Feedback on the 12-12-06 session here

[andydreisch]

Here begins the feedback loop from today's session.

I'll have the Q&A and attendance information, survey results, etc., shortly. We're updating the Session Details page with links to all provided content.

A recap of the session is as follows:

** Jacob led with a summary of tools and techniques available for building upgrade-safe modules.
** Ken spent the majority of the time dissecting the manifest file and going step-by-step through its structure, all the while providing do's and don'ts and best practices.
** Max followed with a brief summary of vardefs.php and pointers to WIki content.

We blew out the scheduled 1 hour and ran for 1h30m total, but it was worth it. Lots of very good stuff was conveyed.

Thanks, Jacob, Ken and Max, for your participation.

Andy

[andydreisch]

Yikes, the recording is an 82MB WMV file. I'll go ahead and post it in its entirety shortly and I'll encode it to a smaller footprint as well.

Andy

[andydreisch]

Q&A here (sorry for formatting issues):


are the regex matches using PHP's regex or the preg_match()? All instances are using preg_match at this point. It is faster and offers better functionality. This may have been covered earlier: is using the newfiles directory a standard convention or something done in this example due to style or convenience? I believe it is a convention in this example. He wants to separate his new files from his replacements. He is very concientious about replacing files.

what are the two arguments in the middle of the $admin_group_header array definition? The arguments are: title, other text, and show help in that order....They are passed to the theme utility get_form_header.

I could be wrong, but it seemed like there were four arguments to the $admin_group_header array definitions. In his example, there was a false in there, too. Wonder what that was about. The last entry was an array for the entries that show up under the section headers.....We will double check the answer afterwards.

No there were, but in my preperation I forgot to find out what the other two did. I will research that and add that information to my wiki entry and post it to the forums as well.

so can i create a loop to go through each module? IE: would that work to add a custom field to each module... If you create code outside of the array, it will be executed. This code can loop through the modules and create a copy of your entry for each module. This would allow you to get all modules if you want. Please be careful with this, as there are some modules that you won't want to modify. I would recommend looping through all modules with a list of modules that should not be processed. Skip those ones when you get to them.

You could I guess, I never have it would be a complex bit of code to interget that array into the installdefs array, but it could be done.. It is just as easy to cut and paste that section of the manifest.php and change the module name. Look at teamsOS manifest file to see how this is done.

Little off the topic: "after_retreive" in logic_hooks - when does this event fire up? Right after the data is loaded and timezones are processed. t fires just after the bean has been populated from the databse, before the bean is used. It gives you a chance to create calculated fields and/or process the retrieved information. You can also retrieve additional data from other data sources if you need to.

For some reason - I didn't get this effect in OS. What might be wrong? Is your hook being called correctly? Try putting a "die("test"); statement in your hook....see if it gets there. A debugger would also add some visibility.

How do you point to image that should be shown left to a link in menu? I think the menu option automatically uses the image of the target module.

How do you add subpanel to admin page? At this point, I think you have to actually edit the UI for admin. We are working on making that screen more dynamic. Dashlets also have configuration settings that are not tied by that screen.

How do you add subpanel to admin page? If you open: custom/modules/Administration/Ext/Administration/administration.ext.php and add new entries, you should be able to create and populate new sections at the bottom.

the administration directive does this. If you look at the PDF in the wiki I have a slide that goes over this in detail. If you need more detailed help just post a question in the forums.

How do you extend with vardefs.ext.php These should be automatically loaded after the vardefs for the module. You want to write the code to modify the existing array, instead of creating a new array.... That way your stuff will add to what exists instead of requiring you to recreate the entire array.

How do you point to image that should be shown left to a link in menu? you must include that 'image' line in the "header" section and then in the 'copy' section you copy your image file to 'includes/images' directlry. Look at any of my modules to get a better idea of how that works or post a question in the forum if you need more deatiled help.


Andy

[andydreisch]

Here's a survey comment that hit home:

Slightly better time management (do we need two hours?) and, once again, allowing more opportunities for attendee interaction. We ran out of time and couldn't have questions from the audience. On the other hand, the answers to questions raised in the chat interface were very timely and informative. Kudos to the presenters/answerers.

Yes, we must allow for audio interactivity. We're learning as we go, but I agree that more interactivity would be useful.

Andy

[andydreisch]

Links are up!!!

Go to the SDUG session details page to find the goodies resulting from today's session:

• Recording
• Links to Sugar Wiki for Ken's manifest doco and Max's edits to the vardefs articles.
• Jacob's PowerPoint prezo

Bear in mind that the recording is a Windows Media file (WMV) and is about 82MB. It's a progressive download format so it will buffer and play as it downloads.

Enjoy!!

[mycrmspacegunnar]

Links are up!!!

Go to the SDUG session details page to find the goodies resulting from today's session:


[list][*]Recording!

Hi Andy,

The video does not work with Windows Media player for MAC.
Can you please use a codec fo the video which is supported by MAC Windows media player as well?


Many thanks in advance

Gunnar

[andydreisch]

Hi mycrmspacegunnar, which recording link did you try? The webinar tool we use, GoToWebinar, records to a WMV using a codec they produce. You can DL the codec directly from their site.

The smaller recording is a "standard" WMV that I created using Windows Media Encoder and, hence, uses standard codecs available directly.

HTH,

Andy

[mycrmspacegunnar]

Hi mycrmspacegunnar, which recording link did you try? The webinar tool we use, GoToWebinar, records to a WMV using a codec they produce. You can DL the codec directly from their site.

The smaller recording is a "standard" WMV that I created using Windows Media Encoder and, hence, uses standard codecs available directly.

HTH,

Andy

I tried to watch to HIGH BANDWIDTH video.
http://media.sugarcrm.com/SDUG/2006-...defs-Large.wmv

The video does NOT work with Windows Media Player on APPLE MACOS.

BTW I think the link to the codec that you provided is a Windows codec and not a MAC file?

Cheers
Gunnar

[andydreisch]

Gunnar, give the medium res version a try. I washed this verison through Windows Media Encoder so there is no need for the GoToWebinar codec.

Andy

[andydreisch]

Hi Gunnar, was this a go?

Andy