Lots of Thread Questions With No Solutions!

[PaulAndersonNRC]

Hi all,

We are a large college and are starting to implement SugarCRM CE. While observing the praise and recognition people have for SugarCRM and what it can do, I have serious concerns about the 'community support' available for this software. Having worked on a problem relating to LDAP authentication for a few days now, I'm noticing just how many other people on the forums have reported the exact same or very similar problems, and the fact that no-one has confirmed reaching a solution. It's clear that the reason for this is that no experienced users or SugarCRM staff appear to be helping.

I am familiar with forum support for other community and open source projects and use it regularly. I know how it works and understand the limitations. However, what appears to distinguish SugarCRM CE here is the sheer lack of input from senior, technically experienced members or even SugarCRM developers. In short, lots of problems reported, lots of peers offering suggestions, but almost no confirmed solutions at all. This is not the mark of a thriving support community. Many perfectly well articulated forum threads received no response at all and have been open for months or years.

I have spoken to my contacts in other colleges who have made the same observations. I have also made my concerns known to my line manager, who makes the purchasing decisions. A lot of SugarCRM's revenue will come from SugarCRM CE users who were lucky enough to get the software working and then decide that it is worth the investment to 'upgrade' to the premium edition in order to fully exploit the software's functionality with the benefit of technical support. I can see from the forums that a lot of people aren't getting that far and seem to be hitting a dead end with their problems as no-one replies to their forum technical questions with a promising suggestion. This surely means lost revenue for your organisation.

Any thoughts ?

Note that I would have posted you a link to my problem so you can see an example, but it seems the moderator still hasn't approved it. Another serious issue and one which many forum members are unhappy about!

[sts]

I've rarely seen such an unfair post in this forum.

Yes, there are many unanswered questions. But there are much more answered ones. Lot's of users get there problems solved in this forum. And there are many people here helping others and spending there time. And not all questions can be answered without spending much time. Please tell me the forums you know where you get all your questions answered (even the complicated and special ones), in short time and without paying.

This is a forum from users for users. No one pays for getting help and the people answering don't get payed for giving help. How much help do you expect on that base? How many questions did you answer, how many time did you invest to help others here?

[PaulAndersonNRC]

Thanks for replying Stefan.

You have completely misread my post. This post is not a criticism directed at community users, of which I am one. It may be of more interest to those who administer support facilities, write documentation and co-ordinate resources and are, thus, in a position to make a difference. For example, SugarCRM developers, SugarCRM forum administrators, etc. I can indeed think of a number of support communities where it just works better, but this is not down to a lack of effort on the part of contributors here.

Please tell me the forums you know where you get all your questions answered, in short time and without paying.

. I don't know of any such forums. Nor did I indicate or suggest that I did. You misread my post.

This is a forum from users for users. No one pays for getting help and the people answering don't get payed for giving help.

I suggest you read paragraph 2 again, particularly the first two sentences.

How many questions did you answer, how many time did you invest to help others here?

None, because, as indicated in the first sentence of my post, we have only just started using SugarCRM. In fact, I have, in all, a couple of weeks experience with it. So there is nothing I can contribute, yet. Rest assured, though, that if I work out a solution to my current problem I will go back to every forum post I could find (including the ones from 2010 with no answers) and post a link to my solution, even if it's likely that they've given up and gone elsewhere. I can't contribute until I have some experience and knowledge myself.

[PaulAndersonNRC]

I'd welcome other comments on this. For example:

Do you think that some SugarCRM developer/support team input to the forums (as happens in other open source / community forums) is feasible ? Would it be beneficial ?

Do you think that moderation of the first ten posts for new users is appropriate for a software forum ? I don't. Frankly, I think it's bizarre.

[eggsurplus]

Hey Paul,

You are unfortunately just hitting a specific topic that not many have expertise in. LDAP isn't on the radar for a large percentage of users and those who are using LDAP with Sugar seem to just not be around. They get it configured and move on. I'm sure you'll find with other issues that a large percentage get answered. I know a good number of individuals (both from the community and from SugarCRM) that go through daily to read through any unanswered posts.

