Suggestion to Forum user to change usage attitude

[murugappan]

HI ALL USERS,

The software is fantastic, users are very active, developers are helpful but user are not helpful in most of the cases. I feel disappointed with the Forum Users (including myself) in the attitude we have in using the Forum. Let me explain.

(1) A forum user raises an issue to get others to help.
(2) Many user review and attempt to help with advises.
(3) Finally the original user manages to resolve the issue with some additional tweaking.
(4) BUT THEY NEVER DOCUMENT THE FULL SOLUTION, instead they say something like "I resolve it, thank you". THAT"S IT???
(5) This leaves everyone else in the dark and makes them feel all the help they provided was a waste.

There is another forum i use and very helpful that will ban anyone does not close the post with final solution documented. They want quality.

Appreciate Forum User document the resolution and then say its resolved.

[telecastg]

+1 on that !!!

[item]

+1 because telecastg have +1 and with google translate

I think, we need to put version of espoCrm too. .. so i think Yuri/Teams must write a Rule before posting in forum like on github.

[emillod]

Good idea. I see even bigger issue with searching anything on forum. Maybe i'm stupid, i don't know, but i have to search forum through google to find something usefull

[shalmaxb]

Ok, I guess, sometimes it is as murugappan describes, but on the other hand I got useful help so often here, that for me this forum is one of the best, I have ever used. So I would not generalize users´ behaviour.
The forum itself has some not so convenient issues as emillod writes. I search the forum exclusively by Google, the built in search does not work.
One other thing I experienced: Don`t put any question on Friday. The chances are good, that you won`t get an answer, as the newest posts seem to be emptied on Saturday. And if there has not been an answer in that time, the post will vanish unanswered.

[murugappan]

I agree with shalmaxb that we should not generalize. Guilty and I apologize for that. Unfortunately, look through the forum and we may find too many "orphaned" postings. It actually give a very bad impression that the software is not good as it is badly supported by user community. One such forum is Joomla and Fabrikar.com. Joomla user have a bad habit of misleading the user very often. We ask a question and we get pointed to something stupid and unrelated.

item , The problem with searching is in most forums and Espocrm is no exception. I too use search through using google but it does not help very much. Like as stated,many of the post are not "solution terminated". My suggestion would be like Pinegrow forum - (1) The search is extensive (2) Response comes in very fast and (3) they sent weekly forum newletters which contains how to use new features and also issues raised that week. The best is still stackoverflow. I get most of my answers there.

I would suggest also that a new main topic to be created called "Solution Snippets" where we can actually post small size solutions that we created so that it will be easier for us to search and get good ideas. This will also give Espocrm developers to mimic these features and function solutions into the next release where possible.. Also a search should be provided in each main topic so that we can search with that main topic instead getting heaps from all over.

[espcrm]

Previously we have Maximus that provide many solution (sometime I get too lazy to write it, e.g. precise and with screenshot). It too bad Maximus is gone from the team.

I don't think there is any replacement in mind yet. Not sure if budgeting is an issue or not with EspoCRM, perhaps once there is a replacement full time Support on the forum might get more lively from an official point of view.

Also version 7 is coming up (in September maybe), considering that it is an major update, perhaps there be Press Release that will pull in more people. Although this optimistic but it better to look at a brighter future.

[espcrm]

(4) "I resolve it, thank you". /B][/COLOR]

I thought that is common in many forum, at least we haven't reached the stage of "I send you in a PM" yet. Pretty sure there is quite a few meme about "thanks i fixed it, bye".

I don't quite like the idea of enforcing ban or 'point and reward system' though, at least not on the official community and channel.

Rumors is that there is a discord being setup at the moment, if that gain traction then it up the discord channel owner to decide on 'point and reward' system if necessary.

At the end of the day, I just hope community get good users to help further make EspoCRM better and everyone can benefit. I noticed dimyy is an active again 'strong' programmer that been making quite a few eye raising post. So that a victory in my opinion.

People like myself that have no program skill (or the brain to write it) will have to rely on the more technical user. A forum upgrade might help, search function is quite rubbish at time but luckily there is an unofficial wiki... too bad no one editing it with me though. But at least there is a few user that find it helpful after so many spam post of mine.

