On Jan 28, 2008 8:24 PM, Joshua D. Drake <
..hidden..> wrote:
Chris Travers wrote:
> I guess the question is:
>
> What role do we want to have CRM fill in LSMB. I think that a CRM
> solution closely tied to financial packages would be quite nice, but I
> don't think we need to do this for 1.3.
I do not believe we need to do any front end work but like I said the
backend is a matter of me spending 6 hours in my relation logic cube and
spitting out some create table statements.
Do we really eventually want all tables to be loaded for all users anyway long-run? Or would it be better to have per-module table definitions and upgrade scripts?
I have some tables (reasonably well-normalized) you could review if you really want to get this in as a marketing bullet point, but my view is that we should worry less about marketing features which will be incomplete for the foreseable future than about. My previous tables could use some minor re-design (in handling subscriber v. owner handling) but are *way* more flexible than anything I have ever seen in other CRM's.
In case people find this useful the task tables work on the basis of:
* Every task has one specific owner and may have multiple subscribers (who can also work on and follow the progress of the task)
* Automatic labor tracking.
* Queue/dispatch system for larger environments
* tree-based sub-task structure
* Tasks can be used for *internal* as well as external handling of requests (i.e. one CRM task could have a subtask involve internal requisitioning).
* Appointments can have one owner and multiple attendees.
* Each attendee/owner of a meeting can submit their own comments, etc. both before and after the meeting.
BTW, my past experience is that task management is extremely easy on both the db and the programmng logic. Appointment management is also fairly straight-forward on the db-side, but the programming logic can be a lot more difficult relating to state handling and questions of what happens when someone wants to reschedule but this causes scheduling conflicts. Also I have some customers who are using a barely maintained old CRM program I wrote (with the above-mentioned tables) which I would love to get these things moved over to LSMB. I was planning on working on such CRM add-on for them after 1.3 comes out, and possibly seeing what we could do to get it bundled with 1.4.
My own feeling is that including tables before we get all the requirements is asking for trouble. I would rather see tables emerge as people prepare to work on functionality because otherwise we have no guarantee that...