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Sending Quotes

Norm Bonenfant

Anyone know of a better method to send estimates in Sugar than the PDF Manager and Doc Merge? We'd like to keep the quotes in SugarCRM but the PDF Manager does not send attractive layouts, allow for page breaks, sends locked files with bloated file size, etc. 

Doc Merge seems to still have a problem with comments not respecting their order and since we send quotes with multiple options broken out by comments, we are stuck using the unprofessional PDF Manager system at this time. 

We have looked at the Docusign, Panda Docs, etc but they are external programs and leave a lot to be desired.

Ideally we would be looking for a portal system where the user can click on a link and visibly see their estimate / download if desired. In a perfect world, select options they want to include in the cost (if applicable) and sign for processing within the sugar framework BUT I know this is asking a lot. The fact is, there are quite a few platforms that do this now, but we have invested far too much into Sugar to easily switch now. 

There just has to be a better way! We can't be the only company struggling with the two options Sugar is providing. 

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    You are not alone  

    I built a custom solution based on PDF Manager back in v6.x but it is getting harder and harder to maintain.

    We are an on-site customer and use PDF manager to build templates for pieces of our documents. 

    I use PDF Manager to compose/store the templates and combine multiple templates into one "printable" document based on smarty variables so we can include/exclude additional information from our Quotes and custom contracts based on the related products that are added etc...

    I work in the HTML not the WYSIWYG which adds all sorts of bits we don't want and edit things I don't want edited (major issues in v12). I had to override some core functions to keep my code working while I look for an alternative, and I expect that to get worse with time as Sugar locks things down more and more for security reasons.
    I use a custom CSS to format the document, wkhtmltopdf to convert it to pdf and qpdf (originally I was using pdftk) to selectively lock text but keep the signature blocks editable. 

    However, wkhtmltopdf is not supported anymore, we can't install it on new Rocky Linux servers.
    Not long ago I needed to replace pdftk with qpdf.
    And the fact that Sugar has moved to DocuSign instead of updating PDFManager, strongly suggest, in my opinion,  that PDFManager is on the way out. It makes no sense from a software development standpoint to keep maintaining both.

    All his to say that I need to find an alternative I can live with, and very soon.

    At the Developer Office hours someone suggested looking into Conga or "Expert Doc" and maybe there is something on Sugar Outfitters that supports he needs here...
    In my world, proposing we get another subscription for yet another piece of software to cater to document printing is absurd, I'm still doing research and I'll be interested in what you find and what others have to say.

    FrancescaS

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  • 0

    You are not alone  

    I built a custom solution based on PDF Manager back in v6.x but it is getting harder and harder to maintain.

    We are an on-site customer and use PDF manager to build templates for pieces of our documents. 

    I use PDF Manager to compose/store the templates and combine multiple templates into one "printable" document based on smarty variables so we can include/exclude additional information from our Quotes and custom contracts based on the related products that are added etc...

    I work in the HTML not the WYSIWYG which adds all sorts of bits we don't want and edit things I don't want edited (major issues in v12). I had to override some core functions to keep my code working while I look for an alternative, and I expect that to get worse with time as Sugar locks things down more and more for security reasons.
    I use a custom CSS to format the document, wkhtmltopdf to convert it to pdf and qpdf (originally I was using pdftk) to selectively lock text but keep the signature blocks editable. 

    However, wkhtmltopdf is not supported anymore, we can't install it on new Rocky Linux servers.
    Not long ago I needed to replace pdftk with qpdf.
    And the fact that Sugar has moved to DocuSign instead of updating PDFManager, strongly suggest, in my opinion,  that PDFManager is on the way out. It makes no sense from a software development standpoint to keep maintaining both.

    All his to say that I need to find an alternative I can live with, and very soon.

    At the Developer Office hours someone suggested looking into Conga or "Expert Doc" and maybe there is something on Sugar Outfitters that supports he needs here...
    In my world, proposing we get another subscription for yet another piece of software to cater to document printing is absurd, I'm still doing research and I'll be interested in what you find and what others have to say.

    FrancescaS

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