Futures
Keith Edmunds
We've started playing^W evaluating Fat Free CRM at $work with a view to
using it internally (and sooner rather than later). We'd also like to
consider offering it to our clients.
I have a few questions about the future. I realise this is an Open Source
product, and as such there are no guarantees about timescales, features,
etc; however, some broad indications of intentions would be helpful.
There's been some discussion on this mailing list recently of planned
changes. Is there any kind of roadmap available, ideally with some
indication of timing? Even if it is "release X is planned to (but may not)
include these features and we'd like to think it would be available
2012Q1".
Secondly, how can we help? We don't have great Ruby or RoR skills,
although that isn't to say we can't offer the odd patch. We do have some
hosting capacity that we can make available in the UK (I get the
impression you don't need that, but hey, we have it and if you want it
then let me know). We do have documentation writing skills. Lastly, we
are, as mentioned above, keen to use this both internally and with
clients, so we'll be testing. I have a short list of bugs found in the
current (as of 12 hours ago) git repo: where is it best to report them?
Thanks,
Keith
--
"You can have everything in life you want if you help enough other people
get what they want" - Zig Ziglar.
Who did you help today?
mattgow
Curious to know more about the kind of company your are in and/or the
scenarios you are looking to support within FFCRM.
Our organisation is a non-profit. We are investing quite heavily in
FFCRM at the moment and want as much of that work as possible to
benefit the wider community. You'll have seen lots of commits from our
guys in recent times.
We have penciled in a few things in that we would like to see come
into FFCRM. I would be getting a bit ahead of things to say that these
represent anything like a roadmap for FFCRM though. They are things we
want and I hope that others will want them too.
Some of the bigger things we're after include:
* Custom fields: we're almost done working that into core FFCRM. Your
offer of QA testing is much appreciated on that front so we can tidy
it up quickly.
* Advanced search/filter: e.g. show me all contacts created this month
that are students over the age of 16 who have not done a tour of our
campus
* Table view: i.e. the ability to view contacts or accounts or other
items in columns and choose which columns you see)
* Saved views: i.e. the ability to take a given set of filters and a
given set of view choices (e.g. table view with name and account
columns visible) and save it as a view called "New students"
* Extended permissions: at least the ability to define groups of users
and apply access to those groups rather than always having to choose
every person individually
* A MailChimp integration
* Hmmm... there are some others but I'm out of time
As for where to list bugs. You have caught us at an awkward time of
transition. We are going to adopt UserEcho http://ffcrm.userecho.com/
as our "catch all" for ideas, bugs etc. But we are currently split
between Lighthouse, GitHub and random stuff on the email lists.
I'd appreciate if you put em in UserEcho so we can figure out if we
like or hate it for that purpose. We'll be doing a huge amount of
housekeeping on the various tickets in the next few weeks in any case
so be assured that your input won't be lost no-matter where you put
it.
Help with documentation, screencasts and user manuals would be much
appreciated. We're also switching over to a new website and a new
approach to documentation at the moment. We'll send around
instructions to the lists and invite contributions to all that asap.
Matt
Keith Edmunds
> Curious to know more about the kind of company your are in and/or the
> scenarios you are looking to support within FFCRM.
I work for a Linux support/consultancy in the UK
(www.tiger-computing.co.uk). We're looking to run FFCRM internally as it
appears to be lean and meet our needs (more on the reasons why and other
CRMs we have considered at
http://blog.tiger-computing.co.uk/2011/12/weve-been-searching-for-some.html).
As well as using it internally, we believe it may be a good fit for some
of our customers, and we'd like to promote it to them.
> We have penciled in a few things in that we would like to see come
> into FFCRM. I would be getting a bit ahead of things to say that these
> represent anything like a roadmap for FFCRM though. They are things we
> want and I hope that others will want them too.
That list looks great, and there are certainly features there that we
would find useful.
> As for where to list bugs....
