What's happening with Fat Free CRM

[nathan.f77]

Hi everyone,

I'd just like to take a minute to tell you about some of our plans for
Fat Free CRM. We're currently looking for a new name, but changing the
name is only a small part of the overhaul that we have planned.
Here are some of the important points that we're considering:


* We're moving to Rails 3.1, and will be creating a better plugin
architecture that leverages the asset pipeline. This will break
support for any existing plugins, but many plugins are already broken
on the latest version of FFCRM.

* We're looking at integrating some plugins into core Fat Free CRM,
such as tags, merging records, and dynamic fields.

* We're looking at redesigning the UI, using jQuery & backbone.js
instead of Prototype and RJS. We may also evaluate an integration with
'RailsAdmin' (https://github.com/sferik/rails_admin).

* We'll be moving the community to UserEcho (http://userecho.com/) and
Github Issues. UserEcho will be the place for users to request and
vote on features, and report bugs. We will use Github Issues as the
issue tracker for developers. At some point, we will be shutting down
both of the google groups and the lighthouse tracker.

* When we find a new name, we'll make fatfreecrm.com redirect to the
new domain, and we'll use up our one 'rename' on Github. We won't be
losing any of the project's forks, watchers or issues.

* We'll be putting in a lot of effort to update and improve the
documentation.


Thanks for your patience while we make some of these decisions. There
will be a lot of work to do, so your input and assistance would be
very appreciated!


Thanks,
Nathan B

[ademola adesakin]

Hi Nathan,

Would you want to shed more light on any new features you would be adding. More so, I did make a suggestion regarding groups and roles, what you currently have is too basic. For instance, as a Sales Admin, I want to see what everyone of my Account Managers is working on and be able to edit it. However, other Account Managers may be able to see it but not edit the account. We need a sort of dynamic matrix for roles that can be set by the Site Admin.

Regards,

Ademola Osindero

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From: nathan.f77 <natha...@gmail.com>
To: Fat Free CRM Developers <fat-free...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 27 October 2011, 19:37
Subject: [fat-free-crm-dev:505] What's happening with Fat Free CRM

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[Nathan Broadbent]

Hi Ademola,

We've been talking about group permissions for a long time, and we definitely agree that it is a necessary feature. We will look at rewriting the FFCRM permissions system using the 'cancan' gem.
I can't make any promises about when it will happen, but this feature is one of the top priorities.


Thanks,
Nathan

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[rob]

What would you recommend to both users and developers as far as the transition period goes?  

As a user, I want to make sure I'm on the latest version of FFCRM and have the confidence that the data I'm putting in there now will be easy to migrate once the new system is available.  There are probably other concerns from a user perspective that I can't think of at the moment. :)  

As a developer, where should we dig in and start?  Does it make sense to wait until the above has been handled by the core team?  If so, how long should we expect it to take?  Is there an easy way to divide and conquer?  I was working on enhancing the plugin section a bit as we discussed a while back, but I think it's going to make sense to abandon those changes in light of what is mentioned above.  I'd just like to make sure that any development efforts are going toward the right area.  

thanks,

rob 

[Matthew Gow]

This is just about the most encouraging thread I've seen on this list :)

I'm in enthusiastic about the name change and the fresh start.

There are many places where lots of value can be added by people now. Creating some basic screen casts demonstrating key features would be useful in "community building" even as the dust is settling on decisions about architectural changes. They can quickly be dropped in on the new website as soon as it's up.

Matt

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[Nathan Broadbent]

Hi Rob,

Sorry I haven't got back to you sooner. We will ensure that the transition period is easy and safe for everyone's data. We will only be adding gems and migrations, so updating will be painless. (bundle install; rake db:migrate)

For users, the transition won't be very dramatic. We will be changing the name and adding new features, but the changes won't be too confusing.

For developers, there will be a lot of changes. This refactor will probably require quite a bit of experience with the application, but we will keep looking for ways to divide big features into smaller pieces. It might be best if the core team handles some of the big decisions about the plugins, settings and permissions architecture, but we do want to keep the process open for discussion. I think it would be a good idea if I started a public wiki page to share more of our plans. Will do that soon.
I'd still love to see the work you have done for plugins, as there will probably be improvements that we can still use.

In terms of "development efforts going toward the right area", we do need a bit of time to switch to new issue trackers and reorganize our feature tickets. If you are itching for something to work on right now, here are a few things you could help us with:

• Refactor some of our RSpec tests, to make the tests faster / more stable. (try to use before :all instead of before :each, try to use Factory.build instead of Factory.create, etc.)
  
• Add some 'steak' integration tests  (alternative to Cucumber, in plain Ruby)
• Import wizard for importing data in csv or xml
• Import plugins for external services such as google contacts, salesforce, highrise, etc.
• iCal feeds for google calendar, etc.
  
• Synchronize tasks with google tasks
• Sales reports and graphs using google charts API

Also, please continue to submit pull requests for any bugs or missing translations, and
documentation still needs heaps of improvement.


Regards,
Nathan B

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 5:07 AM, rob <rob...@gmail.com> wrote:

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