Fat Free CRM Feature Roadmap

[Michael Dvorkin]

Since launching Fat Free CRM to the public in late June, I've been
getting a steady stream of feature requests and product inquiries. Now
that 0.9.4 release is over, I'm putting on my PM hat to prioritize
tasks for the next few iterations. In the near term I have two
features on my list:

- Finish User Profile: the only remaining feature is an ability to
change password.

- Design Admin interface and let system administrators manage user
registrations. The current setup where anyone can sign up to become a
user will be deprecated.

Once these two features are put in place, I will consider Fat Free CRM
to become minimally feature complete. That's the primary goal of the
current v1.0 milestone. My focus for the next v1.1 milestone will
shift towards expanding hooks and plugins infrastructure to make sure
it is robust and scalable.

I've already shared with some of you in private emails that my goal is
not to build yet another CRM system. My vision is to create an open
CRM-centric platform that could be easily extended and enhanced
(primarily through Rails Engines plugins and ActiveResource adapters).
My intent is to keep maintaining a relatively small and clean core
codebase, and encourage developers to use plugins and REST APIs for
any additional features they might want to add.

Speaking about feature requests I'm getting. Here's a list of big line
items that people are asking most often (in no particular order):

- Reports and analytics (originally planned for v1.2 milestone);

- User groups, hierarchies, roles, and role-based permissions;

- Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);

- Interoperability: data exchange with Google, Highrise, Salesforce;

- Localization: French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish;

- Customer support module: cases and follow-ups;

- Tagging.

So that's the list of features I've received so far, and I'm excited
to put it up for open discussion. I'd love to hear from people who are
already using Fat Free CRM or are evaluating it for possible use. I am
committed to keep the momentum going, and I want to make sure the
efforts stay focused and driven by actual customer needs.

Comments? Feedback? I look forward to hear from all of you.

Michael
http://www.fatfreecrm.com

[Dashrath]

Michael,

This is amazingly beautiful App with very clean CODE.
Have just downloaded and looked at some of the features - WOW! Very
cool.

I guess the above list of the features fulfill most of the CRM
requirements.

Thanks for making it open source.

Dashrath

[Eric Davis]

Michael Dvorkin wrote:
> - Reports and analytics (originally planned for v1.2 milestone);

I just started to work on a reporting plugin for another system
(Redmine) and have a few ideas about this. My goal with the plugin was
to keep the core reporting logic separate from the actual reports. That
way, other plugins can easily create reports and hook into the reporting
system. I think something similar would fit FFC's goals.

> - Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);

+1. I can work around most of my other "required" features but this is
the one that is preventing me from converting over to FFC. What I would
like to be able to do is to:

* Forward an email to FFC and have it add a note/record to the contact
based on the email address

* Add FFC as a BCC when I email a contact and store that email as a
note/record on the contact

(Basically how Highrise works)

> - Interoperability: data exchange with Google, Highrise, Salesforce;

What would be the benefit of a data exchange with other CRMs? To import
data?

> - Localization: French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish;

Are there any members of the community who can help translate? I've
done a lot of work with the i18n support in Rails and wouldn't mind
building some infrastructure for FFC.

> - Tagging.

+1, yes please. I'd like to have this before my migration from Highrise
but I can work around it if it takes awhile.

The only other features I can think of would be some more plugin support
but you already mentioned that.

--
Eric Davis
Little Stream Software
http://www.LittleStreamSoftware.com

[Martin Trejo]

Hi,

I've been thinking for quite a time about building software like this
and voilá! It already exists :)

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:21 AM, Michael Dvorkin<mi...@fatfreecrm.com> wrote:
>
> Since launching Fat Free CRM to the public in late June, I've been
> getting a steady stream of feature requests and product inquiries. Now
> that 0.9.4 release is over, I'm putting on my PM hat to prioritize
> tasks for the next few iterations. In the near term I have two
> features on my list:
>
> - Finish User Profile: the only remaining feature is an ability to
> change password.
>

What could be missing on the User Profile?

