Poll: Dump Sugar Mail and integrate something better?

[bjs3]

OK,

Lets all be honest: can anyone really USE the email function? This is undoubtedly some of the worst thought out programing that I have encountered in a major project, ever. And the bug level is roughly like scooping up a square mile of rain forest --- all manner of ugly creepy crawlies spill out.

I simply state this as fact: is obvious that the sugar team is letting the mailer bleed to death (a shame, since integrated mail with the CRM is an absolutely killer app!). I don't believe the team has ever even tried to use their own module, much less to really test it.

So here is the question:
A: Should we all try to make a fuss and see if the sugar team will fix it, or
B: Should we try to integrate some other mail client that wroks well

I hereby open the floor to debate. I vote for integrating something else. Any word from the sugar team on this?

Bruno

[techex]

Zimbra or Scalix perhaps...

I honestly feel that there should be our other priorities for the core dev team. My vote is for 3rd pty integration as well..

[Proware]

Integrated mail is absolutely critical for a larger organisation with a distributed workforce.

I have had frank discussion directly with Clint on the mail issue and its importance.

And I know that Sugar uses Outlook for their mail.

I challenged Clint to use Sugar mail exclusively for one week.

I wonder if he ever took me up on the challenge?

[consta]

I agree, email should be a major priority for the Sugar Team. A solid email solution integrated into sugar will make sugar a killer app. There is talk of integrating Zimbra and I heard talk of integrating with Gmail awhile back too. Does anyone know the status of these projects?

Whether or not sugar improves their own email module or outsource email to a 3rd party I don't care... but significant improvements need to be made.

I was told that we can expect thunderbird integration in the near future. Sugar can greatly improve the value of their email module by making it integrate with more email clients. Thunderbird should be next on the list, and hopefully Evolution will be a consideration down the road too.

If nothing else, I think its fitting for Sugar to have a forum specifically for email related discussions. They really need to make a major push to solicit feedback on email usability IMO. There are many simple improvements to the email UI that missing even in 4.5.

[alsutton]

I think we need to take a step back to look at the big picture. Quality Assurance is something that Sugar are c**p at which ever way you look at it (recent examples being releasing the 4.2.1 patch that had SQL bugs that cause them to pull the patch after customers report the problem, and the long running sort order problems in the existing email system which fixes have been posted for).Sugar also very rarely integrate external code into the main release (there have been many bug fixes posted by developers which Sugar just haven't included and have left the bugs in place), so I don't think it matters what the decision is by this thread, we'll either end up with the same mail system with bugs, or we'll get a set of integration hooks which have their own bugs (and change between releases leaving a lag between the components and the main system), either way I doubt we'll see a bug free mail system any time soon.

As it's been mentioned Sugar don't use the Email section of their system and I think that says all we need to know about their view of the module. It's something that's been added as a feature because it's something that a lot of people want and they can say in their sales blurb "Yeah, we handle email", but it's not something that they consider worth using in a production evironment, and anyone who doesn't use what they write when it's a core part of their day to day business is, in my view, admitting their own product is a vastly inferior offering that is so poor that it would have a negative effect on the business if they used it.

[george_bbch]

I'm trying to put together my thoughts and experience so far:

Option 1: Built-in email module
+ tight integration with the other modules
+ no additional software required
+ platform independent (on the client side)
- needs serious development for a fast, bug-free and international-support module
- less secure

Option 2: External email module
+ a mature, stable module, feature-rich and supporting 3rd party add-ons
+ more secure, the user decides what to sync and what not
- platform-dependent
- extra sync module needs to be developed, installed, supported, updated

At the moment, the Email module is very basic, slow, buggy, unsecure and not internationalized. I've tested the 4.5 beta 1 and I'm not happier. IMHO, the Sugar Team needs to define a clear strategy on this and make it happen with top priority. I would definitely ask the customers what they want and my vote goes for the integrated module.

[bjs3]

Hi,

I am delighted to see that my poll is taking off and that many other sugar fans are deeply discouraged by the shoody workmanship and nonexistent planing that the e-mail module shows.

How can we get the sugar team to take notice of this? Hello Cliff, are you listening? Or is the Sugar Team too busy jumping on the AJAX bandwagon to get the basics right.

What about a separate forum post in which there could be a cumulative list of email bugs (it would probably start off with 20 or 30 knbown bugs). Do you think that wold get their attention?

Regards,

Bruno, the would be mailer.

[thecas]

My vote: dump sugar mail and integrate something better. Zimbra and Scalix are great for web-based clients. Thunderbird if you're looking for something on the desktop.

[rickster]

OK, I have been using sugar for 3 days now, and I am frankly horrified by the disfunctionality of the email client.

- save a draft, resume: everytime it adds a new signature to it. My signature is a good 20 lines, so I didn't notice the tail of signatures

- compose an email in html, and the plain text alternative stays emtpy. Do the opposite and the html portion stays empty. We sent apparently empty emails to two $100k customers this way. Very bad.

- mysteriously, attachments get sent out as part of emails without warning...

So far only for a very selected set of email issues. But it's not just email that is giving me problems.

My hope was that sugar as a "professional" tool would stand up to simple demands, and my assumption is that the closed source version has the same issues as the open source brother. Am I right? In that case, I have no choice but to drop sugar and go and pay hard cash...

As for this thread - DROP email from sugar and focus on core functionality. Don't try and do everything, but try and do a limited set of things right first.

[alsutton]

My hope was that sugar as a "professional" tool would stand up to simple demands, and my assumption is that the closed source version has the same issues as the open source brother. Am I right? In that case, I have no choice but to drop sugar and go and pay hard cash...

My understanding is that all the pay-for versions give you is extra functionality (and all the bugs those modules may have), not extra fixes to the fundamental problems the open source modules have.

Looks like it's either wallet time or you need to get comfortable with Sugar Quality .