Is Feng Office going anywhere?

[WiZaxx]

I'm actually very surprised that Conrado is engaging in this post with enough passion to let us hope good things to come.
Thank you.

IMHO we (the community) can't change direction, just add to its core. That's why i believe it is called a developer's community. The strategy is well defined:
    *  Manage your projects and business services
    * Collaborate with your team and your customers
    * Organize and share documents and files

So to leverage the contribution of the community, the main feature is a workframe that allow easy alteration and additions, I'm talking about adding modules, making themes, making plugins and connectors to other OS applications, creating views and interact with the data .
And yes eye-candies.

At which point we should be able to contribute with features that are much needed to us but, seemingly strange, unwanted by others. In my case those are:
* Manage your projects and business services
   More flexible reporting
   Customizable charts including Gantt chart (yes, i know....)
   Integration with OpenBravo

* Collaborate with your team and your customers
   Chat module
   Rules for e-mails

* Organize and share documents and files
   CAD viewer
   3D viewer

I'm engaged in a start-up, so money is tight, but if we make it, I would think twice before spending the money in FO without the features I mentioned above.

[conrado]

I'm actually very surprised that Conrado is engaging in this post

Why? 

with enough passion to let us hope good things to come.
Thank you.

 

At which point we should be able to contribute with features that are much needed to us but, seemingly strange, unwanted by others. In my case those are:
* Manage your projects and business services
   More flexible reporting
   Customizable charts including Gantt chart (yes, i know....)
   Integration with OpenBravo

* Collaborate with your team and your customers
   Chat module
   Rules for e-mails

* Organize and share documents and files
   CAD viewer
   3D viewer

That's exactly part of the beauty and part of the complexity of Feng.

Made up (with a bit of educated guessing) numbers:
  - Need Gantt charts: 25%
  - Need CAD viewer: 10%
  - Need Gantt charts & CAD viewer: 4%

Now imagine all the other combinations, and the size of the resulting set of users with your exact same needs.

I can see all those features/modules becoming part of Feng Office in time. It's just a matter of what's done first, when. We've come a long way with little resources - that have been constantly increasing.

Certainly, providing for more and better means to let the community contribute might speed up the process. That's another on the top of my list.

[allenlook]

Thanks for your replies and discussion.  It is a complicated thing!

If there were a roadmap - eg. we knew what the FO folks were working on, it might make it more conforting to work on something as we'd know it would not be obsoleted in the next version by a core development by the FO team (I refer to the chat module I read about somewhere else in the forum that was started by both the community and FO team.)

It would also help to get a quote on how much it would cost for a module.  Just clicking a "Platinum" button and donating a sum of money doesn't tell me if I'll get that feature or not, nor when.  I'm not really prone to spending, I'm more prone to investing - which implies a timeline and a rate of return.

And lastly, may I ask who is ConradO?  I feel like I'm supposed to know 

[Pet]

And lastly, may I ask who is ConradO?  I feel like I'm supposed to know 

Answered earlier in this thread

[isimplifyva]

I've been trolling these forums for the last few days and I have to say I'm tremendously happy to see this thread and the subsequent responses from ConradO. 

I just discovered Feng Office a few days ago and have installed it on my site.  So far, I've been extraordinarily pleased.  I'm tickled to find an application (and believe me, I've tried dozens) that does what I need it to do in order to organize my Virtual Assistance business.  In my world, clients email tasks to me (frequently!) and it's ridiculously difficult to manage and stay on top of them all.  Not to mention the nightmare of trying to focus on just one client at a time when your inbox is littered with dozens of emails from different projects.

So on the feature requests, yes, I could stand a few of the features that folks have been asking for - I hope they come to pass in the near future.  I'm happy enough with this fabulous product that I'm willing to wait!

Thanks for all your company has accomplished, conrado.    This VA is grateful.

[amejat]

I add my voice to the people asking for a roadmap.

Moreover, I am actually shocked by the current Feng Office team. Conrado said they have ot pay for a "huge staff". But looking at the team members, I can count many commercial representative and business people but actually very few developers.

It seems to me that you took the wrong direction hiring so many people who are just trying to "sell" the product and so few trying to develop it.

I sent several emails to Feng Office in the last days and I only got answers from commercials asking for money (sponsoring). I could not reach any technical person (not even talking about a developer...).