> - Design Admin interface and let system administrators manage user
> registrations. The current setup where anyone can sign up to become a
> user will be deprecated.
>
> Once these two features are put in place, I will consider Fat Free CRM
> to become minimally feature complete. That's the primary goal of the
> current v1.0 milestone. My focus for the next v1.1 milestone will
> shift towards expanding hooks and plugins infrastructure to make sure
> it is robust and scalable.
>
> I've already shared with some of you in private emails that my goal is
> not to build yet another CRM system. My vision is to create an open
> CRM-centric platform that could be easily extended and enhanced
> (primarily through Rails Engines plugins and ActiveResource adapters).
> My intent is to keep maintaining a relatively small and clean core
> codebase, and encourage developers to use plugins and REST APIs for
> any additional features they might want to add.
>

Is there any documentation o reference of the architecture of FF-crm?
I'm not used to Rails Engine plugins.

Is there a list of initial plugins?

> Speaking about feature requests I'm getting. Here's a list of big line
> items that people are asking most often (in no particular order):
>
> - Reports and analytics (originally planned for v1.2 milestone);
>
> - User groups, hierarchies, roles, and role-based permissions;
>
> - Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);
>
> - Interoperability: data exchange with Google, Highrise, Salesforce;
>

+ 1 Integration with Google seems to me quite important but, what
about Highrise & Salesforce? I know Salesforce because a years ago did
an integration and developed a little library in C# and see no
inmediate benefit of integrate FF-crm and Salesforce, could you please
explain? Can't really talk about Highrise, haven't used before.

> - Localization: French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish;
>

+1 I'm beginning on Spanish localization based on I18n module of
Rails. I have no great advance but keep doing it :)

> - Customer support module: cases and follow-ups;
>

+1 is there any plan for product support?

> - Tagging.
>
+1 I do like the idea of tagging :)

> So that's the list of features I've received so far, and I'm excited
> to put it up for open discussion. I'd love to hear from people who are
> already using Fat Free CRM or are evaluating it for possible use. I am
> committed to keep the momentum going, and I want to make sure the
> efforts stay focused and driven by actual customer needs.
>
> Comments? Feedback? I look forward to hear from all of you.
>
> Michael
> http://www.fatfreecrm.com
>
> >
>

I think this kind of development (base platform sw + plugins) it a great idea.

Regards,

Martín Trejo Chávez

[Dash Bitla]

Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);

I think the DROP box feature makes FFC very powerful. Once the basic infrastructure is done related to dropbox - there could be several other operations can be performed - with different email alias.

Any idea - who HOSTs email servers for dropbox kind of setups? I tried to look around for Redmine hosting for this kind of emal hosting provider - it kind of seems to be against their AUP. 

For the reporting stuff -- does the Ruport fits in?

Dash

[Jeff Judge]

All of those features look great - here's my top two:

> - User groups, hierarchies, roles, and role-based permissions;

This will be helpful (eg - sales manager can see salesperson activity
automatically)

> - Customer support module: cases and follow-ups;

Very important - means people could have information in one place
instead of using FFC in combination with support products like Tender

[Jim Gay]

On Jul 17, 1:21 am, Michael Dvorkin <m...@fatfreecrm.com> wrote:
> Since launching Fat Free CRM to the public in late June, I've been
> getting a steady stream of feature requests and product inquiries. Now
> that 0.9.4 release is over, I'm putting on my PM hat to prioritize
> tasks for the next few iterations. In the near term I have two
> features on my list:
>
> - Finish User Profile: the only remaining feature is an ability to
> change password.
>
> - Design Admin interface and let system administrators manage user
> registrations. The current setup where anyone can sign up to become a
> user will be deprecated.
>
> Once these two features are put in place, I will consider Fat Free CRM
> to become minimally feature complete. That's the primary goal of the
> current v1.0 milestone. My focus for the next v1.1 milestone will
> shift towards expanding hooks and plugins infrastructure to make sure
> it is robust and scalable.

