Frustration w/ slowness/lack of response on forums.

[tbivans]

Hi,

I have been posting to these forums for about four months now, and at the beginning I would say that I got much useful information. But now it seems as if I have hit the wall. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it just because I have asked all the easy questions and now no one knows how to answer the questions I have.

Maybe I've been too abrasive in some of my postings and am thus receiving a virtual 'cold shoulder' from the Sugar community. If so, I apologize.

Maybe a helping hand would be more forthcoming were I a paid user of Sugar rather than a lowly open source user. If so, I think that is unwise and unfair. Unfair, because most of the people paid to adminstrate Sugar had no direct choice in the matter, and have no say as to whether their company shells out the money for a paid solution.

It is unwise, because I think that it is from the OS community that Sugar will receive most of its new ideas and contributions. Those who are paying for support certainly have less incentive to figure it out for themselves.

In the past few weeks I have posted numerous posts and have received only a sparse, if any, reply.

I would like to know if anyone else is having this problem? Just knowing that I am not alone in this would be a bit of comfort.

I have a posting at:
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22002
to which I really need some feedback. I'm really desperate here. I've been tasked at making these mods to Sugar and I have this last one to finish, and I really would like to put this behind me for awhile.

Thanks in advance,

tbivans

[gfa]

i feel your pain, if you search my posts ive got a half dozen questions that didnt get any replies, i think only one that ive ever posted got a useful response.

[tbivans]

gfa,

Thanks for commiserating with me. I will take a look at your posts and see if I can help at all. Can't promise anything though. I will try.

Tim

[jmaxwell]

Dude, you posted that thread mentioned YESTERDAY. and you are unhappy no one has replied yet? Jeez give it a little more time. Maybe after a month it might be something to carp about. Besides, that is really more of a question for a JS forum, not a sugar forum per se, since most of the issue relates to JS methods and code, the sugar part of it is a bit of a side issue. And why bother with the complex checkbox stuff? Just do a pulldown field, with all the various statuses in there. much simpler, takes less space, accomplishes the same thing, no goofy JS required.

And no, paid customers dont' get any extra help in the forums. And even if you are paying for support, that's not much help really, as anything even slightly seriously complex becomes a 'professional services' issue, (read: now you have to pony up $10-20k for solutions to simple problems that shouldnt' exist to begin with, or for trivial customizations... at $125-200/hr or whatever it is now)

So yeah, lack of response on the forums is not uncommon, you have enough posts here to know that. Even if you are a paid user, you have to be pretty self-sufficient to make the most of sugar. It's sort of a glorified permanent-beta version of software, focused too much on eye candy and new features and not enough on bug fixes and code stability, IMNSHO.

I guess the bottom line is there are not enough people @ sugar who are paid to reply/respond to customer issues via the forum or bug tracker in a super-fast timely manner (though they do usually come through with replies eventually if you complain loud enough), so the community has to help itself, basically.

good luck. I feel your pain too.

-Ed

[tbivans]

jmaxwell,

Yeah, I know that my most recent post was just yesterday, but as you pointed out, I have posted enough here to know how long it takes. Indeed I have. Thus my frustration. In fact I had posted on the same or similar problem a couple of weeks ago at least and the only response was my own!

I'm not trying to sound like I'm whining, I was just trying to see if anyone else felt the same way, and apparently there are at least two.

As far as the JS forums go, I have went that direction, on three different forums, and all of them said that I shouldn't name the two inputs with identical names. But I did not name them thusly. The Sugar team did. And all I want to know is why, and is there a way to access such fields under those conditions. I would agree that this isn't a Sugar issue if Sugar used no Javascript at all, but, alas, they do. I would just like a hint as to their method.

I agree about using a pulldown menu, however, that was how it was originally implemented. My lead salesman wanted it changed to checkboxes and the founder of my company concurred, so guess what, I'm trying to implement checkboxes. I'm fairly new at my company so I don't have a great deal of sway. Ever had to do something that you personally thought was unnecessary because the person who signs your paycheck told to you to do so? Well, then you know what I'm talking about.

Thanks for you input. I really don't want to sound like a whiner. I'm just searching for answers and trying to satisfy those who put food on my family's table. This is, for now, the last mod I have to do to Sugar, so I'm fairly anxious to have it done. Sorry if I come off sounding like a big baby.

tbivans

[jmaxwell]

no idea on the sugar method (or lack thereof) in using the same field name twice for the variable and having issues with that. hopefully someone from sugar will weigh in.

tell the bosses that you can't do it with checkboxes - simple enough. they don't sound like they know enough to second guess you. if they want to write the code themselves, tell em to have at it. or, just make them a single bunch of checkboxes without some sort of fancy linking/scripting stuff.

good luck
-Ed

[tbivans]

Thanks Ed,

I may have to pass on your words of wisdom to the powers that be.

As far as the checkboxes go, they are there now, they just aren't linked in any way. And I do hope that the Sugar team will chime in at some point. But I won't hold my breath.

Thanks again,

Tim

[susiewilliams]

Hi All,

I'd like to echo Maxwell's sentiments regarding the responsiveness of the forums. The forums are meant for the community experts to support and respond to the questions from the development community. SugarCRM provides and maintains this forum space as a virtual "watering hole" for developers to meet. We do try to respond to questions whenever possible, and I think you've seen some active posters (like SugarChris and jnassi for example) who try to post answers in between their regular SugarCRM jobs. But this site exists for the community... the best way to make it more vibrant and useful is to contribute as well as to ask questions.

[dafreakboy]

TBivans,

Please understand that Sugar Open Source is a project that is supported through community contributions. If you want to get support in a timely fashion, you might consider Sugar Professional for your organization. The Sugar Support Staff is the best I've experienced. We work with many Open Source users who run their business on SugarCRM and are frustrated with relatively slow turnaround times on the forums. We recommend Sugar Professional for the additional functionality, the enhanced quality assurance, and the support we can count on for our customers.

By the way, you might take a look at the Wikis: http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page. These are constantly updated.

-Kevin

[tbivans]

dafreakboy,

Thanks for the info. I respect the fact that the Sugar forums are a community supported effort, and I understand that one would get more direct support if one's company were to pay for the Professional version. However, I am not in a position to make such a decision regarding such a capital outlay. I realize now that that is just the way it is going to be, and that I am just going to have to wait for responses when they graciously come down the pipe.

It just seems that there is a relatively low number of really proficient users in the community compared with the number of questions posted. For instance, if you look at the member list, sorted by number of posts, I am on page 2! out of 1317.

I certainly don't feel like I am in the top 1% as far as my knowledge of Sugar, but yet there I am as far as how active I am in the forums. I try to check them regularly and share what knowledge I have, limited though it may be.

I have started reading through the Wiki's and have found some useful info there. But it is by no means exhaustive, and the section I most need right now, the Javascript one, is very slim. As I gain knowledge I will post to the Wiki to help others like myself get through some of the hurdles more easily.

Thanks for your response, sincerely, and if you have ANY knowledge re: Sugar and their use of JavaScript I would kindly direct you to my post:
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22002
Which has yet to have one reply.

Thanks again, I am VERY thankful for the community members who do regularly support the forums.

Peace,

Tim