EspoCRM 5.8.0 released

[murugappan]

Hi espcrm,

We are still stuck with version 5.7. The system is heavily used and with the current Pandemic everything is so slow.

Our mobile apps on both Andriod and IOS does the following:

(1) Submission of reimbursement medical claims via the Case module. The user submitting the claim gets a reply with a case number so that he can follow-up on the payment.
(2) The user gets profile reports and claims stats
(3) Approvers approve the claims via mobile apps anywhere.

[esforim]

murugappan Hi muru, sometime it best to create a Post or a new thread. It very hard to notice Comments reply because the notification system don't work quite well. Only saw this because I was doing a bit of a search.

As for your question about Upload migration, it is painfully slow using method such as FTP. I went with this method which depend on your server might be easy or might be hard.

I use my CPanel's File Manager. I zip a portion of the file. Download it and upload it to new server.
I could only zip/archive a portion because of my Host size limitation. But if you are not restricted, you should be able to Archive everything or a big portion in one go.

Would love to see what you have done with it to see, especially with the Mobile Apps.

[murugappan]

Hi espcrm,

We have decided to hold upgrades in Espocrm and live with 5.7 for the time being. Flipping things overnite is not so simple. We have many apps that needs to be tested and verified. I had a bad experience during the last migration. The PHP flip-over took the hell out of us. After flipping, and we assuming nothing serious, we ended up with one disaster after another. This was due to deprecated functions and code. The flip-over forced us to run through the codes and update otherwise this deprecation message were popping-up everywhere and it was really embarrassing.

Besides, I think the next release of MySQL will not be 5.9 or 6.0. If i am not wrong, it has to be 8.X or (9.x sigh!) which we have to pay. Version 8.0 is an overhaul and disgusting. The natural choice is to migrate to MariaDB (a MySQL clone) under GPL license. So, please exercise care when migrating. Version 5.7 is also has short lifespan. Espocrm should have migrated to MariaDB. Well, we will wait and see.

[telecastg]

Thanks jflores, I ended up signing with a provider for a shared server.... I know, hardly the best choice but I am really really not good at configuring or managing servers.

I do plan to learn more about AWS and cloud technology in general, thanks for the advice.

[jflores]

telecastg we host both our staging and production installs on AWS. We haven't had any issues other than when we had to upgrade because we outgrew our initial EC2 instance. Still, with backups, it was pretty easy to migrate.

There is also a Bitnami install that is pretty close to 1-click install that we used for another client who saw our CRM and thought it could be helpful for their business.

As far as server management is concerned, the biggest issue I've had is getting websockets to work, but otherwise, it's been pretty easy to manage and I'm not a server guy in the least.

[murugappan]

Thank you espcrm for the good advise. We have been doing this all time when we create test and development versions. Like you said, the main problem we have is with the Upload folder. In the case of creating test and development environment we drop the upload folder completely. Database migration is not a problem even though the DB size is about 3GB. Migrating that upload folder was a real problem for us as it hogs the server and is really slow. The size is about 8GB. How do we migrate such a size? Will using SSH be any faster? Any help is much appreciated.

BTW, we use instances of Espocrm for various purposes. It really great software. We use it to create and manage lookup tables, runtime configurations, application configuration, document templates, SQL queries etc for our backend PHP, Python and Java applications. Work wonderfully well. As control is essential, we have never modified the original codes. We created supporting modules outside of Espocrm and used the APIs. We even have our Android and IOS mobile apps linked to Espocrm.

[esforim]

Went with Hostinger, if anyone plan to sign up with them. Let me know, I send an affiliate link.

Promising all earning from this will be put toward EspoCRM open source development of wanted feature.

[telecastg]

Who was your final choice for shared hosting ?

[esforim]

Migration was relatively easy for us to do, and this was the first time I was migrating too. Although there was a couple of "hiccup" but was all resolve. Been using the new version without any issue for the pass 2 weeks or 3 weeks? We even been updating to 5.8.3 today also (who know if there will be an issue today).

The biggest issue moving server is (1) the upload folder, this is where all the Documents, Attachment, Image, File, even share icon (such as email, stream icon) is being upload into. This folder get really bigger and there is thousand of files for us.

If you have access to SSH and commandline this might be a simple task for you. But we used shared hosting and is constantly restricted in term of file size, database size, etc. Forcing us to transfer it slowly over using FTP, ZIP Archive upload and extraction, etc.

As long as you got backup, you can always restore it to a clean state previously, but that might hold back your business. I don't know how far you develop (coding wise) your CRM so not sure how it will be affected by these update.

Look at the changes in 5.8.0, is there any function you want at this stage? If yes, then must work toward upgrading, otherwise can wait till major new version of v6.0. You shouldn't really be using "Export to CSV or Excel" feature for these kind of migration. Here is a simple guide to how I transfer (with shortcut).

0) Go into Adminsitration > setting > maintenance mode enable and disable CRON enable.
1) Archive my old CRM. Download the Archive. Upload the archive to new Server. Extract the file.
2) Create a new Database if the new server don't have it one yet. Note down the password, username, database name.
3) Download old Database. Import old database to new database. Update the .config file to point to new database.
4) Refresh your website (be sure to update Name server if you haven't done so).
5) Use update (from GUI or the recommend CLI if you know how to use it) from old version to the latest version.
5a) Do testing of bunch of function see if you run into any issue.
6) Disable setting in Step 0. Happy found no bug? Release it live to the team.

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As dedicated server is too difficult for us (and expense) we stick with Shared hosting (see my Learning EspoCRM for review on all shared hosting).

[murugappan]

Hi Guys,

I am sure there were ample warnings but our priority is in releasing new functionality and apps. Regression is one thing the pay masters dont understand. Migrating PHP version 7.2 or 7.3 was easily achieved as we did parallel development on both versions. Migrating the DB is a sensitive tasks in relation to losing data.

Looks like many of us could be lagging Espocrm in the releases. We are currently purchasing a dedicated server just for the upgrade. Migration would take us sometime but from the looks of large of releases from Espocrm, we could be lagging very far behind. We were evaluating another option. That is to setup a fresh Espocrm on the dedicated new server and import data from the older crm to the newer crm. We seem to hit lots of snag because the import and export works well in a limited level. It fails when entities are linked and also the export and import of emails. Sigh! Has anyone done this before?

[esforim]

Don't use Softaculous I guess. Do a manual install.

You would need to create a new subdomain, upload EspoCRM 5.7 to the server, exact it. Open subdomain. Do the installation (create new Database and User if you want to).

[esforim]

Working as state (at least during these few hours of Live usage). Using MariaDB at the moment from the previous MySQL 5.6

[Marcus]

I'm not the most experienced user but when I was testing it, I did a second install by uploading the EspoCRM files to another directly in public_html and ran the installer while creating another MySQL database.

[murugappan]

Hi Guys at Espocrm,

Now i am facing a problem. I am unable to create another instance of 5.7 version of escpocrm for testing purposes from cpanel softaculous. It always gives me the 5.8 version and kills the installation because of MySQL version. Is there anyway i get the older version in the mean time?

[murugappan]

Hi espcrm,

They do have live chat. Its under the Contact Us menu option. They are very responsive and immediate. Their sales and support respond within 2 minutes on their ticket system and instantly on the live chat. They can even provide you with DR sites by staging your servers in alternate locations. Our DR servers are located about 30 miles away, if needed, they can even locate it in Singapore for us in Malaysia.