-----original message-----
From: David Geilhufe < dgeilhufe%40yahoo.com">dgeilhufe
yahoo.com>
Date: May 6, 2007 7:01 PM
Subject: [RIDERS-TECH] CiviCRM 1.7 Released
To: riders-tech%40npogroups.org">riders-technpogroups.org, nten-discuss%40list.nten.org">nten-discusslist.nten.org
After over 2 years of careful planning and community outreach, the
CiviCRM ecology is growing at a rapid and healthy clip. Increasing
numbers of partners are making code, functionality and other
contributions. Talk a look and consider participating!
-- New events management functionality
-- New documentation by John Kenyon
-- New FAQs by Judy Hallman
-- New Authorize.net payment processing contributed by Marshall Newrock
-- Per community requests, a brand new discussion forum for your
questions (http://forum.civicrm.org/).
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.
New to CiviCRM? Read more at http://civicrm.org/
********************
What's New in 1.7
********************
The big news for 1.7 is CiviEvent - providing integrated online event
registration and management for paid and free events. This release
also includes a new "Contact Dashboard", which gives constituents a
consolidated view of their subscriptions, contributions, event
registrations and more.
Other release highlights include:
* Create and save re-usable email templates (with mail-merge tokens)
* CiviContribute plugins for Authorize.net and Google Checkout
* Use customized versions of templates for any screen
* One-click copying for existing Profiles, Contribution Pages and Events
* Restrict access to selected custom data fields and selected profile screens
..You can read the roadmap release summary here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+v1.7
... and see a complete listing of ALL (145+) new features,
improvements and bug fixes here:
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=3Dhide&requestId=3D10195
Many of the additions and changes in 1.7 were heavily driven by your
feedback and requests - and we hope they solve many more of your CRM
requirements....
***************************
Improved Documentation
***************************
We are also excited to introduce new comprehensive documentation for
all 1.7 administrative tasks AND a new, updated and integrated FAQ.
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/
The second phase of the documentation project is underway now -
covering End-user tasks - and is scheduled for completion in June.
We will also be posting a downloadable PDF of the documentation on our
SourceForge Downloads page shortly. This will allow folks to use and
distribute an offline version of the documentation.
***********
Download
***********
You can download the 1.7 stable release here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D177914
Tarball filenames include the 1.7 label: "v1.7......tgz" Be sure and
select the correct version for your CMS (Drupal or Joomla) and for the
version of PHP running on your server (PHP 4.x or PHP 5.x).
*******************
New Installations
*******************
If you are installing CiviCRM from scratch, you can use the manual
installation instructions linked below.
Drupal Installation (v1.7): http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/xiw
Joomla / Mambo Installations http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/ixI
**********************
Upgrading from 1.6
**********************
If you are upgrading an existing 1.6 site (working with a copy of the
site-of course), we have provided a database upgrade script.
Instructions for upgrading are here:
Drupal Upgrade: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/xSw
Joomla / Mambo Upgrade: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence//x/lxs
*****************************
Getting and Giving Support
*****************************
You can now ask for and help provide support on our community forums site:
http://forum.civicrm.org/
*****************************
Reporting Issues and Bugs
*****************************
We look forward to getting your feedback on the release. Any bugs
should be reported via our bug tracking system (linked on the bottom
of every page). You will need to register as a user - this ensures
that we can follow-up with you on your bug reports if necessary.
Critical bugs will be fixed for 1.7. Other bugs and issues will
generally be pushed to a later release, as we are on a short release
cycle for 1.8.
*******
Demo
*******
The demo sites have are now running v1.7, so you can explore the new
features: http://demo.civicrm.org/
*************************
Kudos and Thank-yous
*************************
Special thanks to the dedicated folks who contributed to this release
by testing the alpha and beta revisions =97 and to everyone in the
community who provided new ideas, feedback (especially critical
feedback), and patches. The beta revisions of 1.7 were much downloaded
and used much more extensively then any prior releases - and we
believe this has resulted in a significant quality improvement.
Grateful acknowledgements to John Kenyon who designed and is leading
the documentation project, and to Judy Hallman who volunteered to
rewrite and migrate all the FAQs from our old site.
Kudos to Marshall Newrock and Ideal Solutions LLC
(http://www.idealso.com) for contributing the Authorize.net plugin for
CiviContribute. it's enormously helpful for the long term success of
the CiviCRM "ecosystem"
