Hi,
I am investigating migrating from our current hosted SugarCRM Professional edition, to SuiteCRM. We currently host our own instance of SugarCRM.
We are on version 6.15.18. There is no upgrade path currently through SugarCRM to upgrade to version 7, despite it being promised last year.
We are using several SugarCRM Professional features, such as Teams and Workflows.
We have also installed modules such as Synolia Reports. We had previously used DashboardManager and Kinamu Reports but had uninstalled them.
We do have a very large instance, with over 10,000 accounts. So we have always used the SilentUpgrade method in the past.
I had downloaded the SuiteCRM Upgrade Zip, which is supposed to upgrade from 6.5.x.
Due to the size of our database, I used the SilentUpgrade files from a previous upgrade, and called the above upgrade zip.
However it failed in the upgrade with the message:
The uploaded file is not compatible with this flavor.
SugarCRM System Flavor = Pro
Upgrade Flavor = CE.
I can imagine that our process would be:
Upgrade SugarCRM to SuiteCRM on a local dev instance, so we can test thoroughly.
Then perform the upgrade on the live site.
Is it at all possible to upgrade a professional version ourselves, or does it definitely need SuiteCRM assistance?
I would be happy to play, if you could provide a zip file with an upgrade.
Just a clue, for you perhaps. I appreciate you’ve been using sugarCRM PRO, whereas my experience is with the Community Edition for 6 years. But I discovered that the migration from 6.5.x to suiteCRM required me to only upgrade to sugarCRM v6.5.15 (not not to 6.5.16 or higher, like 6.5.20). I was experiencing the same error message trying to go from 6.5.20 to suiteCRM.
I share this wit you m in case it gives you something further to enquire about, in terms of whether you can find a path from 6.15.18 PRO sideways into suiteCRM CE. But in my case, I discovered it tricky to try and backgrade from 6.5.20 to get back to 6.5.15 to then migrate to 7.1.14 Fortunately, the deployment I was playing with, was running in production in an older version. So once I discovered what was needed, I only upgraded my legacy system through to 6.5.15, and then did the migration to suiteCRM.
I have over 200 custom reports, and about 30 custom tables that I’ve had since sugarCRM v5.2.0f in 2009, and the entire migration (thru 6.5.15 in the middle) has been very successful, and terrific to be with a growing community in suiteCRM again!
Thanks for your replies - they were very encouraging!
I couldn’t find an older version of my site before 6.5.16, but the latest download is 7.1.4 which equates to my current 6.5.18 anyway.
But after reading a few more forum posts, I thought I would try simply installing a new suitecrm, and pointing to my old sugarcrm database.
It almost seems to work!
Basic leads/contacts/opportunites etc seemed to work (after running a repair and resync).
However none of the teams, workflows, reports, dashboards and most importantly the Contracts, were not picked up by the system.
I’m still investigating, but it would be interesting to know if this is normal.
This ‘pointing’ to old database method, is something that I have not done. so my next comment is only a concern I share with you.
How doe the ‘new install’ know how to deal with all the vardefs files and the customer/changed/extra tables that you are discovering are missing?
Do you want to chat about this on Skype to get to help each other? My Skype number is ‘gazza_mobile’
With regard to the mismatch between vardefs and database, yes the repair and rebuild highlighted the differences. I foolishly hit Execute without taking a copy of all the differences. I’ll repeat the process with a little more care and see what happens.
I can see my contracts and workflows in the database and all the custom fields and content.
I had a token play with copying across the vardef files from the old site to the new site, but again, I shouldn’t have needed to do that.
I’ve run out of time today, but will play again later
This would be normal for at least the teams, workflows, reports and Contracts. as these modules in Suite are modules which do not exist in SugarCRM CE which means they were added once it was Forked. so just pointing the database to the instance is not enough for these modules and the data would need to be migrated over to the new tables which are in SuiteCRM. these tables wil not be identical so some mapping of fields and relationships may be required to get it to work as expected.
With regards to the Dashboards, SuiteCRM has made some addtions to the dashboards so I wouldnt think that other tabs would come over but the main tab may do.
Ian’s reply to Chris raises the question of which versions of sugarCRM versus suiteCRM represent the ‘fork’ (my understanding is that 6.5.15 is the common point of both, but I seek clarification of that).
Chris’ concern about what data can migrate too, is of major interest to many I believe. At what point will backwards compatibility of at least the data that you start with, be capable of migration into sugarCRM? In my case, I discovered the 6.5.15 breakpoint by trial and error, but managed to retain all my sugarcrm custom data over into suiteCRM.
But in Chris’ case, he is starting at 6.5.x (greater than the 6.5.15) but hasn’t mentioned custom modules from hist original sugarCRM instance.
So, why can’t traditional data still migrate for him, and why does Ian mention there are different mappings? That is a second curiosity that would be appreciated if it were spelt out with a more detail for this topic.
typo: sorry, that last post was meant to say:… At what point will backwards compatibility of at least the data that you start with, be capable of migration into suiteCRM?
IE: the data you already have in sugarCRM and how it will migrate into suiteCRM. Am I right in understanding that will only ever be, data that is in sugarcrm at a version that is equal/prior to the fork version?
If so, then any decision to delay moving to the fork now, (or already), would that mean it may become very difficult in year/versions to come, to ever get across to suiteCRM?
I’m happy to raise this as a different topic if preferred, Administrator.
I haven’t rerun the migration process yet - spent Friday cleaning up data in the old site.
I hadn’t built any custom modules myself - we had so many problems with dashboardmanager (it didn’t cope with 10 dashboards each with 10 widgets - blew all the counters!), social plugins etc, that we ripped most things out and ran a relatively basic version. Custom fields/reports/dashlets and a single calculated field were the only real mods.
Yes, surely others will be asking these questions.
The first thing I bumped into was Teams. Given that the equivalent is Security Groups, the teams weren’t migrated. So I manually created new Security Groups, but obviously no records are assigned to them.
Our old process with Teams, was for all Contacts and Accounts to belong to the Global Team. Then Leads and Opportunities were assigned to specific Teams and Users (eg APAC, ANZ) for access control. I’m still reading to find the best way of setting these up. And how to best to bulk assign teams based on the old data.
Then Workflows. Again, these are in different tables. There is no import/export for workflows, so they will all need to be done manually.
Products and Product Categories didn’t import. But at least they can be exported as CSV files and hopefully imported. But the existing products assigned to accounts will be interesting.
Contracts didn’t migrate nicely. But will hopefully export and import.
I’m sure I’ll bump into more issues. I have a separate question about email campaigns that I’ll put in a separate ticket.
While most data can be migrated using simple scripts, the following functionality is very different and does not with migrate or convert (i.e., you’ll need to think about starting again):
Teams
Workflow
Reporting
Additionally - be careful migrating custome modules … if you simply copy the code in Pro/Ent you will be in breach of your license. You need to recreate custom modules in SuiteCRM.