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Most recent blog entries
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Workflow released with SplendidCRM 3.0 Enterprise |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
11/29/2008 10:07 PM
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The SplendidCRM Workflow Engine is finally out the door. It has been a long hard road, but we were able to achieve all the goals we set. Aside from the expected requirements of being able to run just about any action based on just about any event in the CRM, one hidden requirement is the ability to track an error in the workflow back to the source. There is nothing worse than having a problem and not know where to look. Actually, this is a bit more important for us as only a fraction of the SplendidCRM users will create externally developed workflows. But, this might affect you if you need to do some advanced things in workflows, such as integrating with the Alphanumeric paging Activity from  http://www.nsoftware.com/workflow/. /n software also has some other interesting activities such as the FTP Activity, the ZIP Activity or the Amazon Activity.
Another complication with workflow is preventing circular workflows. For example, if you ...
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Workflow Visualization |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
8/14/2008 12:34 PM
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If you were wondering why it has been so long since my last entry, the answer is workflow. I have been working on the integration of SplendidCRM with Windows Workflow Foundation for several months. Workflow is a critical component of any CRM, but it is also one of the most complex. By leveraging Windows Workflow, we are hoping to simplify while maintaining the flexibility. No official release date as been set, but judging by the progress, I would expect that we are a month a way from a beta. Here is a preview:
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PDF Invoices coming soon |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
4/25/2008 10:57 AM
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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.
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Moving to GPL 3 |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
2/23/2008 8:16 AM
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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 w ...
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London |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
2/21/2008 11:14 PM
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I've just returned from a visit to a client in London. If you have never been to London, then you should really go. The people are very helpful, from the Underground workers that provide directions with a smile, to strangers that graciously offer to help a confused tourist. The city is clean and I felt safe traveling, quite literally, from one end of London to the other end at 10 PM at night.
It also helps to have a wonderful host. On top of being generous, our host challenged us to add features that will be critical to their success. We like to be challenged, especially when the result benefits the SplendidCRM community. ...
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Visual Studio 2008 |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
12/9/2007 12:04 AM
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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 < ...
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Something we should have done a long time ago |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
12/3/2007 2:40 PM
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While working on the Saved Search feature, we decided to leverage the Field Layout editor to define the search dialogs. This is something that we should have done a long time ago given how easy it was. Besides being a feature that customers have requested, it actually simplifies the search code.
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Mobile browser support |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
11/18/2007 1:31 PM
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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 c ...
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PDF Invoices coming soon |
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Founder Blog
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By Paul Rony on
10/24/2007 7:27 PM
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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.
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