This will be critical for this software's future. I believe the
success of RadiantCMS has been due to it's extremely easy ability to
override and add to the default application behavior. Lovd By Less
(for example) is suffering from a painful problem where developers
need to alter the actual code

Compare the networks on github and you'll see that most of the forks
of RadiantCMS have bug fixes or i18n changes that haven't been merged
yet.
Lovd By Less shows custom project updates that would be incompatible
with the general project.
http://github.com/radiant/radiant/network
http://github.com/stevenbristol/lovd-by-less/network
It's early, but we're beginning to see this in the fat_free_crm
network
http://github.com/michaeldv/fat_free_crm/network

The beauty of the way that RadiantCMS does it is that the community of
users can focus on fixing bugs in the base application (which may be
used as a gem, in vendor, or as a plain old rails app) and not adding
colors/text/features/deployment scripts that are particular to their
edge case. Rails engines should be able to take care of this, but I
believe that app paths override engine paths, whereas with a project
like Fat Free CRM or RadiantCMS you'd want the opposite: engines/
extensions should override the app so that customization is less
intrusive.

>
> I've already shared with some of you in private emails that my goal is
> not to build yet another CRM system. My vision is to create an open
> CRM-centric platform that could be easily extended and enhanced
> (primarily through Rails Engines plugins and ActiveResource adapters).
> My intent is to keep maintaining a relatively small and clean core
> codebase, and encourage developers to use plugins and REST APIs for
> any additional features they might want to add.
>
> Speaking about feature requests I'm getting. Here's a list of big line
> items that people are asking most often (in no particular order):
>
> - Reports and analytics (originally planned for v1.2 milestone);
>
> - User groups, hierarchies, roles, and role-based permissions;
>
> - Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);
>
> - Interoperability: data exchange with Google, Highrise, Salesforce;
>
> - Localization: French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish;
>
> - Customer support module: cases and follow-ups;
>
> - Tagging.
>
> So that's the list of features I've received so far, and I'm excited
> to put it up for open discussion. I'd love to hear from people who are
> already using Fat Free CRM or are evaluating it for possible use. I am
> committed to keep the momentum going, and I want to make sure the
> efforts stay focused and driven by actual customer needs.
>
> Comments? Feedback? I look forward to hear from all of you.
>
> Michaelhttp://www.fatfreecrm.com

We're currently discussing managing Radiant the way Merb is managed
(merb-core and merb-more, etc) to add in extra features or allow
developers to use a bare-bones system. But even this approach may not
be the best with options like Rails templates, or even better Beet:
http://jackdempsey.github.com/beet/ But the essential problem is
popularizing and simplifying the way that developers may take
advantage of the extensions in the community and that will likely be a
problem for Fat Free CRM too.

The way info about available extensions evolved for Radiant was going
from a simple wiki page to the extension registry (http://
ext.radiantcms.org/). This process isn't really complete since the
registry needs work to make it easier to use, but it's a great central
point for the available extensions (and it's open-source code
http://github.com/radiant/radiant-extension-registry/tree/master)

For Fat Free CRM, things like Localizations should probably be core,
but there's no reason that most of those extra features couldn't be
community developed Rails Engines.
If you don't take some kind of approach like this you may find FFC to
be a bit of a burden ala Steven Bristol and Lovd By Less
http://b.lesseverything.com/2008/9/10/lovd-by-less-needs-more-love

FFC looks like a great piece of software so far (thank you, Michael!)
and I'm looking forward to contributing to it. I'll put together
details about it, but I've setup a demo area on heroku http://fat-free-crm.heroku.com/
if you want to kick the tires. (No file uploads will work on heroku
without external storage, and I've not set that up.) I'll put together
details on how to do it when I have time, but the short answer is
http://github.com/mooktakim/heroku_sass_and_cache/tree/master

-Jim Gay
http://www.saturnflyer.com

[Eric Davis]

Jim Gay wrote:
> Compare the networks on github and you'll see that most of the forks
> of RadiantCMS have bug fixes or i18n changes that haven't been merged
> yet.

> <snip>

This is also happening in Redmine, even though the github repo is just a
mirror of svn and we are still asking for patches to be uploaded.

http://github.com/edavis10/redmine/network

> Rails engines should be able to take care of this, but I
> believe that app paths override engine paths, whereas with a project
> like Fat Free CRM or RadiantCMS you'd want the opposite: engines/
> extensions should override the app so that customization is less
> intrusive.

