CiviCRM team has announced the release of latest version (version 3.0) of their highly extensive membership management application. The new version boasts of a number of improvements and new features from the last stable version 2.2 Other than its standard features the latest version has features such as:

• Improved Interface - The new interface of CiviCRM has a drop down toolbar at the top hence instead of having left hand side toolbar and then selecting link from a webpage, you can now get to a relevant page directly using the drop down menu bar. Also, a search box has been provided beside the toolbar. The search box searches in to the contacts and quickly displays relevant contacts. It is much quicker than the old search interface.
• Reporting - Version 2.2 of CiviCRM saw the introduction of a new component called CiviReport which provided a reporting interface for CiviCRM. Version 3.0 has introduced detailed reports about members, memberships, relationships, event management reports such as event income report, event participant reports etc. In total there are 20 reports and an interface to create reports using a template system.
• Improved Contact Screens - The new version also has improved contact summary and edit screens which are simpler and easier to understand compared to the older version and the tabs at the top of the summary screen provide number of related information in that tab. If privacy setting such as "Do Not Phone" is set the phone numbers are highlighted in Red making it easier for the end user to understand quickly weather that person is to be contacted by phone or not.
• New Contact Screen from Memberships - A membership menu allows recording new memberships quickly. A user can search and select a contact from the database or create a new contact without changing the screen.
• Configurable Menu - Administration Menu gives you access to create a new link and customise the menu to suit your needs.
• Event Templates - The latest version also makes event management easy by creating templates of regularly hosted events. Most of the settings are kept in the template and used while creating a similar event. This improves the productivity a lot as most of the time the same set of events are repeated at different venues/dates.
• Context Menu - From a list of results after a search you can right click on a row of contact (Individual or Organisation) and perform actions on the contact. Some of the actions are view, edit, delete, register for an event, tag, group, membership etc.

The overall performance and look of the new version looks brilliant and we are sure that it is going to improve the process of members' management and membership management for associations, clubs and other membership oriented organisations very easy. If you would like to have a demo of CiviCRM version 3.0; check it out at the demo site for Drupal or Joomla or contact us for a guided demo and Target Integration will help you implement CiviCRM for your organisation.