[emillod]

Discord for EspoCRM? That's interesting

[shalmaxb]

I am against any "reward" system, I think activity itself pays out for the contributor. Me as an active member, I tend to help (if possible) with more effort to those, who also contribute. And of course to newbies, also to animate them to become active. Nothing is more frustrating, if we don`t answer to questions of new (for espoCRM as well as for this forum) members, even when they have questions that are touching fundamental knowledge. I would not judge "simple" questions and if I can, I answer anyway.
I myself am not a developer and my programming skills are quite low, but I can follow good advice here and understand the approach in most cases. So those "better" programmers help a lot regarding the topics as well as bringing the users, who are not that skilled, further. This is something, that I experienced a lot here, never felt any arrogance from skilled people, as in many other forums.

About the Wiki. I guess, there are not so many contributors, because a Wiki is something like an "official" documentation and users (like me) would not have the courage to contribute. Perhaps that could be solved by having kind of "pre-platform", where interested users could discuss solutions to special problems and after that a Wiki article could be published with the best found solution and approach, which would be founded on the contributions in the discussion.

[espcrm]

Don't worry, the current wiki system is basic and doesn't require too much work. Just a name or description that will help search and a copy/paste of the forum URL link (it can be any link doesn't have to be forum).

Welcoming all contribution.

[emillod]

I think there is already something like "reward" system. For example shalmaxb is a Senior Member of forum. espcrm, your wiki is great, BUT.. 1. It's hard to find(github url is long), 2. You link there in most cases to posts on forum. User sometime have to scroll a lot to find a solution. Also sometimes there is no one post with solution, but few. For someone who don't have skills, it could be a problem. Maybe you should consider creating something like EspoCRM did with documentation? Mkdocs is really simple. I'm writing documentation to our extensions and it's really simple. I tried before to use something different to "not copy" their solutions, but after few tests i decided to also use mkdocs, because there is great search mechanism and also it's simple. You can even host it on github. Maybe if you could take solutions from listed posts in one place, than it would be more usefull?

I can help you with this wiki, like you know i also started recording videos from few weeks, most of the videos have 5 views, but i'm still doing this for community
I think there are many forum scripts which are more user friendly, for example documentation of nextcloud or homeassistant(my new hobby haha).

[emillod]

telecastg thank you for kind words, i'm doing my best I even thought about recording video how to add your e-signature field to EspoCRM Also someone contacted me with issue related to e-signature field, basically he have issue with addign signature before save/creation of record. Is that a known issue? Maybe someone else reported that issue?

[espcrm]

Unfortunately making it look good like Documentation will be too hard for me. Not unless there is template that I can just copy/paste and edit from there.

I try to category the relevant section so if people want to just learn how to do some "GUI" think they can just look at that. Previously I considered creating each page for each section but the weakness is it too difficult to search so I decide to use a single page that contain all.

If you are able to jumpstart a better system I wouldn't mind moving over there. This project started out as a Forum Thread but the 10,000 characters limit forced me to look for alternative and end up with Github.

And yes, your video is literally on top at the moment because it is much more useful. For reference here is the link: https://github.com/o-data/EspoCRM-Le...nd-Design/wiki

If this is you: https://github.com/emillod
I can send an invitation to access the editing function, but if it going to get move to another better system. I think it best to create a new one under your system.

[emillod]

espcrm thanks for your reply. Yeah, it's me
EspoCRM use mkdocs for documentation. And you can build there articles in markdown. Thanks to that you'll don't have even to change what you already build. To use mkdocs you have to install node and pip on your computer and know three simple commands. Here you have official site: https://www.mkdocs.org/getting-started/

You know, it's simple thing, if you want check other sites on mkdocs and if you'll decide to switch to the mkdocs, i can help you.

[item]

Hello emillod
i am follow your youtube, greats .. i learn many
do you have extension of espoCRM ? like AdvancedPack, Mailchimp, Outlook, Google, VoIp or .. all from espoCRM ?

so i think that will be great to have some video on how to

Yes i agree, forum is really hard to find solution, i know telecastg give me many solution, .. i try to find-it .. not find ..or hard to find.
Regards

[emillod]

I have plan to show you guys on video how to create simple extension with official espo extension template, but we'll see how it go
I have few extensions, everything on our website: https://devcrm.it
I just created simple extension to create short urls in EspoCRM, probably i'll share it with community for free Maybe this will be usefull for someone

Of course thank you for kind words

[telecastg]

I look forward to the video on how to create an extension using espo's official template !, I feel completely novice with github and would definitely like to be able to use the more modern tools