Feedback needed for CiviCRM / Joomla! further work ..

[lobo]

Folks:

Joomla! users are becoming a significantly large part of our ecosystem and we'd like to make sure we meet their needs appropriately. I've written a blog entry about this and would appreciate any feedback from the joomla community

http://civicrm.org/node/160

Your feedback and input is important for us to make CiviCRM more applicable to you . Please comment on the blog and/or this forum

thanx

lobo

[brian]

The installation problem you mention in your blog have been a major stumbling book for me. Not just the memory issues but what do you actualy do to get civicrm truly integrated with joomla. Maybe its a documentation issue maybe its an unfamiliarity with the key concepts of a CRM. I dont know but I jst never got my head around it

[lobo]

Brian:

thanx for the feedback. yeah, documentation is definitely a big issue, and we will start addressing it with v1.7 where we will have some formal documentation. Would be good to have some training screen casts etc and I suspect we'll have some in 2007

lobo

[brian]

specificaly i found it difficuly understanding the basic aims of civicrm. tha obvioulsy makes configuring it difficult. everyone knows what a website is but tey dont necessarily fully understand a crm. it may just be an issue of terminology

[Flagio]

I find that difficult too, so maybe it's a good idea to have the choice to install sample data, where every aspect of civicrm has examples.

[brian]

Sample data being installed with a component (even optionaly) is one of my biggest gripes. Especialy when you get options that yu dont understand. with sample content you can easily see what those options do.

One component I looked at recently had options such as classic view, modern view, extended view. You had to inout loads of data before you could even see what those views meant. And then annoyingly having decided on a view i didnt need all th info i had inputtd. grrrh

[speleo]

I'd like to see the upgrade routine simplified by removing the requirement to edit the configure.php file to prevent the db from being recreated. I suspect a few lines of code to check for the existence of the db tables would be all that is required. A new install would create the tables but an upgrade would leave them alone.

Similarly, it should be possible to identify if a schema update is required and flag the right file to run.

Also, it would be nice if the upgrade automgically cleared the session and cache directories / files.

[lobo]

I find that difficult too, so maybe it's a good idea to have the choice to install sample data, where every aspect of civicrm has examples.

There is sample data shipped with every civicrm install which we use to test and demo various features. If you are familiar with db's etc, its easy to load the generated data into the db, learn about it and then recreate a new db

lobo

[lobo]

I'd like to see the upgrade routine simplified by removing the requirement to edit the configure.php file to prevent the db from being recreated. I suspect a few lines of code to check for the existence of the db tables would be all that is required. A new install would create the tables but an upgrade would leave them alone.

Similarly, it should be possible to identify if a schema update is required and flag the right file to run.

Also, it would be nice if the upgrade automgically cleared the session and cache directories / files.

This seems to be more a framework level issue, where the component installer should give the user a choice between upgrade and new install. upgrading also involves messing with the db to upgrade the schema etc and it is dangerous to do so without appropriate backups etc. (people in general dont follow instructions and are likely to shoot themselves in the foot etc)

I suspect we'll build an upgrade path within CiviCRM in the not so distant future

lobo

[dbuch]

I am very enthusiastic about this software.  I have many not for profit clients who don't even know how badly they need this.  I look forward to using and implementing this. Great work. I am willing to pitch in somehow to help. I am about to set up a few different installs. Should I wait for the new version?

The joomla integration could be a lot smoother but it is workable. Documentation is key. The information about updating index.php should be called out very clearly.

[lobo]

You can start off with version 1.6, experiment with it and get familiar with it, and then use 1.7 for your clients when its released

any help with documentation and making things more clear would be very helpful. Its a wiki, so create an account and edit the documents

lobo