Development Tutorial

[ftreml]

Hello Sugar Community,
as there is nearly no written development documentation out there, what do you think about an online training session using webex or some other conferencing tool. We would show you how to build your own custom modules and extensions using the current releases of Sugar.

• how to use and extend SugarBean
• how to define metadata with vardefs.php, layout_defs.php, subpanels, field_arrays.php
• how to build relationships between SugarBeans
• how to build subpanels from relationships
• how to integrate custom functionality with "custom logic" hooks
• how to package your work into a package handled by the Upgrade Wiizard or the Module Loader
• ...
• you may ask any other questions, of course

We know what we are talking about, as we built all of the various "Zucker*"-modules available on sugarforge. We would like to know from you if you are willing to participate in such online training sessions. And it would be interesting which price would be fair and accepted from you for this service.
Best Regards,
Florian

[hubertus]

Hi ftreml,
I think an online training session would be very valuable. Some thoughts:

• Very good idea
• The price for a "normal" training session with an experiences teacher is round 1500 USD for a 1-day-training for a group with round five people. The more listeners from the Sugar Community are willing to attend and pay for such a session, the less money has to be spent by everyone.
• Written documentation for the online session is a must-have, so the participants have something persistent for lookup

From the poll above I see that currently half of the people would like to have a training session, but don't want to spend money on it .... I keep asking myself how those people think economy works. You get the software for free, and more than that, including all the source code. You may extend it as you want. And then there are really lot of people who moan around that they don't get Sugar Pro for free. And now they moan around that they don't get training for free. What is next ? Will you expect that a Sugar team member comes right into your house, does all installation and customization tasks for free, just to follow the "Open Source Spirit" ? I really don't understand it.

Hubertus

[yuri.gelman]

Dear hubertus.
You guys are incredible - I do pay you for Pro version. But when I asked your guys to give me little hand on customizing simple thing you Professional Services people trying to squeeze additional $250/hour for "customizations"

What kind of business is that?

[julian]

Hello Yuri,

I just want to point out that hubertus is not an employee of Sugar (your post seemed to imply that). Sugar has a number of partners who may be able to provide customizations for you at a cheaper price, plus we provide some free support in the forums, wiki, IRC channel, and more.

[kpit]

Just in case you did not know about the online trainning that is going to be given on the SugarBean in the SugarCRM Online Dev/User Group. The session is full but will be available to the community for playback after the session is over and you will be able to download the PowerPoint or OpenOffice Presentation and shortly after that there should be a posting in the developer wiki for sugarcrm. For more info on this you can go to SugarForge Dev/User Group

[yuri.gelman]

Max,
I've heard about the forum and even subscribed for it.

My desparation with Sugar team is that they are selling product without any consise documentation and complete lack of tech support. I took me 3 day of waiting plus couple of calls to my sales rep to get my ticket to be looked at and then they came up with something like - if you do customizations please pay us $250/hour and we will do it for you. Other vise you are on your own.

Wiki and forums are great but the problem again - you cannot find consise solution for specifice problem which makes user to go and fish bits and pieces of information from separate sources.

Julian - if I wanted to hire consultant I wouldn't pay you guys for license. I would use open source version which one of my guys can rewrite. You shouldn't neglect people that contribute money for you to develop normal product which they can customize themselves. With little bit more I can purchase SalesForce or another product that allows me to do a lot of things. So if I will take consultant to make what I need I will probably end up with higher price then SalesForce license.

You guys started to neglect your community too early - guys bigger then you (Microsoft, Oracle etc.) are much better at customer support and their client demands then you are. So if you want to continue please be grateful to the community that tries to promote your product.

Thanks for replies,
Yuri Gelman

[kpit]

A little note about SalesForce you pay for customizations as well if you need to have it customized I am not sure what they charge but they do charge you to do those changes. The whole fact is you may not have the flexibility to change like you do with open source.



A common misconception is Open Source means Free. This is far from the truth. Open Source requires expertise to alter a solution to meet your needs. It ether cost you time to alter the product or money to hire someone with the expertise needed to get the job done. The more expertise someone has the more they can bill you as it will take them less time to solve your problem. The value comes down to Time is money.

For Example you higher a college graduate with no real world programming experience at $20/hr. It would take him up to 3 months of full time work to complete the project that would cost you about $9600. But if you put it in the hands of an experienced developer in SugarCRM at $250/hr. The project might take the developer 20 hours of work that would cost you about $5000. Plus the developer can ask other developers in SugarCRM Inc if the run into a problem. As a result the project gets done faster and they already know the project at hand. Your project would be done in less than a week!

[julian]

Hello Yuri,

You're correct that our developer documentation/Wiki is lacking, but the forums are very active and I've seen countless solutions come from the members who frequent it (this thread is proof enough).

I am a Sugar employee and have been tasked with working together with developers in the Sugar community-- I do my best to handle as many questions as possible in these forums, and drive the solutions into new documentation and Wiki articles, but that does take time. The Wiki is relatively new, but with time, it'll grow into a rich resource.

That said, if you have specific questions about the customizations you're undertaking, I'd be happy to begin to help.

[hksduhksdu]

Do your research before you compare with your competitors. Salesforce does NOT charge anything on customization; instead, it is included in the version. For example, if you buy professional version, you will have some development and customization included and you do NOT have to pay extra $$$/hour to do your customization. Like their enterprise edition, it includes built-in custom apps tools that require no programming experience to develop their own salesforce application. Again, they DO not charge extra for any customization and not like what this gentleman said.

Besides, stop showing your customers your bad math, this would have bad impact on your company impression. Show your customers more valuable suggestions please, it's not just giving assumption of "college students do it in 3 months with this price and an experienced developer do it in 3 days with expensive and so paying them to do the job will give you cheaper apps", oh please...this is not persuasive at all!!! Be a professional, show some real cases and real proof, it's not just to show some numbers and you would believe that your customers will be satisfied and stick with Sugar forever.

A little note about SalesForce you pay for customizations as well if you need to have it customized I am not sure what they charge but they do charge you to do those changes. The whole fact is you may not have the flexibility to change like you do with open source.
A common misconception is Open Source means Free. This is far from the truth. Open Source requires expertise to alter a solution to meet your needs. It ether cost you time to alter the product or money to hire someone with the expertise needed to get the job done. The more expertise someone has the more they can bill you as it will take them less time to solve your problem. The value comes down to Time is money.
For Example you higher a college graduate with no real world programming experience at $20/hr. It would take him up to 3 months of full time work to complete the project that would cost you about $9600. But if you put it in the hands of an experienced developer in SugarCRM at $250/hr. The project might take the developer 20 hours of work that would cost you about $5000. Plus the developer can ask other developers in SugarCRM Inc if the run into a problem. As a result the project gets done faster and they already know the project at hand. Your project would be done in less than a week!

[andydreisch]

Hi, hksduhksdu.

"Do your research before you compare with your competitors."

Just to note that umeco is a Sugar community member but is not a Sugar employee. Thus he is in no position to be the subject of "your" as in "your competitors".

We encourage open, fruitful discussions. We just want to make sure that certain facts are established.

Thanks,

Andy