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  • Feature Requests & EspoCRM Development

    Hey Team Espo!

    It is with much gratitude and respect for what we have here so far, that I need to ask and understand from you something on the development, for managing our expectations and systems development and introduction planning.

    I see a number of developments that are essential for users, because they cost large amounts of time for users working with the current way, and the developments to improve this would be small amounts of work in comparison - but I get the impression there is an amount of persuasion or resources necessary with yourselves to pick up on these requests.

    The point of choosing open-source is that, yes, we can commission developments privately if needed.

    The problem though is these are core developments, so I need to understand what is the best way to get these things done, without causing ourselves divergence problems.

    I just would not ask for anything that does not add benefit for the whole platform, so I see these developments as value added to the platform and user needs for speed and intuition.

    However, I do not know what you see, need or want if these requests aren't being adopted.

    What do you prefer?

    1. Requests here and debate them?
    2. Requests on GitHub and debate them?
    3. We discuss privately commissioning or sponsoring some developments where you don't want to add them to the core?
    4. We must work with 3rd party development? In which case, are we going to have an increasing number of Extensions or is there a path for core contributions through GitHub Pull Requests?
    5. What is the preferred method of persuasion? We promote Espo? We sponsor features? We find developer time ourselves for commissioning?

    I'll give you a classic example:

    I look at the Documents Object, and it is 2 very minor features away from being time-efficient in daily use:

    1. The Document Categories on the left should filter a list of files on the right, with the main view being all files where the user has viewing permissions.
    2. The Documents List View should accept drag & drop to add Documents.

    I look at every Details Read / Edit page, and it should have a "Create {Record Name}" button in the top-right, because every single time I need to click back to the List view to get that button. It makes no sense to me, or the users I have to onboard having that button missing by design.

    I see these things as just obvious needs, that every user I show the system to will expect to work that way because it matches every other system they use, and it is obviously a faster way to get more from EspoCRM and save precious time for business.

    Now, I need this to happen if I am not to spend a lot of time, and ask for a lot of time from users for not having these simple things to save us all time every single day.

    What is the official and preferred approach to Team Espo to make these things happen?

    Can I be confident that the development and evolution appetite remains strong for the user experience?

    Should we talk on the phone or email or here in the spirit of open collaboration?

    What can I do to help?

    How do we make EspoCRM even better every day?

    Many thanks,

    Marcus

  • #2
    Only Maximus hang out in this section of the forum. Hopefully he can pass the message along.

    Comment


    • #3
      Hi Marcus,

      Using the forum for future request is fine and preferable. We read all of them when got a chance and add to our internal list of things to consider to implement

      The last 9 months we've been very busy rewriting the codebase to raise the code quality to the standards of an enterprise application and to make more robust internal API so that it would be easier to develop in future. Actually, code refactoring took more time than releasing the first version of EspoCRM from scratch. It may take a month or two to finish the planned part of refactoring work. So for this period most feature requests we set aside, concentrating for other things.

      Regarding sponsoring for future request. I personally don't like this way.

      It's fine if more 3rd party extensions will be out there. The extensibility of EspoCRM is a feature we always pursue. Not all future requests will be implemented in the product. Not all things we find reasonable to be implemented.

      Regarding 'Create' button on the detail view, I don't find that we need it. I can use Quick Create from the top panel in the top-right corner. Adding any more button makes design less clean. We could add more and more buttons for all needs ending up with a messed UI. Some might like such UI, it's OK. Lot of other systems look that way. In Espo we stick to more clean UI.

      It would be fine if there will be a 3rd party extension adding such a button for those who needs it.
      Last edited by yuri; 05-07-2021, 09:56 AM.

      Comment


      • #4
        yuri Thank you, I appreciate your time to answer and certainly understand the need to invest in foundational structure needs like code refactoring with your benefit of hindsight.

        I think my example features noted here should have their own Posts and conversation threads, so I will re-post them separately for better forum etiquette in manageable information.

        For the Create button, I have a good 100+ Entities now in our setup, I don't think it would be "clean" to add them all to the Quick Create menu too. I completely agree on clean design, but this particular thing is no more than is already there on the list page, and ever user I have sat with has asked the same question after creating one record, how to create another. Perhaps if you don't like or want it personally, this sort of thing should be a UI setting, and you could gather user statistics on settings like that to see how many people set things one way or another.

        I completely get and support the vision of Espo, it's many of the things I have always said that business software should be, and I want to invest, but respectfully, and with your guidance on what helps the most.

        It sounds to me like I'm best posting Forum Requests for everyone's interest but without expectation, and then we will commission development for all those requests into an Extension but with the understanding that you are more than welcome to adopt them into the core if you like.

        Comment


        • #5
          I though about adding "Save & create new" action next to "Save" button when creating a record.

          Comment


          • marcusquinn
            marcusquinn commented
            Editing a comment
            That's an idea. The convention I've seen is usually a Save button where there is a dropdown arrow on the right that shows a Save & New button option below.

        • #6
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          Similar to these. Although I'd just go with the simple "Save" and "Save & New" text given that Espo doesn't use Windows / Tabs.

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