I assume that you folks already know about this project: http://drupal.org/project/redhen

Comments

ygerasimov’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

@ldweeks yes, we know Redhen and met its developers in Denver. Even our projects are quite similar but they are different. They will live separately for the time being.

ldweeks’s picture

Cool! Sounds great. Thanks for the response.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

ar-jan’s picture

Title: Redhen » Differences between CRM Core and Redhen
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

Could you elaborate on the differences between RedHen and CRM core? (Since it seems both aim for basic native Drupal CRM functionality, both use entities and fields, etc.).

Are the differences in the intended use? Or in the design/implementation philosophy? Thanks.

seanberto’s picture

Hi, I'm Sean Larkin from ThinkShout. We're the maintainers of RedHen CRM. If I might say so, I think that RedHen and CRM Core are more similar than they are different in comparison to the Party module. RH and CRMC are more prescriptive than Party. From our perspective, CRM Core is a great solution and we looked at it closely before deciding to develop our own toolset. There are a lot of small, technical differences though. Namely, most of the reporting functionality that we're developing in RedHen depends upon EntityFieldQueries and API code - rather than Views. RedHen ships with Views integration of course. But if you want to point and click your way to altering reports, you have to build out Views on your own with RedHen - rather than starting with pre-made views in CRM Core.

Technically, I guess that these two CRM frameworks compete - but hopefully only in a manner that stretches the community in positive ways. It is important that we, as a community, work together. But if folks weren't trying different approaches, we wouldn't grow. A great example of where diversity has served the community well is the whole "Blocks vs. Boxes vs. Bean" debate. Each approach has its pros and cons - and consequently, the core block system in D8 is slated to be incredible.

In conclusion, we're really excited to see CRM Core grow!

AlanO’s picture

Well IMO this sucks for groups looking for a solution to their CRM needs. I really don't see any advantage to having three systems that serve an almost identical purpose help the community... Would it be hard for all three to join forces and at least try to brainstorm/discuss creating a project together? Is it also possible to at least try and see if the approach and management of the new project works for all three while still working on your their own projects? If it doesn't work then fine, at least there will be clearly defined differences in approach and purpose which will definitely help the community grow.

Is this a realistic scenario? I'm curious to know. Thanks.

Anonymous’s picture

I am one of the maintainers for CRM Core and have some thoughts on this.

We are very aware of the RedHen project and would say we are good friends with those guys in the sense that we respect their work and do learn a little from what they do. When we talked with them at Drupalcon Denver, it was clear we are taking similar technical approaches and there may be areas where some of our code is interchangeable. I mean, it's all entity based on both sides, and there's nothing stopping us from working with each other's entities.

So there's nothing fundamentally different about what we are doing. Saying that both projects compete at this stage would be untrue, they actually both solve very different problems faced by organizations in regards to handling contact information.

So I don't think I agree with the idea that this situation 'sucks for groups looking for a solution to their CRM needs.' Dealing with contact information in Drupal is a highly complex technological challenge, and it's unlikely there will ever be a single solution that can handle every use case that will ever come up. I am thinking about things like online donations, event registration, user roles, e-commerce, tracking content, case management, and a lot of other domains where a CRM system could be used to track users. It's very unlikely a single project would produce semi-ideal solutions in all of these areas, even if people from a lot of different disciplines were involved in the project.

The Drupal community, historically, has benefited from a plurality of approaches to problems; if nothing else, similar efforts often help to highlight the gaps that exist and the need to plug them. So, help me understand why it is such a bad idea to have 2 separate CRM efforts out there, which could be merged at some point down the road (if it ever became a good idea)?

pedrorocha’s picture

I think that one of the great powers of Drupal is the plurality of developers and companies working with him, because if no one could think that a different approach could be useful, none of amazing modules would be created, like CCK Content Profile(there was the Profile already), CCK(there was the Flexinode already), and many, many others.

And an other great point in all of this is that, in fact, we have 2 companies here working to share their expertise in the CRM market with the Drupal community, with the tools that they create along some years, and when they started, there weren't any stack, and even if it was there, they could create another too, because a company have it's own needs in matter of schedule, etc, that not always could wait for an issue queue to be organized.

