SugarCRM books -- what do you want to see next?

[david at packt]

Hi

I'm David Barnes at Packt Publishing. I worked with Michael Whitehead on Implementing SugarCRM (http://www.packtpub.com/sugarcrm/book if you want to find out more about it).

We are pleased with the success of this book, and I am now looking for other book ideas that would be useful for the SugarCRM community. If you have any ideas for future books, or suggestions for the next edition of Implementing SugarCRM, then please let me know either via PM or on this thread.

And of course, if you would be interested in writing books for Packt then I would be especially interested in hearing from you!

The topics I've been thinking about already are:

Customizing SugarCRM -- branding it, developing templates, tweaking it for particular customer purposes, etc.
SugarCRM Module Development -- this shows how to extend SugarCRM's capabilities by writing new modules. So wheras Customizing is about tweaking existing functionality, this would be about adding completely new stuff
SugarCRM Quick Start -- a short tutorial to get you up and running, shorter and less comprehensive than Implementing SugarCRM.

Thanks for your time. Please suggest the books you would like to see, and I will do my best to publish them!

David

[alejandrops]

Hi,
the book I need (and for the posts in the forum I am not alone) is one that explains customization and simple module developement, with best practices, integration with other modules, creating an installable module etc.
advanced features is a topic for another book.
hope is released soon!

[david at packt]

Message received. Thanks for the feedback.

If you have time to flesh this out some more... what qualities do you think will be most important in making a book like that fit your needs perfectly?

I'll get on with investigating this area further...

Thanks

David

[stevec]

Something that would be useful is how to manage modifications and official patches/upgrades together.

[alejandrops]

I think it should cover the following aspects

- very basic PHP (10 pages max)
- Very basic MySQL (4 pages)
- selecting an IDE/Editor

- customizing actual modules
- adding new fields
- fields
- lists
-chsckbox
- searching new fields

- creating a very simple module (every enterprise must add a custom module tu suit needs)
- creating a module with 2 fields
- integrating with accounts or other modules
- searching the new module
- creating a module installer file
- making it multilanguaje
- extending your module
- more fields
- ajax

upgrading versions and the new module
best practices

testing

deploying in sugarforge



i want to help. pls contact me if you want

alejandrops@gmail.com

[Lars.Englund]

I would like to also put my vote on something dealing with advanced customization with modules.

Something that would be very useful is a database chart showing relationships. I worked alot with Onyx previously, and the DB chart they provided was sometimes the only way to grip relationships in the crm system.

Another item that should be at least discussed is handling daily imports of data from other systems. alternatives available, from web services, batch jobs to jitterbit etc would be useful.

Good luck with the book project, if you need a beta reviewer, or someone to translate it to swedish let me know.

/lars

[Markku]

Hi Lars.Englund,

Thanks for your good comments, This is slightly off-topic, but I decided to post anyway. Sugar does not follow traditional relationship model per se, thus you can not draw db chart. Yes, there are some obvious relations (which can be drawn) , but those are defined on module level and not forced. This thread provides more info about this particular subject:
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showt...0882#post20882

[lvangool]

What Implementing SugarCRM was absolutely not (a book voor developers), this one should be from page 1.

Simply put: a SugarCRM developer (customizer/module/developer/code hacker) needs technical information, reference, how-to's etc. When I just started developing for Sugar, I needed graphical representations of the business logic of Sugar, and detailed explainations as to how this big underdocumented pile of code was working underneath. I had to learn this the hard way.

Meanwhile, the Wiki is up. I'm not so sure there is a very big need for a book at the moment, but I'm sure you did or will do your own researche. I've played with the idea of writing a more technical book too, but decided not to do it because the community is finally being recognized here at sugar .

[stevec]

One thing to be aware of is how quickly sugar release new versions and how much the structure changes. Could be problematic for writing a book. For example - the use as ajax quickcreates and new searching methods in 4.5

[anjireddy987]

here is the link for the one of the sugarcrm book
http://rapidshare.com/files/26776995...or_Dummies.pdf