> ...I'd appreciate if you put em in UserEcho so we can figure out if we
> like or hate it for that purpose. We'll be doing a huge amount of
> housekeeping on the various tickets in the next few weeks in any case
> so be assured that your input won't be lost no-matter where you put
> it.
I will put the bugs and wishlist items there. If you want them moved
later, tell me.
> Help with documentation, screencasts and user manuals would be much
> appreciated.
We've put together some early internal documentation. The section on
installing FFCRM on a current Debian (6.0 aka "Squeeze") server is
complete, and I'll try to post that publicly soon. The documentation on
using FFCRM (ie, from the perspective of a non-technical user) has been
started; I'll see if we can post some of that too, although it's currently
incomplete (but hey, feedback is welcome).
Keith Edmunds
> Help with documentation, screencasts and user manuals would be much
> appreciated.
I've posted our instructions for installing ffcrm on Debian at
http://blog.tiger-computing.co.uk/2011/12/installing-fat-free-crm-on-debian.html
Comments welcome -
Russell Hay
Just wanted to echo your comments. I've looked at Vtiger to work
alongside a open-source ATS for a small recruitment firm, and it's
very overblown for our needs. Personally I'm not that comfortable with
Ruby apps but I'll be getting ffcrm (until it's renamed!) onto a test
server... Just as soon as I finish the asterisk install..
Glad to see someone else looked all around to find ffcrm in similar
circumstances
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Russ
Nathan Broadbent
- A generated guides index
- Chapter indexes for each page
- Documentation can be more integrated with the main website, including header links to other fatfreecrm.com sites
- Ability to style documentation to match the main site
- Each page must start with a title (h2. in textile, or ## in markdown)
- Each page should contain an introduction followed by the keyword: 'endprologue.'
- You must add an entry for that page to the 'Home' index, and follow the existing convention in that index.
Nathan B
Hi Matthew
Not a problem at all: I know only too well how hard it can be to juggle
> Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner Keith. I'm on leave and doing
> stuff in snatches of time.
all the demands upon one's time.
Please do point me at any information you have on that. I'm keen to put
> We have decided to use the approach that Spree uses so we can have our
> docs in github and generate them from there. Nathan, could you perhaps
> explain that a bit for Keith so he can have a play with it?
>
> https://github.com/fatfreecrm/fat_free_crm_guides
some high-quality documentation together: it's an area that a lot of Open
Source projects are weak on, and I consider it critical for a project's
success.
Tell me what you would want in an ideal world, and I'll see what we can do.
> Keith, you also mentioned that you guys have some server capacity. I
> wondered if that would be something that could be helpful for keeping the
> latest "edge" version of FFCRM running for QA and demo purposes? Just a
> thought.
A lot of work! Seriously, in conjunction with the documentation mentioned
> The idea of a technical book on FFCRM sounds really cool to me. What
> would that involved?
above, a dead tree book can only help the project. To answer your
question: I think we need a bit more take-up of ffcrm first, and then it
involves someone (I'd like to do it) talking to the various publishers.
I've talked in the past with O'Reilly about another project, and whilst
that one didn't come to anything, they were helpful. If I were to
undertake this, there would inevitably be questions from me, which would
need time from others to provide answers.
Part of the reason for asking on one of the mailing lists about a roadmap
was because, as it stands, ffcrm needs a bit too much technical help.
That's no problem if someone were to offer it on a SaaS basis, but, for
example, I've just imported our existing accounts and contacts (from
another CRM) into ffcrm. Currently, that isn't something you'd want to do
without some knowledge of SQL, etc. My point here is that, prior to trying
to gain some external publicity for ffcrm, there are a few housekeeping
items that need to be taken care of (not that many, but some).
I know there was a feeling that it should be changed, but if I'm honest
> PS it seems that the gavel has fallen and we are sticking with the old
> name... not what I expected but that's where we've ended up.
I'm not sorry. I think Fat Free CRM is a great name, and it makes it stand
out from the others.
Thanks for the reply -