I hope that when you do get it figured out you'd be able to add your expertise to those questions.

As far as the moderation goes that is definitely different and is a reaction to the recent onslaught of spam posts. The captchas were no longer sufficient for filtering out these posts. I'm not a huge fan either as it only further frustrates new users who are just trying to get help. Would love to see a different solution used. Perhaps an initial, one-time use verification key found when you install a version of SugarCRM to verify new users?

-Jason

[PaulAndersonNRC]

Hey Paul,

You are unfortunately just hitting a specific topic that not many have expertise in. LDAP isn't on the radar for a large percentage of users and those who are using LDAP with Sugar seem to just not be around. They get it configured and move on. I'm sure you'll find with other issues that a large percentage get answered. I know a good number of individuals (both from the community and from SugarCRM) that go through daily to read through any unanswered posts.

I hope that when you do get it figured out you'd be able to add your expertise to those questions.

As far as the moderation goes that is definitely different and is a reaction to the recent onslaught of spam posts. The captchas were no longer sufficient for filtering out these posts. I'm not a huge fan either as it only further frustrates new users who are just trying to get help. Would love to see a different solution used. Perhaps an initial, one-time use verification key found when you install a version of SugarCRM to verify new users?

-Jason

Thanks Jason. I'm getting closer to a resolution and, of course, if I get a solution I will post it along with details.

[Chris_C]

In response to Paul the original poster - I know exactly what you're talking about.

As CE users, I feel the best thing we can do is:
1) Come up with these "recipes" for vital Sugar functions like: "How to get LDAP working".
2) Share them with others on this forum, as a sticky post in a "How to" section of this forum - if one doesn't exist yet then it should be created.
3) A critical mass of posts will build, Sugar CE will become easier and faster to get working right, and will fuel a great level of enthusiasm from others, who will join in and contribute even more "recipes", and even amazing modules.
4) Sugar CE will become more and more awesome.

[PaulAndersonNRC]

In response to Paul the original poster - I know exactly what you're talking about.

As CE users, I feel the best thing we can do is:
1) Come up with these "recipes" for vital Sugar functions like: "How to get LDAP working".
2) Share them with others on this forum, as a sticky post in a "How to" section of this forum - if one doesn't exist yet then it should be created.
3) A critical mass of posts will build, Sugar CE will become easier and faster to get working right, and will fuel a great level of enthusiasm from others, who will join in and contribute even more "recipes", and even amazing modules.
4) Sugar CE will become more and more awesome.

Thanks Chris. I couldn't agree more. I noticed a few days ago that a senior member (sts I think) had posted a visitor message to the forums administrator, John Mertic, that he had noticed a drop in posts from new members since they began moderating people's first 10 posts. This is hardly surprising, is it ? I think the first thing that needs to happen is they need to come up with an intelligent way of dealing with spam and get rid of moderation, which is ludicrous. I had to wait about 12hrs to get some of my posts released. This does not welcome new contributors.

[Chris_C]

Agreed - I was stunned at the 1-2 day delay from my first posts on here.

For urgent business matters, I'm sure delaying like that is hindering contributions from newcomers to the forum, and use of Sugar CE in general.

Forum spam is a huge problem for all forums, BUT there ARE some very effective anti-spam forum plugins and recommendations available. I've done this - albeit on other forum software - but the idea is the same for all forums.

Sugar forum is running on vbulletin, so this next part is for the forum admin,

I want to request that these vbulletin anti-spam recommendations (below) be tried on here on the Sugar forum.

Notably, akismet scans each new post and will tell vb not to post it if it contains spam links.

Hopefully this will automatically detect spam posts, and reduce or eliminate the need to moderate a user's first 10 posts:

how do i avoid spams in Vbulletin 4.3?

