Today we are delighted to share that Acquia has completed the process of open sourcing the Custom Objects plugin, a proprietary extension which was developed by Mautic Inc. in 2018 and has been a part of Acquia’s Campaign Studio since the acquisition in 2019.

The Custom Objects plugin brings some much-needed functionality to community hosted Mautic installations which to date has only been possible with complex workarounds. It will be a third-party plugin which you can install in Mautic if you require this functionality.

What does the Custom Objects plugin do?

The Custom Objects plugin allows users to create more many-to-many relational data tables to associate more items, such as products, orders or transactions, households, and more, with either a single contact or multiple contacts. For example, one family can have multiple cars from multiple manufacturers or with different models. This elaborates a 1:many relationship between the custom object (car) and the custom items (BMW, Porsche, etc).

These associations allow you to easily segment and market to your database, based on buying behavior or other interactions with your organization and its offerings.

Source: https://docs.acquia.com/campaign-studio/settings/custom-objects/

Why is Acquia open sourcing the plugin?

I am leading a process at Acquia of reviewing all the plugins they have developed for customers in Campaign Studio, and determining if, how and when to make them available as open source plugins. Giving back to open source is part of Acquia’s DNA, and this marks the start of a process of developing a systematic approach to open sourcing our work when it’s appropriate to do so.

There was considerable demand for the Custom Objects plugin and the functionality which it brings to Mautic, and it ranked highly on our scoring system which meant we prioritized this plugin as our first to be released. 

Over the coming months we are planning to open source more of the plugins Acquia has developed, so watch this space for more updates!

~ Ruth Cheesley, Mautic Project Lead

We are very grateful to the community contributors who worked with us to beta-test the plugin and ensure that the many features and functionality which needed to be merged into Mautic before the plugin could be released were tested in good time. The Open Source Friday sprints were a real help with this.

How can Mautic users access the plugin?

The Custom Objects plugin is available to install from the Mautic Marketplace, and can also be found on GitHub for direct installation.

You must be running Mautic 4.3.0 or higher to use the plugin, as there are many dependencies which were introduced in this release, necessary for using the Custom Objects plugin.

Where can users find the documentation?

Documentation for end-users on how to configure Custom Objects in Mautic can be found in the Acquia Campaign Studio Documentation. Developer-focused documentation can be found in the repository’s wiki.

Where can users contribute to the plugin?

Issues and pull requests are welcome on the GitHub Repository.