Redmine changed Engines so plugins override app paths. It's a very
small change (1-2 liner if I remember). I'm planning to get onto Rails
2.3 soon, at which point I'll try to pull out the custom engines
overriding code into a separate plugin/gem. That way FFC or any other
Engine project can just use it.

> The way info about available extensions evolved for Radiant was going
> from a simple wiki page to the extension registry (http://
> ext.radiantcms.org/). This process isn't really complete since the
> registry needs work to make it easier to use, but it's a great central
> point for the available extensions (and it's open-source code
> http://github.com/radiant/radiant-extension-registry/tree/master)

Redmine's right at the point where a wiki page isn't working any more
either and I was planning to build a plugin registry. Maybe the three
of us (Radiant, Redmine, FFC) can pool some efforts and work on the
registry app together?

> For Fat Free CRM, things like Localizations should probably be core,
> but there's no reason that most of those extra features couldn't be
> community developed Rails Engines.

I've found Engines can do almost everything a developer needs. It might
be in a roundabout way but it's possible (e.g. including modules,
aliasing, overriding routes). Common things should be in the core like
i18n, hook APIs, and basic designs. From there, everything else can be
bolted on as a plugin.

> FFC looks like a great piece of software so far (thank you, Michael!)
> and I'm looking forward to contributing to it. I'll put together
> details about it, but I've setup a demo area on heroku http://fat-free-crm.heroku.com/
> if you want to kick the tires.

Great, I was about to propose a demo site also. Maybe setup
http://demo.fatfreecrm.com to point there?

FYI: I'm idle on #fatfreecrm on freenode if anyone wants to hang out and
chat.

[Michael Dvorkin]

> I just started to work on a reporting plugin for another system
> (Redmine) and have a few ideas about this.  My goal with the plugin was
> to keep the core reporting logic separate from the actual reports.  That
> way, other plugins can easily create reports and hook into the reporting
> system.  I think something similar would fit FFC's goals.

I agree.

> > - Email integration (dropbox, IMAP);
>
> +1.  I can work around most of my other "required" features but this is
> the one that is preventing me from converting over to FFC.  What I would
> like to be able to do is to:
>
> * Forward an email to FFC and have it add a note/record to the contact
> based on the email address
>
> * Add FFC as a BCC when I email a contact and store that email as a
> note/record on the contact

Yes, I've been told by several people that this is in works already.

> > - Interoperability: data exchange with Google, Highrise, Salesforce;
>
> What would be the benefit of a data exchange with other CRMs?  To import
> data?

Yes, a) data import, and b) use Fat Free CRM as a front-end to do
initial processing, and feed qualified data to SFDC.

> > - Localization: French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish;
>
> Are there any members of the community who can help translate?  I've
> done a lot of work with the i18n support in Rails and wouldn't mind
> building some infrastructure for FFC.

Yes, I've been contacted by several people who would help with the
translation.

> > - Tagging.
>
> +1, yes please.  I'd like to have this before my migration from Highrise
> but I can work around it if it takes awhile.

Sure!

Michael
http://www.fatfreecrm.com

[Michael Dvorkin]

> > - Finish User Profile: the only remaining feature is an ability to
> > change password.
>
> What could be missing on the User Profile?

I've just committed the last remaining piece which was changing user's
password.

> > - Design Admin interface and let system administrators manage user
> > registrations. The current setup where anyone can sign up to become a
> > user will be deprecated.

That's next big rock on my list.

> Is there any documentation o reference of the architecture of FF-crm?
> I'm not used to Rails Engine plugins.

Not yet, but I'll start putting together wiki page on Github.

> Is there a list of initial plugins?

I wrote a couple of sample plugins, but they're not using Rails
Engines. Check out my Github page for the code.

> +1 I'm beginning on Spanish localization based on I18n module of
> Rails. I have no great advance but keep doing it :)

Thanks, Martin! I saw your commits and it looks great. Helps me learn
Spanish too ;-). I'll merge your fork to master so that other folks
could start with other languages.

