Global Portal

[dranakan]

Hello,

I would like to integrate some information from SugarCRM in a Portal (Like Liferay).

Is it possible to show for example the Bugs pages to inform users that he has a new bug to verify ?

I have search on the Liferay site, but no portlet can do that.

Has someone advises to do that ? (Are there another portal able to use communicate with SugarCRM).

Thanks

[dtokeefe]

Hi dranakan,

Lampada Global, a SugarCRM Gold Partner, can help you with your project. Since 2005, we have worked on SugarCRM implementations with 150+ customers around the world.

Our project - Sugar Portal for Zend Framework (SPZF) - is perfect for your case. See:

http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/sgr-zend-portal

Please feel free to contact me on Skype (dtokeefe) or call me at the phone numbers below to discuss your project and how to take advantage of the SPZF.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

David

[dranakan]

Hi dtokeefe,

Thank you for your reply. I am interesting in your product. However, I am not sure that it does what I need.

Stop me if I wrong : The SPZF is SugarCRM server side and it display differents views to access the SugarCRM.
My wishes are to access SugarCRM from another server (on the Portal) to show some SugarCRM features like bugs page...

To resume, user log in the portal (for example Liferay) and a part of code access the SugarCRM to return some information.

Is it possible to use SPZF in this context ?

Thanks :-)

[salesagility]

You might want to discuss the Joomla Portal integration we have developed. This users Joomla authentication, tied to SugarCRM and lets you expose the parts of SugarCRM that you want your customers to see without introducing them to the complexity of SugarCRM. Included in this is things like Cases, Bugs etc. and the ability to raise Cases/Bugs from the Portal.

PM me if you need to discuss.

[dtokeefe]

Hi again. Yes, you're right. SPZF pretty much has to be on the same server as Sugar. In your case, you should use SOAP to interact with Sugar. There is a well-documented SOAP API and examples in the /examples folder of SugarCRM. The Enterprise version of SugarCRM comes with a Portal which uses SOAP and provides a framework for development. Depending on the number of users involved, this might be your most economical solution. Liferay development, by the way, has a pretty significant learning curve.

[dranakan]

Hello,

Thanks you salesagility and dtokeefe.

I will look at Joomla.

Portlet for SugarCRM is one thing. I need also to connect my portal with Zimbra (getting mail and calendar) and also Alfresco.

I will compare Liferay with Joomla...

[tekknokrat]

You might want to discuss the Joomla Portal integration we have developed. This users Joomla authentication, tied to SugarCRM and lets you expose the parts of SugarCRM that you want your customers to see without introducing them to the complexity of SugarCRM. Included in this is things like Cases, Bugs etc. and the ability to raise Cases/Bugs from the Portal.

PM me if you need to discuss.

Hi can you explain the sugarcrm integration a bit more specific. Can cases,bugs and contracts be mapped to joomla users? Is there an api to that fits within the joomlaframework.

[dtokeefe]

You might take a look at:

http://www.datasyncsuite.com/

It's a suite of integrated open source applications.

[blackened]

Hello,

Thanks you salesagility and dtokeefe.

I will look at Joomla.

Portlet for SugarCRM is one thing. I need also to connect my portal with Zimbra (getting mail and calendar) and also Alfresco.

I will compare Liferay with Joomla...

Well dranakan, it seems you about stole the words out of my mouth. I started this quest months ago to put Liferay, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Zimbra together in one place. Here is where I am:

1. I decided that for my purposes, the Liferay document library, wiki, and blog were good enough so I dropped Alfresco entirely. I did not like how much manual modding I seemed to need to do to get minor changes made to how Alfresco worked and much of what it does overlaps with Liferay.

2. I have integrated Zimbra's LDAP with Liferay to provide a single user database and have used the preauth code to make a SSO iframe portlet into Zimbra from within Liferay. This works very well. However, I would like to dig this down a little deeper to provide the various Zimbra tabs as tabs in Liferay rather than having all of Zimbra under one Liferay tab. Also, saving the state of the tabs when users switch to another tab would be VERY nice.

3. I have gotten NOWHERE on the Sugar side of things. I would like to do something similar whereby I publish tabs from Sugar directly into Liferay tabs. Right now I have Sugar in an iframe tab but the SSO is not working. Sugar however IS using the unified LDAP user database.

Essentially my goal is this:

1. I want all systems to use one central user database (already done).
2. I want all systems to use one unified address book for global contacts (from Zimbra, although Sugar will obviously be holding the customer DB - eventually just one large customer DB from Sugar that is accessible from all of the other systems would be awesome)
3. I want all systems to use one unified calendar (from Zimbra).
4. I want all systems to use one unified task list (from Zimbra). Eventually it might be nice to integrate some sort of project management specific solution to get that part of it done, but for now all I need is a group task list with due dates, details, and that can be assigned to specific a specific user or group of users.
5. i want all systems to use one unified document library (from Liferay in my case, but I can see the benefit of using Alfresco for this part of it).

My complaint with Liferay is that they seem to be taking the needs and making a solution themselves rather than doing what Liferay I thought was always designed to do (tie systems together). If the community there focused more on integrating other systems rather than developing their own solutions to missing items, then I think that it would work SO much better. For instance, instead of adding their own mail system, why not make a good solid Zimbra and/or Scalix portlet. Instead of creating their own doc library, why not make a good solid Alfresco portlet. I wouldn;t be suprised to see some infant CRM solution tied into it pretty soon rather than a good solid SugarCRM portlet.

It seems thats what DataSyncSuite is doing. But they too have a long way to go. And I don;t want to use Ubuntu as my server. I like CentOS - and I could not for the life of me get DataSync to run on it.

- Scott

[unicum]

Hi Dranakan,

I can highly recommend info@hand CRBM System on Version 6.1, there is everything you need included:

• More features then Sugar Enterprise
• Google Domain Apps (Mail, Docs, Contacts, Calender) Integration and Synchronisation
• Zarafa Groupware Integration and Synchronisation
• MS Outlook Plugin
• and soon Zimbra Integration

and the best is, its comes free with an integrated Joomla CMS, including a full Customer Portal, where your customers can track Quotes, Invoices, Projects and its documents and task, case management, bug tracker, and integrated eCommerce, where new orders automatically flow into the info@hand CRBM Order Management. For sure the Customer Portal also have an Partner area, where your resellers or partners can track their leads, accounts, their quotes and invoices...

and much much more.

feel free to ask me for a free demo , visit crbm.ch or infoathand.com for more information. info@hand CRBM System starts on 238 per Onsite Licence or 45 Euro for On Demand Seats, including SSL and Basic Support.

Cheers

André

CRBM INC.
Switzerland