Workflow automation for Sugar Community Edition

[preginald]

Our company has successfully created workflow automation contribution for our Sugar Community Edition.

This contribution sends an email to defined email contacts when a sugar module status has changed, when a new case is created, status of a case changes to assigned and closed.

Here are just 5 of the many features:

1. The notification email uses an email template you create in sugar.
2. The email template dynamically merges fields from the related case, lead, contact, account etc...
3. The notification email can be sent to the contact and / or account email related to the case;
4. as well as the account manager's email
5. The email that is sent to the contact is also saved in the contact history

This workflow can be edited to automate status changes to Lead and other modules.

This contribution has improved our efficiency, reduced data entry errors which in turn has saved us a lot of time and money. This contribution also sets the framework for an unlimited array of customizations.

If you think this contribution is of help to your sugarcrm then please send me a private message.

Cheers,

Peter R

[preginald]

To those who contacted me with your questions: I will create a list of answers to some very good questions.

Why did you create this workflow automation for Sugar Community Edition when the professional and enterprise version has workflow automation feature as standard?
We are a relatively small business with many users. It is more feasible to invest in a solution to customize sugar community for workflow functionality rather than purchase many professional licenses ever year.

Are you willing to share this contribution?
Our plan is to first test this contribution locally on a fresh sugar community installation. Once we have easily installed this contribution on the test version we will begin testing on a handful of existing sugar community installations.

Will this contribution offer multi lingual support?
At the moment this contribution is developed in English. We have set the framework to allow for multilingual contributions in the future.

Will you be making this a commercial (paid) contribution?
The scope of this development project was intended for deployment on our company crm only and as a result we are currently working within the allocated budget. If there is a great demand for this contribution in the community then we will need to allocate more funds for further testing, development and support. So we may share this cost with some kind of license structure.

When will you be adding this contribution to the sugarforge?
It is too early to add this to the sugarforge. If there is no demand to create an easily installable workflow automation for sugar community then it will not be feasible for us invest our resources. This contribution is very impressive and actually works better than the workflow automation that comes standard with the Professional and Enterprise versions.

Tell us about your business.
Your PC Matters is a Melbourne based IT consulting firm providing a range of services and products to our clients and members. You can find out more by visiting http://www.yourpcmatters.com/about/index.php

[longreach]

"So we may share this cost with some kind of license structure."

Ummmm?

This is an add-on to GPL-3 software - your options are pretty limited.

First guy you sell it to posts it on the Forge - and you're done.

[SugarDev.net]

"So we may share this cost with some kind of license structure."

Ummmm?

This is an add-on to GPL-3 software - your options are pretty limited.

First guy you sell it to posts it on the Forge - and you're done.

Not necessarily. It's still legal to add something to Sugar and make is proprietary:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/license...LModuleLicense

[preginald]

This is an add-on to GPL-3 software - your options are pretty limited.

First guy you sell it to posts it on the Forge - and you're done.

Hi Longreach,

Our intention is not to profit from this contribution. Please understand that we already have this contribution working for us on our crm.

It is not just a simple matter of copying some files to your own sugar install. To make the contribution 'user friendly' then it would require more resources that we would otherwise allocate toward other internal projects.

Obviously our core competencies are not in software development so this is a new field of experience.

I mean, when you think about it, the community version of sugarcrm could come with workflow automation as standard. Why doesn't it? They've already created that functionalit. There is a good reason for this.

Cheers,

Peter

[longreach]

Not necessarily. It's still legal to add something to Sugar and make is proprietary:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/license...LModuleLicense

Can't say I see anything there to change my opinion - unless you plan to use fork and exec - which would not be likely with this intimately linked type of capability. Workflow would form part of a derived work with Sugar CE, and would therefore have to be released under a GPL compatible license as soon as the code goes to more than the original developer or their commercial client.

[longreach]

Hi Longreach,

Our intention is not to profit from this contribution. Please understand that we already have this contribution working for us on our crm.

It is not just a simple matter of copying some files to your own sugar install. To make the contribution 'user friendly' then it would require more resources that we would otherwise allocate toward other internal projects.

Obviously our core competencies are not in software development so this is a new field of experience.

I mean, when you think about it, the community version of sugarcrm could come with workflow automation as standard. Why doesn't it? They've already created that functionalit. There is a good reason for this.

Cheers,

Peter

Yes, I understand, and also sympathize - just pointing out the facts so you don't walk into a wall absent-mindedly. A typical solution might be to assemble a consortium to jointly pay for development - then when you release it you know you are not making a loss.

[dtokeefe]

You should take a look at our experience with Teams 5.0 CE before getting too excited about the community ponying up development money.

[dtokeefe]

The Workflow admin interface is nice and handy for some things, but:

1. Users rarely create Workflows (the admins or developers do)
2. A typical installation has only a handful of workflow events
3. It's straightforward to program those events with logic hooks (the underlying code of Workflow)

That said, we are interested in lending a hand to making your contribution distributable, providing Sugar-skilled development resources for free. We would not want to sell the resulting module, but rather to use it in our projects.

Besides the license issue Michael mentioned, selling packaged code is a level of business commitment that does not seem very attractive unless there is real sales volume, which does not seem likely in the case of Workflow for SugarCRM CE. Better to release it "as is", enlisting the support, maintenance and upgrade help of the community, while also staying free of any obligation to bug fix or stay current with Sugar versions.

Cheers.

David

[SugarDev.net]

Can't say I see anything there to change my opinion - unless you plan to use fork and exec - which would not be likely with this intimately linked type of capability. Workflow would form part of a derived work with Sugar CE, and would therefore have to be released under a GPL compatible license as soon as the code goes to more than the original developer or their commercial client.

Maybe this will change your opinion: The LGPL is a GPL-compatible license.