We are very pleased to announce the release of 1.1! This release is packed full of bug fixes and features and it is just the beginning. There is so much planned for Mautic that we can barely keep up. If the feature you wanted didn’t make it into this release, rest assured that we aren’t done, and likely never will be!
In addition to the features and bug fixes, this release also brings some changes that will make using Mautic easier and better. Here are some highlights of some of the major changes in this release but you can read the full changelog here.
[h]Form Improvements[/h]
Forms have been much improved and made easier to manage. Please note some important changes as outlined below.
When creating a form, you now select between a “Campaign” form or a “Standalone” form. Standalone forms are what you’re already used to where defined submit actions are executed when a lead submits. Campaign forms can be used as lead sources for campaigns. These forms no longer have submit actions as the campaign is expected to take over after the form has been submitted. Leads created from the form submissions will be automatically added to campaigns that have selected the form as a lead source.
Creating and updating leads no longer has to be configured as a separate submit action as it all happens automatically now. All you have to do now is choose the matching lead field when creating the form field. Mautic will even auto-match some fields such as email for you. Don’t worry if you’re upgrading, the old Create/Update Lead submit action will be migrated to the new setup for you.
The biggest change that may affect existing forms is how they are integrated into other pages. Forms now post through a hidden iframe and uses a little javascript magic to receive information back from Mautic. This means that the lead never leaves your site and can even receive downloads from Mautic directly through a form submission. You may have to account for this change as Mautic will no longer show the Mautic’s message page after a form submit. Messages are sent back through the iframe and displayed as messages directly within the form. Of course, you can still configure a redirect, a download, or now both!
If you used a template override, please reconcile it with the changes of app/bundles/FormBundle/Views/Builder/form.html.php of this release.
[h]Email Improvements[/h]
A lot of work has gone into Mautic emails.
Like forms, emails have been split into two types, “List” and “Template.” List emails can be sent to selected lead lists and once sent, cannot be edited. They can however be sent to new leads in the lists. Template emails are emails used by campaigns, form submits, etc and can be edited.
Emails can now have custom from, reply to and BCC addresses along with assets as attachments.
Tired of retyping an email’s plain text? We’ve got your covered with the new auto generate feature that will automatically convert HTML into plain text.
Want to send a lead a quick email? No problem, just view the lead’s profile and click the Send Email button. Type out something completely custom or pull in the content from an existing template email.
Having to remember to use the {externallink} token to generate trackable links is of the past. All links are now automatically converted into trackable links and click stats are displayed in the emails’ details.
If you’re a Mandrill user, this will cause you to do a little jig. Our Mandrill integration now uses their API to send emails. Ports are no longer an issue; emails are sent faster and tokenized; and bounce callbacks are now supported. To leverage bounce callbacks, create a Mandrill webhook that points to http://your-mautic.com/mailer/mandrill/callback. Configure it to post to the events bounces, soft bounces, and failures. Finally create two custom metadata fields of hashId and leadId. Woohoo! If you’re not a Mandrill user, we’ll be adding similar support for other supported email services in future versions.
[h]Builder Improvements[/h]
The last thing I want to point out here is the improvements to Mautic’s email and page builders. First, we cleaned up the UI a bit. Choosing custom HMTL vs the builder is no longer required as it’s assumed builder if you choose a theme.
Inserting tokens is easier by using the new inline token search feature. Just start typing
A little hidden feature is support for lead field fallbacks in emails. We'll be improving this in future versions but wanted to let you in on the little secret so you can start using it. If you use raw tokens, you can simply do something like
There are other little gems in this release that we think you'll enjoy but will let you discover them for yourself (or read the changelog
[h]Upgrading[/h]
As always, we highly recommend that you backup your database prior to upgrading.
Once you do, upgrading is easy as a few clicks. The update will show up in the notifications area then just click the Update Now button. It'll look similar to this:
We appreciate all the feedback and involvement from the community and look forward to Mautic's community growing more every day!
Happy Marketing and enjoy!
The Mautic Team
