By Paul Rony on 4/25/2008 10:57 AM

SplendidCRM has had the ability to import an RDL file for more than a year.  Six months ago we added support for parameters to an imported RDL file, which effectively allowed you to generate an invoice.  The one thing we were missing was the ability to generate the PDF invoice at the click of a button.  With the new DynamicButtons feature of SplendidCRM 2.1, we are finally able to put it all together.  You can now create a button and have it run a report, using any of the parameters of the current record.  In this case, we added a PDF button to the Invoice Detail View and we run the Generic Invoice report with the current INVOICE_ID as a parameter.

 

We are going to start included sample RDL reports in SplendidCRM.  If you have any suggestions as to what kinds of samples we should create, feel free to post them on our forum or send them to our support staff.

 

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By Paul Rony on 2/23/2008 8:16 AM

We are considering moving the open-source version to GPL.  This is an extremely tough decision because the ramifications would require that we more closely follow SugarCRM's approach of reducing the feature set of the Community edition.  Features such as Reporting, Team Management, Access Control, Product Catalog, Quotes, Orders and Invoices would all be exclusive to the Professional edition.  We would effectively follow SugarCRM's offerings http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/products/editions.html.

 

On the positive side, we would provide the SQL source code to the Community edition and we would get to continue to include the SugarCRM 5.0 icons and styles.  On the negative site, we would be taking away features that customers are using today.  Lots of our customers are able to take advantage of a free and full featured CRM, but the new product packaging would take most of that away.

 

Please voice your opinion in the licensing...

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By Paul Rony on 2/21/2008 11:14 PM

By Paul Rony on 1/10/2008 7:35 AM

First a little background.  One of the new features of SplendidCRM 2.0 is the detection of a mobile-based browser.  Within days of release, a customer requested support for a BlackBerry, and iPhone and an iPod. 

 

Our first instinct was to search the UserAgent Request variable for any of the keywords found in the most common mobile browsers.  This seems to be a very popular technique for the PHP crowd. Digging a little deeper, we found the collection of .Net 2.0 browser files at C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\Browsers.  Then, we found that we could add our own application-specific to the App_Browsers folder.  The trick is to chain the app-specific profile to the last detected browser ID.

 

Once we knew what we were looking for, we were pleased to find a BlackBerry profile on CodeProject at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/BlackberryASPNET.aspx, but we were surprised that we did not...

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By Paul Rony on 12/9/2007 12:04 AM

Have you tried Visual Studio 2008 yet?  Microsoft recently released it to MSDN subscribers http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/default.aspx.  You can even download the free Express version http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx.

 

We had a customer that was having trouble compiling, so we decided to retest on all supported versions of Visual Studio.  While we were at it, we decided to include all versions of Visual Studio 2008.  You can review our support matrix that was a direct result of these tests.

 

Loading SplendidCRM 1.4 into Visual Studio 2008 was completely uneventful.  The project was automatically and it compiled without any errors on Express, Standard and Professional versions.  We have not tested the Team edition, but we do not expect any problems...

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By Paul Rony on 12/3/2007 2:40 PM

By Paul Rony on 11/18/2007 1:31 PM

A customer recently inquired about our support of a mobile browser.  My immediate answer was no, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was one of the features we wanted to add after migrating to .NET 2.0 MasterPages.  Feature creep is a terrible thing, so I'm not going to call this feature creep.  I'm going to call it a re-prioritization of a planned feature.

 

The cool thing is that we were able to create a new master page for the mobile browser.  This means that 95% of our code went unchanged.  We did need to modify our dynamic view generation to separate fields by rows instead of columns and we were compelled to create new search controls.  We had to touch a much of files, but most of the edits were minor.  Since our list, edit and detail views are all data driven, we created new mobile versions of the views for all supported modules.  This means that you can dynamically configure the layout for the mobile users.

 

We have tested the new system on a PocketPC...

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By Paul Rony on 10/24/2007 7:27 PM

We have a number of big projects that occupy our time, but we were able to slip-in one long-overdue feature.  When we designed the reporting engine in SplendidCRM to be based on Microsoft's Report Definition Language (RDL), we knew that we would one day be able to import RDL files created by the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.  That day has arrived.

I'm happy to report that we are testing a build that allows you to create invoices using a full-fledged report designer, and import the report files into SplendidCRM for execution.  SplendidCRM has a basic built-in report designer, but it is only useful to create tabular reports.  With the ability to import report files, you can create freeform reports, like the kind typically used to generate quotes or invoices.  These reports can even embed images so that your invoices would be nothing less than stunning.

By Paul Rony on 8/22/2007 10:05 PM

By Paul Rony on 8/10/2007 2:46 AM

The day started with the goal of posting a new VHD that includes Visual Studio 2005 Pro configured to compile and debug the latest SplendidCRM build.  The day ended with migration to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). 

 

http://www.amazon.com/S3-AWS-home-page-Money/b/ref=sc_fe_l_2/105-7259275-4637243?ie=UTF8&node=16427261&no=3435361&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA

 

We were compelled to move our downloads from TimeWarner to Amazon because the new VHD was 4G and we were already bumping into the 3G limit on our existing file server.  TimeWarner has served us well, but they quoted an additional $100 per month to add the 4G.  By moving to Amazon S3, not only do we save the $100, but we expect to save an additional $50 per month.

 

If you are going to check out Amazon S3, you will also want to check out Sissle http://sissle.s3.amazonaws.com/index.htm. ...

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