mapping links in Profile search results and details
* Optional CAPTCHA validation for Profile forms
* Generate mailing labels
* Attach photos, documents and other files to contacts

..You can read the roadmap release summary here:

We've been fairly hard at work in CiviCRM land resolving all the issues related to v1.5 which can be found here:

http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requ...

the CiviCRM 1.5 feature list is available at:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+v1.5

We are fairly pleased with the stability of v1.4 and hope to continue the tradition of high quality releases meeting the needs of the community with v1.5. Personally I think that v1.5 has the most feature additions / improvements since v1.0beta :)

Now is a great time for folks to take a look at whats coming in v1.5 and make sure that we have not missed any important things / issues. If so, please do start a discussion on our mailing list

Recently went through an import of 2.4 million voter file records into CiviCRM. Went through a lot of testing, sharing some preliminary information here on things we discovered. The 'we' used in this document refers to me and other resources within my company, Trellon. Working with recent releases of CiviCRM 1.4.

First, default CiviCRM distros are not suitable for working with massive numbers of records. After importing the 2.4 million records, and before adding any custom fields, the main and advanced search interfaces became unusable. Trying to save information into a contact record became nearly impossible. The reasons for this were myriad and included database design, data access queries, as well as the hardware we were working with initially.