Alarms? (i.e. "Super Reminders")

[TimCollins]

Looking into converting to Sugar from a different CRM. One of the requirements is having "proactive/schedulable/snoozable" reminders or what I am used to calling Alarms.

I could find reminders, but they only appear to work for calls and meetings - either that or I am doing something incorrect with regard to "tasks". Is it possible to:
1) Set a reminder on a task and
2) Pause the reminder some amount of time into the future - could be minutes, hours, days or even a years out.

An example Use Case: I want to send hand written birthday cards to clients. I'll setup an alarm attached to their contact record - "Send birthday card" (details of their birthday/other relevant info would be in the "alarm notes") and I would schedule that alarm for 7 days prior to their birthday. The alarm goes off, I make a personal note to buy/mail a card, and snooze the alarm for a day. Assuming I bought the card and mailed it, the next day I snooze the alarm for a year out (7 days prior again). If I couldn't get to the task, I snooze another day.

Is this possible in Sugar?

I am open to business process change suggestions and, admittedly, the example use case in a bit on the fringe, but the requirement to easily manage "alarmed tasks" is important.

Thanks,

Tim

[andopes]

Hi Tim

It is possible to accomplish on SugarCRM, but it requires some programming.
Fell free to contact us on skype (dtokeefe) to discuss such project.

Kind regards

[TimCollins]

Thanks André.

I'll be happy to contact you, but do you know if this is something the community at large would be interested in incorporating in to standard product? I am in the software services business myself (ERP) and want to be up front regarding my current position. I am reviewing SugarCRM as a potential replacement CRM. An attractive benefit is its open source nature so desired changes can be made and one also has access to all the data. I have not spent much time coding in the L/WAMP stack, but am very comfortable with technology.

Do you know if others would be interested in such a feature or can you provide some guidance regarding the new feature process. I would like not to be applying this same work over and over during upgrades (realize that won't be an issue if the architecture has the hooks) so would like it available now or on the roadmap.

Can you provide a broader perspective of how the product is enhanced and tell me about what percentage of the customizations you perform get incorporated back into standard product?