Webform CiviCRM Integration: new features added in 2018 and looking ahead to 2019

2018 was a big year for Webform CiviCRM module. I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the new features that were added in 2018 (with some examples/screenshots) and take a look at what's to come in 2019!

Webform CiviCRM Integration - what is this?

Webform CiviCRM is a Drupal module that in a nutshell exposes CiviCRM APIs (with which you can create CiviCRM contacts, contributions, memberships, participant registrations, activities - just about any CiviCRM Entity programmatically) to the powerful Drupal Webform module - a very popular (over 450,000 Drupal sites are using it) and highly configurable drag and drop form builder. Webform CiviCRM itself is a popular module - over 3,000 CiviCRM projects are using it. That's more users/sites than the Mosaico Extension has! Webform CiviCRM was invented by Coleman Watts (of the CiviCRM Core Team) and is supported by the CiviCRM community:  https://www.drupal.org/project/webform_civicrm

2018 - highlights

• enhancements to recurring contributions via Webform CiviCRM (thanks to Biodynamics Association (USA) for co-funding this) - you can now configure your webform such that you can pay any amount (Event, Membership) in instalments as well as start a regular recurring open-ended Donation. An example of this would be swim club fees -> a full season is 10 months and costs $3,000 for the entire year. You can now configure your webform such that parents can sign up their child(ren) for Memberships/Events -> and select to pay all at once or in e.g. 10 instalments of $300/month.
• Stripe support (thanks to contributions by Matthew Wire from MJW Consulting) - Matt has been doing a lot of work on the Stripe Extension and we've been supportive of changes he has PR-ed to Webform Civicrm module.  This means that Webform CiviCRM is now compatible with all major in-line Payment Processors: Stripe, iATS Payments and PayPal Pro.
• being able to configure financial types (thanks to PEMAC (Canada) for funding this) - it is now possible to e.g. charge the correct Sales Tax [which is defined per Financial Type] based on a member's Province/location.


• added line item support (thanks to Wilderness Committee (Canada) for funding this) - it is now possible to add up to 5 additional lineItems for one Contribution. So you can now do things like: make a donation, purchase a calendar, pay for postage - all on the same webform - and in combination with the financial type improvements - you can control the financial types for every line item, ensuring that (in our example) - the donation becomes eligible for Charitable Tax Receipting but the calendar purchase and the postage do not. 
• numerous improvements re: cases, activities, memberships (thanks to people at Compucorp and Fuzion, and many others)
• many other improvements - I apologize for missing anything/anyone!
• Coleman and I ran a 2h sold-out Workshop on Webform CiviCRM at CiviCamp Calgary 2018. We covered lots of features and in-hindsight wished we had recorded it. Next time! Amongst many other items we covered how the Registration form for CiviCamp Calgary 2018 was built (allowing multiple participants to be signed up for multiple events and also including a Partner discount code field).

Also filed under 2018 highlights: Jacob Rockowitz officially released his Drupal 8 version of Drupal webform module - it includes wicked new features that make webforms more portable than ever and new fields like signature fields and my favourite: automated country flags for phone numbers (see screenshot further down).

Looking ahead at 2019

• formula field enhancements - very powerful to be able to do calculations on the fly in your webform to e.g. calculate credit card fees or variable discounts and being able to add these as line items to a contribution. If you're interested check out this PR: https://github.com/colemanw/webform_civicrm/tree/webform_calculator_works - I've got it in production on two sites at the moment.





• recognizing price sets that are enabled on a specific Contribution form. If you're interested in this - follow along here: https://github.com/colemanw/webform_civicrm/pull/58 
• Drupal 8 port! The D8WFC project kicked off in August 2018 and we've already got Contacts, Memberships and ... Contributions working. Yes! We're transacting through live pathways. Try out the dev version: https://www.drupal.org/project/webform_civicrm/releases/8.x-5.x-dev if you feel adventurous: it currently contains Contacts and Membership functionality. If you want to try Contributions you'll need to check our GitHub repo:  https://github.com/colemanw/webform_civicrm/tree/8.x-5.x - and keep an eye on PRs against that branch. Many thanks to Matt Glaman (USA) for being the Drupal Ninja that he is and to David Snopek (MyDropWizard, USA) for all his oversight/expertise/management on this. Of course: many thanks to our 13 CiviCRM Partner co-sponsors that help me (Semper IT, Canada) co-sponsor Matt's time on the D8WFC project: your Canada Buff swag to commemorate this D8WFC project/partnership are in envelope and en-route to: Skvare (USA), CiviCoop (The Netherlands), Northbridge Digital (UK), Compucorp (UK), Veda Consulting (UK), CiviDesk (USA), MJW Consulting (UK), Joinery (USA), Blackfly Solutions (Canada), Megaphone Technology Consulting (USA), Fuzion (New Zealand), Nubay (USA) and Agileware (Australia). 

How can user organizations Contribute?

• If you're not already using Webform CiviCRM module and are on Drupal try it out!
• Already using Webform CiviCRM module? Show us your use cases in detail on https://civicrm.stackexchange.com - use the tag webform-civicrm - add plenty of screenshots to help other users. Let's build a library of examples!
• Help us with Testing - either Drupal 7 or Drupal 8 - give us your feedback - here's how you can help test PRs: https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/24432/how-can-i-help-review-... and bugs/issues can be reported here: https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search/webform_civicrm
• Contribute financially: thank you to Wildsight (Canada) for becoming the first user organization to co-sponsor our D8WFC effort! If you're interested in Sponsoring our D8WFC efforts, I have more swag in stock (while quantities last). Want to know more? Ready to sponsor? Contact me: https://www.semper-it.com/contact
  • $300 will get you one Buff;
  • $600 will get you two Buffs;
  • $900 will get you three Buffs!