We have 2 great companies here that are bringing 2 great tools that will help a lot of other people and companies to do great projects, so i think that this never could be treated as a situation that "sucks for groups looking for a solution to their CRM needs". And i say this from a point of view of someone who have a company that works with CRM too, and yes, i'm spending some time to study the 2 projects, because i need to choose one to be my framework, but even if i choose one now, this will not stop me from get some insights, or even code, from the other project in the future.

Let's talk about how to make both projects awesome, not how to cut some legs and make one very generic module that will not solve anyone's problem(Drupal community uses to think that always a generic approach is the best, but not always).

seanberto’s picture

I totally agree with comments #7 and #8. Saying that "everyone should work on a single CRM solution" is sorta like saying "Drupal and WordPress are redundant and should be consolidated."

Keep in mind too that pretty much every game-changing Drupal contribution - including Views - was originally born out of the needs of specific clients. For the most part, companies who can make larger contributions to these efforts need to make sure that the solutions they put together meet their clients' needs. When we decided to build RedHen, CRM Core was still the "Drop CRM" specification - with no code behind it. So, we began to scratch our own itch.

Now, as techsolden points out, both projects have seen a lot of growth and development. Respectfully, there are things that we want to do differently from CRM Core. I'm sure that Trellon feels the same way about our work - and that is 100% okay. Remember that we have the same situation with e-commerce in Drupal. Since 5.x there has always been two solid solutions, not one.

seanberto’s picture

@Techsolden (and others), Lev Tsypin and I will be headed to Capital Camp next week. I'm sure you all will be there too. Let's definitely connect and talk CRM. We're excited to see your roadmap. From what I can tell, you've moved ahead solving a number of problems that we haven't addressed yet.

dsdart’s picture

In reading the posts, I can't find the answer to the question about what are the differences. It was pointed out that "they actually both solve very different problems faced by organizations in regards to handling contact information" but we (people who are faced with the tough decision of what CRM solution to use) would like to know more details. Just what are those problems that are being solved? What are the solutions being presented? etc...

thanks

seanberto’s picture

Fair question. I'd say:

1. Install them all.
2. Listen to the 3 ModulesUnravelled podcasts that came out in the last month reviewing each solution.
3. Check out the documentation found at http://groups.drupal.org/crm.

Ultimately, the first point is probably the best place to start. There are a lot of similarities in the problems that they all solve. The more significant differences are in implementation approaches.

dsdart’s picture

The podcasts were very informative. Listening to them yesterday knocked one of the choices off the list, so that was helpful.

Installing them all would be ideal, but the reality is that I have had errors installing both Redhen and CRM Core. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to wait for issues to be addressed and I don't want to have to fix code myself just for an eval. Civi is just plain hard to work with (and I had fix some bugs there too) and I would rather use a Drupal-centric CRM.

So, it would be very nice of you folks to outline the differences between Redhen and CRM Core in this thread. Other readers may hit upon this and, if they have made it this far in this thread, be in the same position I am in of having to make a decision very soon and may appreciate as much information as possible.

zeezhao’s picture

A few comparison comments between crm_core/redhen & party modules can also be found here:
http://drupal.org/node/1461116

seanberto’s picture

Please note that the comparison listed above does not have the input of anyone who's worked on CRM Core or RedHen. More active and engaged discussion can be found at: http://groups.drupal.org/crm.

HongPong’s picture

It's been a little over half a year since this thread has been touched on - looks like Redhen got to 1.0 release this month & CRM Core is very active. Are there commonalities? Are there approaches which other module developers could use to work with either/both, any API calls could be combined etc.?

Anonymous’s picture

@HongPong - No offense, conversations about the differences between RedHen and CRM Core tend to be more about people's ideas for what to do with each set of modules rather than the facts of what each one does. I mean, there's a thousand differences cancelled out by a thousand similarities.

I think the places for these kinds of conversations is in the handbooks for each module.

The documentation for CRM Core is being updated to reflect what exactly you can do with it. Check it out at http://drupal.org/node/1856906.

Also, you might note that the updated documentation speaks to the CRM Core 0.9 release. We are finishing off 0.9 today and plan to have an official release this weekend.

If you are itching to see what the difference is between CRM Core and RedHen, check out a copy from the development branch. Should be very stable.

Anonymous’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (fixed)