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15 Responses to “Team activities update - Feb 2010”

1. on 07 Feb 2010 at 2:57 pm   bruzergear

   We really appreciate all the work the vtiger team puts into making this project more successful.

   I have put several comments in the forum about 3 features I think will really help the project out to help make workflows more powerful and get developers creating and sharing workflows with the community.

   I think the ability for developers to create custom modules and the introduction of workflows was absolutely great in 5.1.
   However, I think you will see that once the workflows have the 3 features I mention in my recent forum posts, that you will see developers like myself get much more involved because it will be so much easier for us to create and share our solutions.

   From what I have noticed in other opensource projects we have been involved in, is that the community is very good at helping to find bugs but not really good at fixing them. They are better at being creative in making more extensions and contributing with ideas and enhancements.

   So if you are able to make it easier for the developers to share custom workflows that go along with their custom modules, I think you will start to see more good things come out of the developers in all sorts of ways.
   Once the developers feel there is a thriving community for them to share their modules and workflows with, they will start to care more about advancing the overall project and will help with the bug fixes as well.

   I think the Joomla project is one of the best ones I have seen as far as getting the developers and community involved in progressing the project, so if there are things you can do to pattern after what they do, then that might really help get us all going.

   Basically the developers will be driven at first by being able to create new modules and workflows that they can either give away or sell easily to the community, then once the extension market is thriving, you will see them get more involved with bug fixes.

   That is just an observation from our past experiences.

2. on 07 Feb 2010 at 9:23 pm   Prasad

   Thank you for sharing wealthy observation.

3. on 08 Feb 2010 at 3:03 pm   adrian friggieri

   could you kindly advice if there is any module that handles job sheets please? or projects.

   or if there is no current module maybe people that are able to udate the product and work on a new module

   thanks

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5. on 09 Feb 2010 at 1:03 am   Murat

   I think there should be a kind of announcement on the first page of vtiger.com saying something like “vTigerCRM 5.2.0 is coming soon…”
   When an interested person would click the link he would see the upcoming features of v5.2.0 and words like “bugfixes are needed”…
   I am not a programmer, but I have never heard of v5.2.0, although I periodically read updates of vTigerCRM blogs.

6. on 13 Feb 2010 at 2:16 am   downes

   I would like to repeat bruzergear´s observations because because they are from great significance for the future development of the project.

   QUOTE
   “From what I have noticed in other opensource projects we have been involved in, is that the community is very good at helping to find bugs but not really good at fixing them. They are better at being creative in making more extensions and contributing with ideas and enhancements.

   So if you are able to make it easier for the developers to share custom workflows that go along with their custom modules, I think you will start to see more good things come out of the developers in all sorts of ways.
   Once the developers feel there is a thriving community for them to share their modules and workflows with, they will start to care more about advancing the overall project and will help with the bug fixes as well.

   I think the Joomla project is one of the best ones I have seen as far as getting the developers and community involved in progressing the project, so if there are things you can do to pattern after what they do, then that might really help get us all going.

   Basically the developers will be driven at first by being able to create new modules and workflows that they can either give away or sell easily to the community, then once the extension market is thriving, you will see them get more involved with bug fixes.

   That is just an observation from our past experiences.”
   UNQUOTE

7. on 13 Feb 2010 at 6:45 am   adomc

   nice to hear vTigerCRM 5.2.0 is coming soon

8. on 21 Feb 2010 at 6:27 pm   NonoFr

   Hi Prasad, We’re looking forward to see what’s cookin’ for 5.2. We like 5.1 very much although since July 22, 2009 official release date no maintenance version as been issued 5.1.XX like in joomla 1.5.15 currently.

   The feature list in 5.2 looks more as a maintenance release (at least I don’t see any smashing and ecxiting new things):
   New :
   4. i18n support added

   Update ?:
   3. Installation Wizard rewrite (full rewrite for something that is going to be used just once ??):
   6. Pre-Migration Tools appear only if there are MyISAM tables or the new database name is same as the old database name for migration
   8. mysqli and mysqlt database types supported for Mysql dbtype

   Let’s use the plugin approach
   7. Stronger support added for the migration of Vtlib modules
   9. Min version and Max version information storage and retrieval support added for Vtlib modules
   10. Reports Enhancement- Added Line Item Support: Feature to show the line item details for inventory module like SO,PO, Quote and Invoice in reports.
   11. Delete option for User Image

   Yet unknow (what does it do):
   1. User List view Navigation
   2. Calendar Import Export
   5. Actions broken down into functions

   Finally I wished you could get inspired by the joomla environnement : Extensions sections noticebly/ letting other contributors publish in a tidy environment.

   I also hope that the SMS Module will be pluggable into this release not native. Again I think this plugin should be left aside since it has been done/ maintained by Joe Bordes and remain a plugin on it’s own (neveer you may encounter a developper wihing to provide it’s own SMS module).

   Finally I wished we could get a sense of the coming new features and previsional date of launch (when is 5.2 going to be out for RC ?

   Hope this log post will help you keep up the good work. It s always easier to give advice than to be actually producing the work
   Cheers, NonoFr

9. on 24 Feb 2010 at 7:28 am   Andrew

   I agree that the primary work should be done on making extensions and plug-ins easier to write. I’m pretty comfortable with writing code and I was totally confused by the instructions for writing an extension and ended up giving up. As a result I haven’t rolled out vtiger to any of my clients because I’m not confident I can create extensions or modifications for my clients. (which most CRM’s need to be done for clients). Which means we cannot give this extensions back to the project.

