[Vtigercrm-developers] 5.4.x

[John Crisp]

Hi,

Just had a quick peek at the new 5.4 demo and sad to say, I'm not at all
sure I like it :-(

==========================================

Organisations ??? Opportunities ??? Just managed to educate my users and
now I have to re-educate them. Or is there an easy way to change them to
back to Accounts & Potentials which they are used too ?

==========================================

Bug ? Looking for a way to rename the modules I had a look in the Module
Manager, and noticed that all the other modules are sorted
alphabetically so I was a bit surprised when looking for Organisations
down the list and then found it was at the top !!!!

==========================================

The whole thing just seems more difficult to find what you want quickly
despite being told that it was easier to use. The drop downs previously
used were much more 'usable' IMHO.  The ability to choose preferred menu
buttons is a plus, but I would have liked to have seen the ability to
choose the top buttons, and then sub menus as each organisation sees fit.

e.g. For us I would like a Sales menu with drop downs for Contacts,
Accounts, Potential, Quotes, SO's, Inv, a Marketing menu with relevant
sub menus, and a Vendors Menu with say POs, Products, Price Books and
then a Tools/Reports/Misc menu for all the other gubbins. This would
mean I only need 3 or 4 to buttons with relevant groupings below.

A more flexible UI to cater for different companies methodology and
thinking would be a great leap forward - being able to choose buttons is
a great start, but doesn't work for all.

==========================================

The help button on the right is nothing but annoying, overlaps things
slightly and keeps dragging your eyes away. It needs the width reducing
to keep out of the way. Or the ability to disable it altogether (is that
possible already ?)

==========================================

The global search box at the top looks like it has been thrown there in
desperation ! Maybe the old one wasn't quite obvious enough, but this
feels like a 'slap in the face with a wet fish' approach !

Bug ?  On my Firefox (11.0 Linux) it isn't rendered properly - the icon
is 50 x 25 px but it shows as 48 x 31 px which is not 70%/70% as per the
code :

<input type="image" class="searchBtn" alt="Find" title="Find"
width="70%;" height="70%" src="themes/images/searchicon.PNG"
align="left" border="1" onsubmit="submit-form();">

I think it should be around 48 x 24 px to look right or 'square'.

Having looked, I think there may a duplicate entry in the style.css file

Line 2825
.searchBtn {
width: 48px;
height: 31px;
}

Line 1303
.searchBtn {
width: 48px;
height: 24px;
}

The bottom one looks correct but is overridden by the top one.

==========================================

Bug ? If you do a global search, and then 'Show results in', check a box
and then apply, my natural thought was that it would then filter the
results on the basis that I wanted a 'Global' search first and then a
narrower search if I got too many results. However, if you do, you just
get either no change or a blank screen (have had both). Obviously my
search logic is different to other users !

My users and I tend to type the search term, wait for the results and
then filter down. I would argue that there needs to be some more thought
on how to make this work more intuitively.

==========================================

Vendors. I thought great, finally you can add a Contact to a Vendor. Or
so I thought. But wait. That Contact belongs to an Organisation ??? That
is crazy. Either they are a Contact of that Vendor or they are a Contact
for an Organisation. Or does someone out there have Contacts who relate
directly to a Vendor ??? Our Contacts never have any contact with a
Vendor. It's totally illogical, and confusing.

Vendors should have the ability to have multiple Contacts of their own
and I have said as much before - a lot of our Vendors have different
Contacts for their own departments Sales, Accounts, Marketing etc etc.

But they have nothing to do at all with our 'Sales' Accounts or Contacts

I think the Vendors/Product/Services aspect is somewhat neglected and
should be as powerful as the Sales side - after all it is equally as
important as Sales.

No Products/Services = No Sales
More Sales = More Vendors / Products / Services

And it needs to be clearly separated from Organisation
(Account)/Contacts other wise we'll all be in a right mucking fuddle !

==========================================

Sorry if I sound negative as I don't want to be - I love the product and
evangelise where I can, but it just doesn't feel quite as 'natural' as
before !

However, I thought I'd speak here, and not the forums, to look for some
constructive discussion. If need be I will post some of this on the trac
if people with greater minds than mine feel that some of the items are
either bugs or NFRs

B. Rgds
John