Customization, customization, customization

[WiZaxx]

I have installed and removed FO about 10 times, every time thinking I missed something just to find out that I can't get past the first few days of use.

So I spent the last few weeks looking at alternatives to fengoffice and trying to better understand what's that bottleneck that seems to be blocking me to use FO and I found it: customization

I can't even report on custom properties!
Sure I can list them, but not make totals, let alone any other form of analysis. There is no currency field, no cascading, not even calculated fields!!
Not to mention make/modify modules (applications).
The only thing I can do is use it as it is:  An arrogant approach, in my point of view.

So I have installed and tried a number of web apps, Tine20 and SugarCRM just to mention but a few and they ALL provide ways to customize/add core modules.  As a result their communities are much more active in providing plugins, new modules, themes, and all it is needed to really get them projected into fast development.

Conrado:
have a look at tine20 they will leave FO in the dust if you don't move fast.

I'm looking forward to seeing a definitive change of course.

[WiZaxx]

Allow me to make an example:
I want to have an image viewer to allow us to upload and view bitmaps, so I decided to try to embed a photo gallery.

It should be simple, right? Just add a new tab with a wrap module. Then enable/disable it as you deem fit.

Well... not really!
At the end I managed to get the bitmat viewer but it took me hours to get it to work.  For whom is interested I opted for http://www.zenphoto.org/ (Also because FENG & ZEN sounded good together )

Doing things like this should just be matter of a few clicks in my opinion.

Please give us some customization tools.

Cheers.

[cabeza]

The idea is great, and I'd love to have a powerful API.

We've started some work with the hooks, but developing a whole customization platform is a very big project.

We can get a volunteer team together to specify, build and test this, or else get some sponsor money to hire a team to do it.

If anybody is interested, that would be great!

[WiZaxx]

More on my findings... I ran FO and Tine20 in parallel for a few days now and I have to admit that the speed performance of FO is way superior, that keeps me hooked

@ cabeza:
Unfortunately I'm not a programmer (actually I label myself as a "code challenged" person), so I can't help at all on that side, but I'm a software designer and I have designed and deployed CRM to over 3000 users; analysis softwares for all kind of dashboards and GUIs for over 20 years. So I may be able to help in the spec-out process, perhaps?

IMHO:
- asking for sponsorship on a core feature is pretending a bit too much, and counting on it will delay the development even further.
- Providing customization to the community will bring in a larger base that in turns will bring in a larger number of apps, that in turns will bring more to offer to your customers. Although there will be work to do to stabilize the community work

Glad that you find it a necessity and looking forward to what's coming...

[cabeza]

Writing the specifications would be a great start.
It makes it a lot simpler for the following stages

Just contact me if I can help you further.

Best

[allenlook]

At this point, I'd settle for a list of classes and what they do...  That could be fleshed out with their methods, events and properties and what they in turn do...  And a simple little diagram would be just peachy.  Something hand drawn on a napkin would be better than what I've got now.

[cabeza]

OK. Good start.
Let's say I'm willing to dedicate time to this (I am, but I need help in order to be productive).

To get started I'd like more quantity of more elaborate opinions.What do you need the most?

Other open questions:
Are there any tools for automation? (i.e. any volunteer to find or build a script that lists all PHP classes in Feng Office code).

Is there any way to make comments  in classes "parseable"? I'd like to comment each class or method and then have an "application" (or script or whatever) generate the documentation. Does this exist?

If it doesn't, any suggestions on how to organize this info and ease the job?

[WiZaxx]

The description of this tool seems very interesting:

"A reverse-engineering package that scans PHP files and directories, and delivers an UML/XMI representation of the classes and packages found."

It is here http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_UML/

Hope it helps

[allenlook]

@WiZaxx: That does seem mighty full-featured. 

@cabeza:  As a bare-bones get-started, it would be enormously helpful to know how to manage the workspace / milestone / task tree...  How to build it and how to traverse it.  Second would be how to query the security information to know if someone should have access to a document (or not).  I think that would be a beginning to facilitate the most possible plug-ins.

[cabeza]

I liked the idea of  PHP_UML.  Thanks WiZaxx.

Has anybody tried it for FO?

[allenlook]

I'm not sure I'd understand the output 

[cabeza]

From their home:

"- Can generate an API documentation in HTML format"

Just curious ... we'll look at it in a couple of days if nobody does.

Best

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