So, please... Fire some of these unuseful sellers and hire more real technical persons and MORE IMPORTANTLY more developers !

You may think that Feng Office is a good-enough product to start selling it... It is actually wrong. It is far from most other free (eyeOS) and commercial (Zoho and Thinkfree) web office. It is uncomplete as an office suite (not even a spreadsheet app...), uncomplete as a customizable platform (not even two templates... just the basic one from ExtJS, not even a simple "How to" for developers...), uncomplete as a community (no roadmap, no SVN, no contribution of the community).

And the recent mix up between opengoo and feng office just destroyed all the work done by the community to promote the product.

Now here we are:
- No roadmap
- No development plan
- No active development of new features (as it seems from the answers of commercial representatives)
- A lost contact with the community (no way to be in touch with developers... just commercial people)
- A lost image (Come on ! What was wrong with OpenGoo ?)
- A lost strategy (Do you really expect to find "sponsors" for basic features already available in zoho suite, eyeOS, thinkfree...?)

And at the end... a lost faith.

Conrado, YOU initiated this project but it seems you lost control. Do not let the seller deciding the future of OpenGoo (sorry I prefer it) and come back to the basis... development !  

[spingary]

I am compelled to add my opinion...

Amejat has some valid points, even if it was a bit overly harsh (IMHO).  Developers are expensive, even having a couple on payroll is a huge expense.  This marketplace has some serious competition, so it's obvious that sales is harder to come by.  But to stay afloat, Conrado has to make sure he's selling and making money.

When I first was introduced to Opengoo, I was very impressed with how it compared with others. But now, almost  2 years later, the competition admittedly has more features.  But I still think Feng can compete by adding just a few more features. 

Let's take a quick look at competition amejat referred to...

Zoho - big time competition. But they try to be all things to all people. Feng competes with their "Zoho Project" offering, but in order to use features like Timesheets you have to upgrade. Basically, they nickel and dime you.  For people looking for just a project management software with doc sharing, time sheet, and BILLING (hint hint), Feng is better IMO.

EyeOS - Are you serious?  Start a beta account and in 5 mins you'll turn it off and won't come back. It's not even a proj management tool.  Might be of interest if you simply want to share documents in a cool new "cloud desktop".

Thinkfree - again, not project managent, but document collaboration and sharing.

Real competitors would be Copper Project and Basecamp.  Copper is a great tool but on the high-end of pricing.

To me, Feng has a real good thing going with the "workspace" feature.  Even though it may seem like a fancy word for Project filter, it's actually very unique in how it manages resources and access.  Conrado - if you were in the U.S. (you're not, right?) you can probably patent that! (In the U.S. you can get them to patent just about anything).

Conrado I think this is a great product, please don't give up. But more progress has to be made to features in order to complete with the others.

I look forward to seeing 1.7.

Gary

[a2opinion]

Well said Gary, thanks 

--Christian

[nihar]

Hello,

Exactly the post I was looking for...
I started using Opengoo to manage our startup which manages EMR installations for doctors.  I don't remember but I read an interview with one of the feng office founders where you mentioned that you would really want to change the initial road the company took. Not sure if that was the "Project Management" focus or the "e-Office" focus.
We use it for project management. I would love to use the email feature more but its too slow for the number of emails we get...
I hope you keep the project management focus since most small businesses have a problem getting work done and knowing how much time their employees spend.

My list of wishes would be very similar
- Work space dashboard. Somewhere where I can say the project needs to be completed at what time and how much is remaining.
- Each of my workspace is an "Account" so I would like to get a glance of key information about it. Something like a mini-CRM
- Gantt chart  and task dependency please!!!
- Wiki! This would be a life saver. We tried to use the documents to keep a running log but it just does'nt work.
- Reporting especially at task level...With the .csv export in 1.7, it will help.

I don't care about chat or replacement to OpenOffice. I think those are huge projects themselves. Not complex but time consuming. A wiki should take care of most of the "quickly" note down something for  a project scenario.
Ticketing system would be icing on the cake!!

[allenlook]

Project management is also "where it's at" for us.  Our number 1 priority with Feng Office.

Office-like features (spreadsheet, word processing, e-mail) are satisfied entirely by other programs.

[Karl]

When I first was introduced to Opengoo, I was very impressed with how it compared with others. But now, almost  2 years later, the competition admittedly has more features. 
...