10. on 03 Mar 2010 at 8:24 am   bruzergear

    I want to first start this post by Thanking the vtiger Team for their long and hard work in producing such a wonderful product for all of us.

    I have recently been posting several things on the forums and blogs that are very similar. I hope the vtiger team and users aren’t sick of reading all my posts that keep saying similar things, but I think it is important for the future of vtiger.

    So this will be a fairly long post that will try to summarize everything that I am trying to say in all my posts across the forums and blogs. So please bear with me.

    I believe vtiger COULD be the most powerful platform for businesses of all types and sizes in the future.

    However, to accomplish this, I think it is critical that the following two things happen with the vtiger project:

    1. Many Outside Developers must be actively involved in the community by creating and sharing or selling custom modules and custom workflows to solve any type of feature request or problem a business may be trying to solve to make their business run better. (Think Joomla JED)

    2. To accomplish #1, vtiger must add just a few features to the core and the rest will come from developers like me that can then work with those features to program anything the community is looking for.

    These few features that I will discuss at the end of this post will allow Developers to create modules and workflows for the community that would easily allow anyone using vtiger to integrate vtiger with any other system or automate any task within vtiger.

    Here are just a few of the things you could do with the few features simple features that I will list at the end of this post:

    1. Integrate any website with Vtiger so users and accounts and orders on your website are automatically updated and synced with vtiger.
    You could work with any shopping cart: Joomla/virtuemart, Zen Cart, OsCommerce, Magento, and any other shopping cart or website system.

    2. Integrate any Accounting system with vtiger. FrontAccounting, Quickbooks, etc.

    3. Integrate any Mass Mail marketing system with vtiger to send out newsletters, etc. PHPlist, Aweber, Constant Contact, etc.

    4. Easily Integrate other systems with vtiger that use an API like ebay, or amazon or google, etc.

    5. Integrate vtiger with any Point of Sale system for taking orders and processing credit cards, checks, cash at retail locations, trade shows, or through any POS system.

    6. Integrate vtiger with any affiliate tracking software to keep track of sales and commissions on your website

    7. Automate any Sales or Business Processes within vtiger.
    For example:
    a. Create and Send Purchase orders automatically when an order comes in from your website that you need filled by a Drop Shipper.
    b. Receive and account for inventory in a warehouse and then reflect that inventory on your website automatically so you customers can see what is in stock on your website.
    c. Eliminate any double data entry for any business process. One time data entry will share any data across any of your business systems.
    d. There are many, many other things you can do that I could go on to list forever. Just look at all the posts in the vtiger Wish List forum and I bet I could solve 80% of them by getting creative with Custom Modules and Custom Workflows.

    Creativity of developers and customers is the limit. Anything you can think of, you can do with Custom Modules working with Custom Workflows.

    However,
    THE FOLLOWING FEATURES NEED TO BE ADDED TO VTIGER TO MAKE ALL OF THIS POSSIBLE:

    1. Add “Update Fields” Task type to workflows module.

    2. Workflow trigger based on field change.(i.e.,if a field value has changed, irrespective of the old or new values are, the workflow action should get invoked).

    3. Allow adding of custom fields to Users.

    4. Allow workflows to run off of User Fields.

    5. Create way for users to easily Install Custom Workflows just like they can now Install Custom Modules.

    If those five features were added, then developers like myself can get creative with the Custom Modules and Custom Workflows we create and can easily share them with the community to do anything you want with vtiger.

    Vtiger COULD be the most powerful platform for running your business if it had a bunch of developers like me providing custom modules and workflows to do anything you can imagine.
    The only way that will happen is if we have those features and an easy way for users to install these Custom Workflows we have built solve their problems.

    In my Opinion, the best thing that came with vtiger 5.1 was the ability to add custom modules and the ability to create workflows. However, there is still a few things that need to be done to realize the full potential that these new features brought to 5.1

    The future success of vtiger is completely dependent on these things happening, because if they don’t, then vtiger will forever be limited in what it can do.

    So let’s get together and make it happen.

    I recently contacted the core team of vtiger about this and they Estimated that it would take about 20 man days to make this happen.
    At their rate of $400 per man-day to have this custom built for me, I couldn’t afford to do it on my own.
    So I am asking the community and the vtiger team to figure out some way to make this happen.
    20 man days is not that much and the future rewards would be huge.

    If vtiger absolutely can not invest any time in this because of lack of resources, then I understand and I am able to contribute $500 to the cause if there are others that can help come up with the funds.

    However, I really do think it is in the best interest of vtiger to invest in developing their system in a way that will make it easier for me to invest my time and money in developing extensions that I can easily share with the vtiger community.

    Thanks for your time and any feedback or support for this idea.

    I am excited about the future of vtiger.

    Dave

11. on 01 Apr 2010 at 12:49 am   NonoFr

    Dear Vtiger Team,
    Do we have some update as to when will 5.2 be launched?
    Regards
    Nonofr

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13. on 14 Apr 2010 at 2:39 am   Deep

    Anyone home??

    Have you seen whats happening in the world, while you were away…

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/04/sugarcrm.php
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33007&tag=wrapper;col1
    http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/technology/salesforcecom-expands-social-networking-collaboration-chatter/106466
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=32999&tag=wrapper;col1
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33042&tag=wrapper;col1

    Pls guys wake up and do sth.

    regards,

14. on 18 Apr 2010 at 10:01 pm   kyo

    Sorry but what’s the prolem with the sugarCRM ?

15. on 05 May 2010 at 9:31 am   Albert

    Any update on vTiger 5.2.0?

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