January was dominated largely by a CiviCRM security release, by several final migrations off of old infrastructure and by a weeklong sprint focused on product planning and development. While the completed list below may seem light, we believe the updates are meaningful and continue to set Greenleaf ONE apart from other systems.
Likewise, the time we invested in product planning should be reflected in both what we have in progress as well as what we have planned. We continue to push toward a fully unified system that truly empowers organizations while at the same time deepening its core feature set. The end result is a more stable, more performant system that tightly integrates your CMS and CRM along with powerful communication tools.
In addition, with new functionality like SearchKit and FormBuilder maturing rapidly, we’re in a better position to reevaluate legacy plugins like Caldera Forms and Ninja Forms and to remove them, resulting in greater stability and improved performance.
We’re very excited about the future of Greenleaf ONE. Each month, we’re releasing new features and updates that are intended to empower organizations to make the most of the system. In the coming months, we expect to shift heavily towards training and tutorials that will ultimately help support organizations interested in mastering the systems and getting the most out of them.
On to this month’s update!
Security release upgrade to CiviCRM 5.56.2
CiviCRM rolled out security releases in conjunction with the latest stable release in January. After initial testing, we pushed all clients to version 5.56.2 or higher over the course of a few weeks. This upgrade included extension upgrades as well as applied new standards within CiviCRM extensions as we continue to optimize Greenleaf ONE.
We also took inventory of several systems that are avid users of SearchKit and FormBuilder (which we strongly encourage!) and are planning upgrades to CiviCRM version 5.57.2 which supports contact deduping in FormBuilder.
Advanced Page Builder Elements
We absolutely love the page builder that we ship in Greenleaf ONE. Out of the box, it has a truly impressive amount of design power and flexibility. In January, we installed several new plugins that provided advanced elements directly in the builder, including a powerful new Grid element, circle progression, teaser cards and more row layouts.
In addition, you can now build very powerful modal pop ups that are based on page builder elements. This allows you to create very appealing layouts and control their look and feel directly through the page builder. Likewise, you can trigger the pop ups in a variety of different ways ranging from page load to on-click mechanics. We’ll be launching a video tutorial on this shortly, so stay tuned.
In Progress
We have a long list of improvements that we’re actively working on. Some of these broadly apply to Greenleaf ONE whereas others are unique to each system. Nonetheless, these are our priorities for the next few weeks.
Analytics Improvements
For clients where we manage your analytics, we’ve upgraded you to Google Analytics 4 and have streamlined script insertion by using Google Tag Manager. Our objective here is both to consolidate analytics based plugins for performance reasons as well as migrate you to the next version of Google Analytics. For clients that didn’t have any analytics running, we’ve gone ahead and set this up for you as well.
If you were already using Universal Google Analytics, don’t worry, we’re continuing to run it and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in parallel. If you would like more information or what to do more with your analytics, please contact us at info@greenleaf.one.
Improved user permission controls
We’re consolidating user permissions to one plugin and are implementing a more defined hierarchy of permissions. Many current users of Greenleaf ONE will experience no real impact whereas others may find that some restrictions have been placed on their role.
This is not at all to be heavy-handed, but rather out of an abundance of caution for security reasons as well as to continue to consolidate plugins and users’ ability to run “upgrades”. Greenleaf ONE is built not only to be a wholly integrated system for nonprofits, but it’s also intended to be stable and performant (naturally!). In order to achieve this, we have to ensure consistency in upgrades as well as control the addition and management of extensions.
The improvements in user permissions will also include new resources for users, be they administrative or public users, such as members, donors, etc. These are designed to improve the overall user experience and to put the right resources at each user’s fingertips.
Plugin Cleanup
Speaking of WordPress extensions, we’ve completed a process of evaluating the current plugins we support as well as new ones we plan to add. Greenleaf ONE is not a static product and requires periodic review in order for it to stay high performing and optimal for nonprofits.
We are actively replacing plugins or removing unsupported plugins altogether in order to consolidate all systems to a standard implementation of Greenleaf ONE. If this makes you at all anxious, don’t worry. Most users will immediately notice a cleaner interface and general performance and stability improvements. Likewise, we are highly focused on replacing critical functionality with better plugins.
User dashboard
We’ve rolled out a first version of the Greenleaf ONE dashboard. Essentially, this will streamline the interface to include key user actions and will serve as a jumping off point for users to access key functions within the CMS and CRM.
For now, the ONE Board includes a change log of Greenleaf ONE updates as well as a feed of resources that may be useful to users, including tutorials, trainings and general information.
We’re already working on improvements for version 2 of the Greenleaf ONE Board and have plans to make it even more useful for users. Stay tuned!
Custom element and layout library
We’ve integrated the ONE Library into the element library of the page builder. This is a remote library that allows us to upload custom layouts, elements, etc. that are then accessible by all Greenleaf ONE users. The ONE Library allows us to provide additional functionality that will be accessible directly in the builder and at your fingertips.
If you’re looking for a particular design or element configuration, shoot us an email and we’ll be glad to take a look. Everything that we deploy to the library is available to all users, so if you have a common use case, then we’re happy to work something up and share it.
Planned
We have a long list of updates planned. Those below are broad in nature and will be detailed out as we properly plan their implementation. Stay tuned for additional details.
Video Library
Version 1 of the video library is live and accessible via the Greenleaf client portal. It ships with a few dozen video tutorials, and we’re adding more weekly. These tutorials are intended to be short, instructive videos that help dispell some of the complexities around both website and CRM management. At Greenleaf ONE, we’re committed to taking the complex and making it clear and simple for users to understand and ultimately to use.
We’re continuing to develop tutorials targeting key features and functionality within both WordPress and CiviCRM. Expect a few new videos each month as we continue to build out a comprehensive training library. Have something specific you would like us to cover? Send us an email.
Return of monthly webinars
Expect to see more live webinars coming online soon. These will be geared both to new users interested in getting an overview of specific functionalities as well as advanced users that want to take a deeper dive.
Historically focused on CiviCRM, this new webinar series is expanding to include all of Greenleaf ONE’s functionality and will provide an overview of various topics from using the page builder, custom post types, custom fields and much more.
Referral program
We’re very confident that Greenleaf ONE provides a superior tools set for CiviCRM and WordPress users, particularly those that are new to the space or that are long time users of Drupal and are simply tired of dealing with Drupal 8 or 9… or wait, we’re up to 10 now, right?
Because of this, we’ve launched a referral program for current Greenleaf ONE users that provides up to 3 months free use of the Greenleaf ONE platform for successful new referrals. You can access and share your referral code via the Greenleaf ONE client portal.
This is potentially a big opportunity for Greenleaf ONE advocates to essentially leverage the system free while helping new organizations get up to speed on using a powerful toolset to improve their performance and achieve their missions.
Let’s get back to work!
Another big update with lots of big plans. Again, we’re really stoked about the progress we’re making on Greenleaf ONE. We’ve made huge strides in improving the underlying infrastructure and are now putting the standards in place to make Greenleaf ONE an incredibly powerful and flexible tool for high performance organizations.
We’re excited to share these updates and even more excited about the feedback we’ve received so far. We’re not at all afraid to admit that there is still work to be done, but adoption rate and use of Greenleaf ONE is accelerating, which is very encouraging!
As always, feedback (good or bad) is welcome at info@greenleaf.one.
