nantIt's been 3+ years since I wrote the first release of the Joomla to CiviCRM user synchronization plugin. Based on some forum posts, it looks like the new releases of CiviCRM broke compatibility.
So, this weekend I found some time to fire-up my development environment and install CiviCRM 5.1.15 over Joomla 3.9.10 and Communuty Builder 2.4.2. I was able to fix the broken compatibility and add some more features in the process. Old plugin users will have to uninstall their previous version, install the new one and then reconfigure the plugin parameters.
This Joomla 3.x plugin will detect when a new user is added to your website through any Joomla or Community Builder user interface and automatically create (or update) the corresponding CiviCRM individual contact. This means that the following actions will trigger the integration process:
- frontend user registration using the Joomla registration form
- admininstrative (backend) user creation using the Joomla User Manager
- frontend user registration using the Community Builder registration form
- admininstrative (backend) user creation using the Community Builder User Manager
The plugin will detect what method was used and act accordingly:
- If a CB process was used and CB has been configured to gather firstname / lastname fields, these values will be used to create a new CiviCRM contact (if one does not already exist for the email address of the user that just registered)
- If a Joomla process was used the plugin will split the single name field to come up with first/last name equivalents
If the registration email address already has one or more CiviCRM contacts, then the plugin will decide (based on plugin configuration parameters) which contact to use and how to proceed. The relevant plugin configuration parameter is called 'Multiple Contact Handling' and its value options are:
- Skip syncing
- Use oldest
- Use newest
- Create new contact
There are some additional cool integration features that the plugin supports:
- Ability to put the CiviCRM contact in one or more CiviCRM contact groups (groups must already exist in CiviCRM and plugin will automatically detect them and present them for selection in relevant plugin parameter fields)
- Ability to create a single CiviCRM activity for the relevant CiviCRM contact and give it a scheduled/due date, a status, and a priority level. You can even set the activity subject and description and assign it to a specific CiviCRM contact ID. Once again the CiviCRM activity types are automatically detected by the plugin and presented as a single select plugin parameter.
I have some additional features in mind, but I am releasing 2.1.1 right away, It is free for downloading in our download section.