Real competitors would be Copper Project and Basecamp.  Copper is a great tool but on the high-end of pricing.

To me, Feng has a real good thing going with the "workspace" feature. 

Have a look to the all new PHProjekt 6: http://phprojekt.com/

They just call it "Project Management Suite", not "Office Suite". And it has some important features we are missing here like a Gantt chart.

[raboof]

I'll add my 2 cents to this interesting topic (which I admittedly didn't read through completely).

Pet:
I get (and agree with) most of your points, as a user. However, consider that switching from an Open Source project to a business does drain a lot of effort, and definitely distracts you from development in the first place. This usually rocks the boat for several months, or one year.
Hopefully, after this is settled, some focus on product development will be restored. Otherwise, FengOffice may decide to discontinue the open source version and move to a purely Software as a Service strategy. Arguments for keeping the OSS distribution are mainly: let OSS users beta-test code before deployment in production; much better feedback on the product: broader, more responsive, "collaborative" rather than "critical", and from people with technical competences; offload of some development work, but this requires very good practices, fantasy and organization.


Conrado:
I still find OpenOffice great. As team leader of several OSS, I know it's hard to keep the pace with feedback from users. However, when missing offers of code contribution, you are really missing labour opportunities. MySQL does not have a community because their code is nasty crap, but you have some growing and proving willing to talk and contribute.
One great way to leverage it, helping OG as well, would be for you to define a strategy to handle it.
For example, you can periodically define and clearly publish to the community a bunch of broader "open items" that they're welcome to contribute to. Now a problem is that users often submit low quality code, often because they have no background on other architectural choices and practices you do; so invite developers to contact you to book work on them, for tipping or discussing quickly the right way to go about them. Do not require "committable" code, require generic implementation of something (converters, algorithms etc) that *you* can then embed in the code cleanly. Once you have a contribution, make sure you commit it reasonably soon (< 2 weeks); if you don't, users will be annoyed and you risk to forget about them. Make extensive use of branches on your repository if you need to.
Feel free to "hide" the community a bit behind the curtain, some customers turn their nose if they see it (so people do it/have it for free? It must be not as good as other commercial ones), but keep lively releases to keep the community hot -- release early, release often.

And good luck with the business.

[gman]

I've been a big fan of OpenGoo/Fengoffice for almost two years. I've tried many other systems, mentioned in this thread like PHProjekt, NexPro, eGroupware, etc. but I always find myself coming back to FengOffice. Yes FengOffice could use improvement and some new features, but for me it's ease of use and nice interface put it above other systems. Plus FengOffice has features other don't. For example, the ability to associate a document with more than one workspace, which I haven't found in other systems.

For me, the number one thing I would like to see is to allow module configuration per workspace. What I would envision is when you create a new workspace, inherit module access from the parent workspace, but have the ability to remove modules as needed. So for example, I have a parent workspace with a set of modules, I create a child workspace that I want to act like a document folder or library. I create that child workspace and only select the file documents module. Under that I can create child document workspaces that by default only have the documents module enabled. This allows me to create a separate document management structure for the parent workspace. As needed, I could create separate calendar workspaces, notes workspaces etc, or I could enable document workspaces to also include notes modules. In my opinion this would give FengOffice unparalleled flexibility compare to other systems I've tested.

[interjinn]

Hmmmm... workspace configuraton of modules seems kind of weird since modules would activate/deactivate depending on the active workspace alone. I imagined a better system of module configuration (enable/disable) being linked to the permissions management system. That way you can enable/disabled modules for specific users or, as I prefer, by group.

[gman]

I look at workspace configuration of modules as a way to allow workspaces to have specific purposes. I will try to explain this from another environment I come from, that being Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

To me one of nice features of SharePoint is that a site (I will use the term site for what in SharePoint is called a site/workspace) is a container for child objects. I can create a main parent site, and can use child sites as specific containers. For example I could have one child site that contains only document libraries, one child site that contains wikis, one that contains task lists, etc. or I can have the one parent site that contains document libraries with document folders within the libraries, task lists, wikis, etc. Point is I have some flexibility in SharePoint in how I want to structure the child objects within the parent container.

If I could manage the modules available to a workspace, I could have even more powerful parent container - child object options than available in something like WSS 3.0.

I could also see a possibility of doing module activation by permissions, but I think module activation by workspace might be easier to implement in the current system.