PBJ CRM 1.11.0, Helpdesk 2.6.0, Invoicing 1.13.0, Archive 1.2.0
PBJ CRM 1.11.0 is out, together with PBJ Helpdesk 2.6.0, PBJ Invoicing 1.13.0 and PBJ Archive 1.2.0. This is one coordinated release across the whole suite: a lot of it is plumbing you will never see, and the parts you will see are all about the CRM feeling like a place of work rather than a page on your website.
The CRM is its own screen now
Open the CRM and your site’s logo, menu, header and footer are gone. What is left is the CRM, using the full width of your display instead of sitting in a fixed column, so wide tables finally get the room they need. Dark mode is properly dark — black rather than charcoal, and black the moment the page opens instead of flashing white first. Cards stay a shade lighter than the page so they still read as cards.
More importantly, the CRM is now genuinely independent of your website’s theme. Your theme’s styling does not reach inside it at all, so the CRM looks and behaves the same whichever theme you run and however you change it. Every other page on your site is completely untouched. If you would rather keep your theme’s layout, a developer can turn it off with the pbj_crm_use_portal_canvas filter.
One place for templates and notifications
There is a new Templates & Notifications tab in the CRM’s settings. It holds who gets told what, the settings for one person, and — because the add-ons put their own templates there too — the wording of your help desk emails, your canned replies, your invoice emails and your reminder and late-fee settings. One place to find anything you send. Nothing about how those emails work has changed; only where you edit them.
The triage screen leads with your own tickets
The help desk’s first tile used to count new messages, which is not something anybody is answerable for. It now counts the tickets assigned to you that are still open, and clicking it opens them as cards without leaving the page. Open-ness is read from each ticket’s own status path, so a category with its own stages is counted properly. New messages moved to the top, and a duplicated “waiting to be assigned” tally is gone along with the extra database query behind it.
Clicking a person on the Team screen now shows what they have been working on — their replies and notes across every ticket you are allowed to see, newest first, each naming its ticket, with a filter by kind of activity.
Your own sign-off, and your own mailbox
Your team can fill in their job title, direct number, booking link, office hours and photo, then drop any of it into an email with a click. Every screen that writes an email now has a button for each merge field, offering only the fields that make sense there — so nothing on offer can come out blank. You can add a personal sign-off to replies, off until you turn it on, and a manager can set a shared one instead.
When you reply to a ticket you can now choose which of your mailboxes it goes out from. Leave it alone and it decides exactly as before.
Security
Three changes worth knowing about. Removing someone from the CRM now signs them out everywhere immediately and refuses to let them back in, rather than leaving whatever browser they were already signed in on working until it expired on its own. Staff sign-ins now last hours rather than the site’s default of days. And the sign-up link at the bottom of a client’s help desk email now expires after 24 hours and offers a fresh one — before, that link worked indefinitely, so a forwarded email handed account setup to whoever received it.
Upgrading
Update PBJ CRM first, then the add-ons — Helpdesk 2.5.0 and newer need CRM 1.10.0 or newer. Your groups, notification settings and email templates are all carried across as they are, and the database updates itself. Because staff sessions are shorter now, everyone signed in at the time of the update will be asked to sign in again once. Nothing else is asked of you.
PBJ CRM 1.11.0 is out, together with PBJ Helpdesk 2.6.0, PBJ Invoicing 1.13.0 and PBJ Archive 1.2.0. This is one coordinated release across the whole suite: a lot of it is plumbing you will never see, and the parts you will see are all about the CRM feeling like a place of work rather than a page on your website.
The CRM is its own screen now
Open the CRM and your site’s logo, menu, header and footer are gone. What is left is the CRM, using the full width of your display instead of sitting in a fixed column, so wide tables finally get the room they need. Dark mode is properly dark — black rather than charcoal, and black the moment the page opens instead of flashing white first. Cards stay a shade lighter than the page so they still read as cards.
More importantly, the CRM is now genuinely independent of your website’s theme. Your theme’s styling does not reach inside it at all, so the CRM looks and behaves the same whichever theme you run and however you change it. Every other page on your site is completely untouched. If you would rather keep your theme’s layout, a developer can turn it off with the pbj_crm_use_portal_canvas filter.
One place for templates and notifications
There is a new Templates & Notifications tab in the CRM’s settings. It holds who gets told what, the settings for one person, and — because the add-ons put their own templates there too — the wording of your help desk emails, your canned replies, your invoice emails and your reminder and late-fee settings. One place to find anything you send. Nothing about how those emails work has changed; only where you edit them.
The triage screen leads with your own tickets
The help desk’s first tile used to count new messages, which is not something anybody is answerable for. It now counts the tickets assigned to you that are still open, and clicking it opens them as cards without leaving the page. Open-ness is read from each ticket’s own status path, so a category with its own stages is counted properly. New messages moved to the top, and a duplicated “waiting to be assigned” tally is gone along with the extra database query behind it.
Clicking a person on the Team screen now shows what they have been working on — their replies and notes across every ticket you are allowed to see, newest first, each naming its ticket, with a filter by kind of activity.
Your own sign-off, and your own mailbox
Your team can fill in their job title, direct number, booking link, office hours and photo, then drop any of it into an email with a click. Every screen that writes an email now has a button for each merge field, offering only the fields that make sense there — so nothing on offer can come out blank. You can add a personal sign-off to replies, off until you turn it on, and a manager can set a shared one instead.
When you reply to a ticket you can now choose which of your mailboxes it goes out from. Leave it alone and it decides exactly as before.
Security
Three changes worth knowing about. Removing someone from the CRM now signs them out everywhere immediately and refuses to let them back in, rather than leaving whatever browser they were already signed in on working until it expired on its own. Staff sign-ins now last hours rather than the site’s default of days. And the sign-up link at the bottom of a client’s help desk email now expires after 24 hours and offers a fresh one — before, that link worked indefinitely, so a forwarded email handed account setup to whoever received it.
Upgrading
Update PBJ CRM first, then the add-ons — Helpdesk 2.5.0 and newer need CRM 1.10.0 or newer. Your groups, notification settings and email templates are all carried across as they are, and the database updates itself. Because staff sessions are shorter now, everyone signed in at the time of the update will be asked to sign in again once. Nothing else is asked of you.