Re: how do i avoid spams in Vbulletin 4.3?
Most people are being hit with a lot of spam these days. Some things you can do to reduce this are:

1. Moderate new registrations
Admin CP -> Setting -> Options -> User Registration Options -> Moderate New Members -> Yes

2. Activate email verification
Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> User Registration Options -> Verify Email address in Registration

3. Upgrade to at least vBulletin version 3.7 or higher. These versions have several Human Verification Options.
Admin CP -> Settings -> Human Verification Manager ->

Image Verification:
This is the same Images Verification Captcha as in older versions of vB, except that this now requires both GD and Freetype 2 to be installed in PHP.

Question and Answer Verification
This allows you to set up a Question and Answer verification during registration. If done correctly it will be almost impossible for bots to enter the correct answer.

reCAPTCHA™ Verification
This uses the reCaptcha service. You will need to register with them and get both a Public and Private key.

*** Note: As per this announcement, we recommend using the Q&A method with multiple questions. ***
After you have chosen the method you want to use and have set this up, then make sure the correct Human Verification options are set here:
Admin CP -> Settings -> Human Verification Options

And if you have chosen the Image Verification option then you need to choose either GD or ImageMagick here: Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> Image Settings
You can go back to the Human Verification Manager to make sure the image is showing correctly.

Note: Both are equivalent. These are also required if you use thumbnails for attachments or wish to automatically resize pictures that are too large.

4. Ban 'free' email domains many spammers use.
Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> User Banning Options -> Banned Email Addresses

See this thread for a list of commonly banned email addresses:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148061

5. Set these options for the Unregistered, Users Awaiting and COPPA usergroups:
Admin CP -> Usergroups -> Usergroup Manager -> Edit ->
Can Use Email to Friend -> No
Can Email Members -> No

Require Human Verification on Configured Actions -> Yes

6. Add a new required question to registration.
Although there is a Q&A option in the Human Verification Manager, at this time these is no way to use this in conjunction with Image Verification or reCaptcha. However there is a workaround for this. You can create a required profile field to add Q&A to the registration process. To do so, follow these instructions: Add an extra question to the registration to prevent bot registrations.

7. Restrict Email to Friend to Registered Users.
Some people have reported that spammers are using the 'Send Email to Friend' function to spam others from your forums. To reduce this make sure that your Unregistered, COPPA and User's Awaiting groups have the 'Can Use Email to Friend' option set to 'No'.

8. Stop bots spamming through the Contact Us link.
Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> Human Verification Options -> Check 'Contact Us' and 'Register'

9. Enabling Spam Management.
vBulletin supports managing spam through the Akismet and Typepad Anti-spam services. Both services require an API key to use. Here is how to obtain those keys.

Akismet -
To obtain an Akismet key, you need to sign up for a Wordpress.com account. This will give you a key to use within vBulletin. After signing up please see this page for instructions on retrieving your key:
API Keys « Support — WordPress.com

Typepad -
Typepad also requires a key to be used. To get one go to this link here:
TypePad AntiSpam - Get an API Key

Once you have your key, you need to enter it into your vBulletin Options under:
Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> vBulletin Options -> Spam Management -> vBulletin Anti-Spam Key Powered by Akismet

Note: Either key goes into the same spot. On the same page set 'Anti-Spam Service' to the appropriate service. You can only use one service at a time.

[Chris_C]

I posted a reply about an hour ago - don't know where it went.

Basically - there are popular, widely used, plugins for vBulletin (Sugar forum runs on vBulletin) that automatically eliminate spam - here is the link.

[GlowHost] Spam-O-Matic for vB 3.8 (StopForumSpam, Akismet, Auto-Moderation and more) - vBulletin.org Forum

I hope Sugar forum admin will take a look at it - and hopefully install it - so as to eliminate the manpower and delay involved in manually approving all new users's first 10 posts.

Instead, Sugar forum admin will just have to manually approve posts that were actually marked as spam by akismet - to try to catch the false positives.

Although there should be very few false positives - most normal forum posters will not post spammy looking posts...

Plus, it learns and adapts to the general content of the forum and generates less and less false positives over time.

Hugely popular on both blog sites and forums - excellent quality improvement and eliminates nearly 100% of forum spam.

Should be an awesome upgrade for our Sugar forum.

Free - or $5/month for commercial sites that make money.