Update on vtiger progress
July 13th, 2007 by Richie
Well, I am back after a long hiatus and here is the update!
5.0.3 was tough and then some more …
We have been busy with getting our house in order.
- The code base is being cleaned up further to ensure that the product remains slim and trim.
- We are trying to make the product more user-friendly and good-looking ;-).
- There are some areas in the product wherein we feel that the design out to be changed so that there is enough room for flexibility and customizations. Right now, it is a beast at times to customize in certain areas.
- The patches are being integrated. We took around 34 patches to integrate of which close to 20 made into the product. Down the line, it will be wiser to have Patch Reviewers who do this. This time around we have done it but it is surely not scalable and certainly not practical. Minnie is burning midnight oil to get a review of all these THIS time.
- We are working on making the modules complete. Most of the modules are 90-80% complete. There lies that crucial gap being good and usable that we ought to bridge and that is where we are focusing on. We DO NOT intend to bloat the product, we just want the common features in and then give provisions for adding/extending more.
- There has been a spate of business deployments of vtiger and that is keeping the team in very high spirits. Gopal is doing twice the amount of job that a stretched human can do and still there is miles to go to meet the enquiries and follow ups. This also highlights to me that we need to make certain changes to vtiger to make things easier. The day I have Gopal happy is the day when vtiger is set for life. By the looks of it, it does not seem so anywhere in the near future
- We have opened an office in the USA to facilitate the business handlings. SVK is the person who is heading the US office. He will be handling all partnerships. You can touch base with him at svk at vtiger dot com. vtiger is booming now and all this has been simply due to your overwhelming support.
- As Gopal has mentioned earlier, vtiger has been nominated for the SourceForge Community Awards. SVK will be representing us in the awards ceremony. Do visit us at booth no: 425 at OSCON on July 26, 2007. I hope to be there too but my itinerary is not certain yet so let us see.
- The forums are booming. The Italians are pounding the hell out of the forums and man, am I happy! First, it was the Germans, then the French and now the Italians! Welcome all to vtiger!
- We are also working on fixing bugs. We have shortlisted around 70 odd bugs to be taken up for fixing as of now.
- utf-8 support at the PHP level is being integrated.
- We plan to update the third party packages used in vtiger so that we are supporting the latest and greatest versions out there.
- PHP-5.2 support has been integrated and released. This was a big relief for me personally as there was intense heat on this issue what with half-baked information floating around. People do not realise that it is very easy to make statements on an individual level but when we need to take the onus of delivering a product which supports an entirely new version of a particular product, we have to think ten times and then work. Just a screwup is needed to get all bad publicity and loss of faith. With the web-world, bad publicity spreads faster than light. What with backward compatibility added to the mixture! There has been quite some criticism on this front for not supporting PHP-5.2 but then it was too late in the release cycle and I did not want to muddy the water anymore. I standby that decision.
- There is no time frame set for the next release. We will release when we think that the quality is good and we have a good product that we are proud to release. This is a VERY BIG lesson for me personally
- Support for module addition too is a similar ask. Yes, it is a dream to do that and do that damned well but it will take time. Let us visit the basics and clean them and ensure that the very tenets are proper instead of going out for an all revamp.
In order to be big, we must become small first. Only when we have a strong foundation, can we create a magnificent building.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for the support and the encouragement. vtiger has done just the technical part, the rest has been done by you. Thank You.
And yes, before I forget, please do spread the word!
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Hi Richie,
Congratulations, you still doing a great job, but your post brings me a question.
Do I have to understand that modularization is not a “must do” on your roadmap?, because all the post is about integration.
Maybe it’s time you do an upgrade to Vtiger Road map.
Hi Rasomu!
Modularization is certainly there in the roadmap but I am not able to comment if we can take it up now. There was a lot of soul-searching on that issue here too and we realised that there is too much clean up to do first.
I have deliberately not updated the roadmap because things are very fluid and we are not able to keep to the commitments. By setting expectations and not keeping them, leaves a bad taste hence have decided not to update them.
Once things are reasonably shaping up, then, I will be able to state what is coming up in the next release. In the meantime, the community is welcome to checkout the code and have a look.
There are plans to make the developer list more audible from our side too. We have not done much work on that front. So that should make up for some of the silence.
We are also helping out the folks in the forum to an extent now so that they can come upto speed. This is also to ensure that there is proper communication happening towards the developer front.
I would still encourage the folks to buy support though.
Richie
Thanks for your fast response Richie, as said many times before I’m not developer so I can’t help you cleanning the code, but here are my two cents.
I’m the es_es language translator. One thing you should do is try to concentrate all strings in just one file.
There are many strings that repeat all over modules, so when you are translating that strings is quasi-imposible to keep it the same because they have different tags.
In some modules you have done some “string adding” for building dinamic messages, but haven’t thought than in other languages we have different gramatical estructures so when they became translated they have no sense.
Integrating the language module on Vtiger is also a good idea, some companies have different spelings for same concepts, adding the module give that companies the chance of customizating the Crm without the needings of knowning anithing of vtiger structure.
I wish that words helps you someway or give you some new idea.
Keep doing.
RaF
Hi RaF,
i desagree with you on one point.
I think it’s better to keep language in differents folder. A lang string can take another sense from a module to another for us in france.
To have a “lang manager” can be a good think, but i think to have a real data dictionnary can be better. Like that we can have custom field translated in different lang…
I iagree with you Aissa, different meanings need different strings, but what about some words like Accounts, Contact, Telephone, Fax …. that repeats on each module, or the picklists.
The exceptions you are saying I have registered on spanish no more than three or four.
I think that multicurrency per user support and Snaphots of quotes & Sales orders on every edit after its creation is a must.
it´s not useful to attach the pdf to the quote or so every time it´s edited to keep record of changes.
Webmails too has been given a lot of attention. Srinivas has handled most of the issues. We are working on the Character-set issue and that is the only thorn left out on that front.
I agree Richie, actually we doesn’t use webmail as part of vtiger CRM. Unusable for us. Caracter problem, slow… Improve in future is a good idea.
As a first step, we have configured IMAP server for our own (vtiger Company) Business System to fetch Sales/Services/Partnership/Info mails. In the next few days our goal is to make Web mail usable for us, so that we can provide a working solution for our business community.
I will post our experience, once we have successfully completed this operation.
Regards,
Gopal
Hi Guys,
Can you update the community on the latest happening in vtiger team!! New features, roadmap, etc and any plans for 5.04 or 5.1, etc. etc. I guess its about time!!
We got really excited to see 5.03, but it has further escalated our hunger
Keep up the great work!!
Regards,
Deep