New user dilemna-Search Problem>Cold Feet

[BoomerangJ]

Hi-

We chose to use Sugar after reviewing, demoing, and in some cases evaluating all of the usual suspects: Avidian-Prophet, ACT!, ......, etc.

We were able to download OpenSource Sugar 4.5.1 onto a XP box. Set it up in servermode: peer to peer-all of this was no problem super easy using the "installer".
Over the course of the last month we have been busy doing the following:
-loading leads, contacts, using it to set up opportunities, accounts, etc. We modified drop downs to give us more flexibiliy for searches.

My company represents several vendors and one of the reasons that we chose Sugar was that we could modify the "lead source" pull downs and add our vendor names, The hope was that we could perform searches by vendor to track their leads specifically. Modifying the drop downs was no problem. However now that we want to search on these vendors the search doesn't work.

We went to Wiki, and the forums and in the forums we found that Search did have a bug. There were several fixes offered up that involved going into the source and removing a space. (posted by MATBRU on 1-10-07 Re:4.5 Search Issues). We looked at the source code,used various search strings and could not uncover this fix. However in the interest of full disclosure we are not programmers in this language.

Our use model is 0ne sales person, one marketing for e-mail campaigns, Lead inputs, etc. desktop/laptop for sales, desktop for marketing. May expand to 2 more sales. Vendors will not allow their data to be hosted elsewhere. (leads, confidential documents, etc.)

This situation has given us cold feet with the following questions:
1.) We are not php developers. Using Studio is no problem for us-kind of fun. However editing source code currently worries us. We could learn. Currently we may not be right clients for the open source world?
2.) I don't feel like hiring someone everytime we have a problem with source. This could be an expensive rathole-we can't afford it-time wise or money wise. At the same time don't want to undermine the 100's of hours already invested.
3.)Upgrading to Sugar Pro doesn't really appear to fix the problem as it appears it is the same version?

So the marketing person feels like moving on to something else. I feel like we should be a little more diligent on trying to make Sugar work. At the end of the day we want a tool that mekes us more productive,not one that holds us back from the marketplace because we are working on the tool, not going to market making sales. For us that means using all of the features of the tool including reporting capabilities using Search.

Any thoughts advice? Are we thinking about this correctly? Is there a "bulletproof" CRM s/w package? or are they all going to have issues?

[Peterson]

I am new to Sugar myself, and we explored the same functionality--- and have no trouble searching by our customized drop-down "lead source" field.

Are you sure that it is a source code issue?

[BoomerangJ]

No I am not sure that it is a source code issue. That is what we picked up from other posts in the 4.5 section of the forum.

Can you relate to me the process you used to customize your drop downs? Maybe we incorrectly used Studio????

Thanks;

BoomerangJ

[andydreisch]

Hi BoomerangJ, imagine the clamor we'd experience from all the Sugar users out there if this didn't work ... so let's find out what's going on here!!

We just released 4.5.1 yet you (BoomerangJ) referred to installing 4.5.1 then over "the past month" adding data. Can you please verify the version you're now using? (See the About box). Did I get this right?

Can you find records using values that existed prior to the changes to the Lead Source dropdown? Does a search fail for any new dropdown value, or only particular ones? Are you certain other field values in the Search screens are clear (and not influencing the result)? If you were to remove the custom values and re-add them ... same result?

Can you install a separate test version on the same or similar configuration and the test baseline version, then add a single dropdown value and test it, etc.

Please let us know what you find.

Thanks,

Andy

[Boomer]

Andy-
This is (BoomerangJ) (for some reason my pwd did not work-re registered)
First you are right-I do have 4.50. Sorry for the confusion,

We went to an online demo site and moved some of our data to that site. We modified the search fields as we use on our install. On the demo site everything worked fine.

What should be our next steps?

Thanks;

BoomerangJ

[andydreisch]

This is a stretch but it might account for your issue.

http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showt...6911#post66911

Let me know how this works. I'm moving away from the customization itsefl being the issue and I'm unaware of how you could "ask" the system to do this via Studio. That is, from Studio's perspective, it's simply another item in an array.

Andy

[Boomer]

Andy-

I read the thread that you pointed me to. That has not been our issue.

Since I last posted we did the following:
-took the doc advice and went online to the demos system which was 4.51. We modified the lead drop down with a few additional sources. We input some lead sources using the drop down to designate a particular custom lead source. We then went to basic search chose the lead source and searched. It worked!

This morning I upgraded to 4.5.1, using the upgrade wizard. Seemed to be no problem-(nice wizard). After upgrading the docs recommended going in and doing the rebuild relationships and extensions. Which I did. ran a couple ofother repairs as well. The only upgrade recomendation that I did not do was the "merge files". I could not find any forum, Wiki, or user guide documentation to walk me through this. After completing the upgrade I noticed two things: 1.) hundreds of leads that had been designated by one of our custom lead cource fields now all said new. Our custom fields were still in all of the drop downs. 2.) After editing several leads to one of our custom lead source fields and choosing that lead source for a basic search-nothing happened. The windo would blink and the entire set of leads would be returned and the field for lead in the search window would default back to none.

Any ideas?

BTW-I love Sugar. I like it more every day as I use it. Still not fully integrated with e-mail, etc. but getting there. This search function is critical for us though. I work with 7 different vendors-all supplying me their leads-I need to do e-mail campaigns by vendor lead and also topreserve the source of the lead for follow up reporting.

Thanks for following this thread and I hope to hear back soon.

[franklin_sugar]

Hi Boomer,

I tried to reproduce your case, but couldn't. Here is what I did.
1) Install Open Source version 4.5.0 on Windows with MySQL
2) Create custom lead sources
3) Create leads with the new lead sources
4) Change Status from New to Assigned
==> Everything is fine.
5) Upgrade to Open Source version 4.5.1
==> Status is still Assigned.
==> Basic search works fine with the custom lead sources
If this is not what you did, please provide the steps to reproduce your problem.

Also, can you provide your platform informaiton?

Thanks,
Franklin

[andydreisch]

Franklin, thanks for checking this out. Boomer has separately provided me with the basic steps to reproduce this in his environment. Here they are:

Andy-

My configuration: Sugar CRM 4.5.0h, Apache 2.0(January 2004), PHP 3.01,

1.)Use studio-edit lead source drop down-added vendor names-7 new names in addition to the sugar choices. Saved and published.

2.) Entered new leads and chose one of the [newly-added] selections from the lead source drop down, saved lead.

3.) After ~1700 leads were entered we began testing the search function and have been unable to search on any lead source selection-the standard sugar or are additions..

Andy

[Boomer]

Franklin_Sugar and Andy-

One additional data point: When I am in contacts the search on the new lead source fields works fine.

Franklin-your step of new to assigned is interesting. I will go back and look at that. I believe in leads I have a mixture of new and 3 assigned categories. I will see if this change works.

I will report back my findings. I appreciate the extra eyes on this. I will not be surprised if it is something simple that we have missed.

Regards;

BoomerangJ