> > - Customer support module: cases and follow-ups;
>
> +1 is there any plan for product support?
>
> > - Tagging.
>
> +1 I do like the idea of tagging :)

Sounds good, together we'll make it happen!

Michael
http:/www.fatfreecrm.com

[Michael Dvorkin]

> For the reporting stuff -- does the Ruport fits in?

It depends, might be too much for simple reports, but good fit for
heavy lifting. Picking good charting library is also important. Any
suggestions?

Michael
http://www.fatfreecrm.com

[Michael Dvorkin]

> <snip>

> Redmine's right at the point where a wiki page isn't working any more
> either and I was planning to build a plugin registry. Maybe the three
> of us (Radiant, Redmine, FFC) can pool some efforts and work on the
> registry app together?

Sure. As Jim pointed out http://github.com/juanjo/tension/tree/master
might be a good start. I would also consider using it as an
opportunity to learn Sinatra ;-).

> Great, I was about to propose a demo site also. Maybe setuphttp://demo.fatfreecrm.comto point there?

I could change DNS, but I'd like to set up a cron job (or something)
to
periodically reload demo data. Can it be done with Heroku?

> FYI: I'm idle on #fatfreecrm on freenode if anyone wants to hang out and chat.

Thanks and see you there! Our first chat earlier today was fun ;-)

Michael
http://www.fatfreecrm.com

[jack.tang]

Hi Michael,

How cool the software!

I am now working on FFC localization, if possible I'd like to discuss
with you more :)
More I am enhancing account management in FFC, say sync the account
information from GMail, Yahoo and Outlook and etc.

And personally I'd like create one mobile-CRM on android.

Thank you the software :)

Regards
/Jack

>
> Michaelhttp://www.fatfreecrm.com

[Eric Davis]

Michael Dvorkin wrote:
> I change DNS, but I'd like to set up a cron job (or something) to

> periodically reload demo data. Can it be done with Heroku?

Heroku has cron support. It's free for a nightly one:

http://heroku.com/pricing

[nateleavitt]

I will also suggest the email support. Although I would like to take
it a step further. In fact, the step is actually quite a big step :)

We currently use a system where it's strength is in automated
marketing. For example, their campaigns are essentially timed
sequences of sending different marketing pieces (ie.. email, voice
broadcast, tasks etc..). So a campaign could have as many steps as
you want. The first step could be an email that is sent on day one.
The second step could be a follow up email sent on day 10. The third
step could create a task for you to make a follow up call... and so
on. Essentially, it keeps track of where the customer is in the
sequence of the campaign and/or multiple campaigns. It's all about
marketing to your lists! This is where, in my opinion, most crm
software miss the boat.

Anyway.. just my thoughts of what I would like to do.

[François Lamotte]

Hi Nate

The email marketing stuff is really complicated to manage :

* Sending large volume (Queue management, ...)
* Delivrability, blacklisting and spam filters (ISP, mailboxes, ...)
* Tracking (reception, opening, clickthrough, ....)

There are other features that are difficult to manage and need permanent human control

This is mainly why email marketing providers are successful.

One good idea could be to create a plugin to synchronize a campaign structure
towards the API of an email marketing provider (Eloqua, CampaignMonitor, ....).

Sending the list of emails for each steps, and retrieving back the results of the step.
 But even that is not so simple as it sounds.

Regards,

François

[Michael Dvorkin]

Hi, Nate!

Great suggestion! Yes, what you've described is called drip marketing
campaigns. Many advanced marketing automation systems have scriptable
workflow engines that let you create rules to run the campaign. Its
pretty complex stuff, but hey, give us some time and we'll get
there ;-).

Michael
http://www.fatfreecrm.com

[Pranab]

I am planning to implement an IMAP based inbound email plugin. Please
provide your feedback and suggestion on how this should work. My idea
is that it should link it to a lead based on recipient email address.
If it can't find a lead, it will create a lead. The user will be
prompted to tie the new lead to a campaign, based on the content of
the email. Down the line, there will also be email browsing,
searching and tagging functions

If any one out there is interested in developing this, please let me
know. May be we can join hands.

Pranab