I’m just entering into holidays, so I won’t be progressing much in the coming weeks, but still I’d like to leave some notice of stuff I’ve been working on as SponsorWare.
I dream all this will one day be part of SuiteCRM Core, although it’s proving hard to get the ball rolling with this SponsorWare model. It will all depend on a publicity push I plan to make in September, that really needs to go well, otherwise I’ll have to quit.
So as I put more advanced features into PowerReplacer, I started feeling an increased need for a feature that I’ve always wished for in any campaigns software: previews.
Getting HTML email content right is hard, and more so if it involves variable substitution and other operations. So I added:
-
a Preview button to Emails Compose window, which talks back to the server and runs all the email generation code, but doesn’t send it; instead, it sends the produced HTML back to browser, where it is shown in a pop-up window. If you like it, you just click send, otherwise, you can go back to editing it.
-
a Preview button to Campaigns Wizard, final step. This also talks back to the server and runs all the campaigns code, but doesn’t send anything; instead, it sends the produced HTML back to browser, where it is shown in separate tab as a long list of emails. This should be the end of your doubts and hesitations about errors in variables substitution, not understanding exactly to whom the Campaigns will get sent, or why it isn’t sent to someone. SuiteCRM shows and explains, all in one screen.
Even small errors in Campaigns can have a negative impact on your business. And campaigns can be complex and it’s easy to go wrong. It should be SuiteCRM telling you about this, not a bunch of angry customers on the phone (ok, I’m dramatising for effect, but some of you probably already went through some nasty scenes).
Maybe I should coin a new acronym, WYSIWTG - what you see is what they get 
Let me just add that it’s a lot of fun working on improvements to core features like this for SuiteCRM.