Falafel Dashboard for Sitefinity
I still remember the good times when Sitefinity had a pretty decent dashboard. Starting, I believe, with version 4, Telerik turned what supposed to be a dashboard (ironically, they kept the name) into a set of random links to the help resources. Sort of like a subset of the "Help & Resources" section that is also linked from what they call now "Dashboard."
Falafel, a company that does training and beyond for the sitefinity users, does have a real dashboard: www.falafel.com/.../falafel-dashboard-for-sitefinity-mvc
But, in order to install it, one has to be a programmer - to travel thru a whole bunch of junk that needs to be downloaded and installed in order to finally install the dashboard. Lots of gibberish to read too...
I would like to hear from Telerik - are you ever going to put back one of the best functionality your CMS ever had, but by some extremely faulty logic it has been removed? The CMS is complex enough to deal just with it, forget some third party installations that would provide something that you took away from us, the users.
If for some inexplicable reason you decided to NEVER restore the good functionality you once had, is there clear manuals, step-by-step on Falafel Dashboard installation? I did read their manuals on this page www.falafel.com/.../falafel-dashboard-for-sitefinity-mvc which says that I have to also install some "NuGet package", whatever it is. So that led me to another manuals on this page indicating that I have to have some "Package Manager Console" - www.nuget.org/.../. But, there is more "fun" reading right here: docs.nuget.org/.../using-the-package-manager-console. That's about "Finding and Installing a NuGet Package Using the Package Manager Console." Long page. Lots of reading. Could not understand a single word.
And, it's all has to be read and done to just have back the dashboard! Again, what was the reason for Telerik to remove it?
Thanks Inna,
The short answer is you are in luck, I believe Telerik will be bringing a great Dashboard for Sitefinity very soon and it will be native part of the product offering.
For the Falafel Dashboard, it has been available for over a year and it is used on hundreds of commercial sites with great success. Yes it does require someone with Visual Studio to install it. It takes exactly 60 seconds in Visual Studio to click on pretty much 3 links to install Falafel Dashboard. It is true if you are not a developer, you will be lost in how to get this working. But who is supposed to install a full blown Dashboard into a Sitefinity Web Application, USERS? I beg to disagree with you, as I believe that an IT Admin or a developer will need to conduct this operation as the Falafel Dashboard is a full blown application that needs to be integrated using the MVC framework of Sitefinity. To say it takes 60 seconds to install this massive, informative and productive tool, I say it is a success.
I would be more than happy to meet with you over GotoMeeting and demonstrate what it takes to get Falafel Dashboard installed on your system, it will take 60 seconds :)
Again, the good news for you and thousands of others, that Telerik does realize that this functionality is extremely important for Sitefinity and I am glad they are bringing it back even though that this will probably kill our Falafel Dashboard product, but if it is good for Sitefinity, it is good for us too.
Best of luck
-Lino Tadros, MVP
President & CEO
Falafel Software Inc.
Lino, thank you for the good news. Actually, the great news. You said: " I beg to disagree with you, as I believe that an IT Admin or a developer will need to conduct this operation as the Falafel Dashboard
is a full blown application that needs to be integrated using the MVC framework of Sitefinity." I do not see any disagreement in here on your part, you just echoed exactly what I said: "...in order to install it, one has to be a programmer..."
I, probably, didn't make my point clear in the posting. All I tried to say was that when one is choosing a CMS out of the sea of available on the market CMSes, it takes hours to compare and test all those CMSes' functionality. But, when the company starts removing already EXISTING functionality after CMS is chosen and paid for, applications based on it developed, and the users trained, it is softly spoken, not a nice thing to do. The bottom line is: when we evaluated Sitefinity and purchased it, there WAS an important for us functionality - the dashboard. Now it's NOT there. As simple as that.
I, certainly, appreciate your offer to meet over GotoMeeting and demonstrate the installation process. Please let me know your availability and how to contact you.
Thank you for your reply.
Thanks Inna, I am available this afternoon if you are available, please email me at lino at falafel dot com and I will be happy to share my screen over Gotomeeting and go through it with you
Cheers
-Lino
Thank you, Lino. Email is sent.