IMAP - How far along is IMAP support?

[tyro]

SugarCRM looks fantastic so far except for the email.

We use IMAP with various folders for obvious reasons, and I simply cannot get Sugar to recognize my folders.


My goal: To have sugar integrate with our IMAP boxes: Have sent mail sent to the sent mail folder, drafts to the drafts folder etc...Should I jsut stick to using an external mail client per the options?


Is that possible?


In addition, we have another pop-only email account that we would liek to import. IS it possibble? We have an outlook .pst and could use Mozilla thunderbird to make a different file type if required.

[sugarchris]

Hi Tyro,

I believe we are approaching IMAP support from two different angles. I would say that the IMAP component fully implemented; you can use Sugar to import emails from just about any email server like Exchange, Gmail (linux only for now), and most any standards compliant IMAP or POP3 server. The remaining functionality to implement is related to character-set support and of course bug-fixes.

As a convenience, it has some basic email functionality like composing, replying, and the such, but its functionality is focused on email import. It can read any folder that you point it at but It does not support folders like IMAP. It does not copy emails back to the email server if you compose in Sugar. There are no plans to do anything of the sort in the roadmap.

Its real strength lay in the fact that any inbounds are automatically related to Leads, Contacts, etc. This is how it was designed from day one, and how it will continue to develop in the future.

It will never replace Outlook or any other mature email client. In the grand scheme of things, our dev effort will be focused on things that benefit Sugar as a whole; the features you asked about are probably never going to be implemented by our team. That does not mean it cannot happen, in fact I think that any independent developer out there could probably knock it out in a few weeks. It just does not have much wholistic value.

[dstrickler]

We are evaluating converting to Sugar, and have also have seen some issues with IMAP.

Is there a "questions when you are evaluating Sugar" forum?

Thanks,

Dave

[sugarchris]

You're in it

[tyro]

So, assuming that I really like Sugar, where would it best fit in with our setup?:


Using Outlook/thunderbird to access an IMAP account (maybe your plugin might work nicely here?

We use contracting software that takes care of everything like contracts, document management and stuff, and such, and uses outlook for email and quickbooks for the accounting. It does not currently have a built-in CRM.


We were hoping on focusing on leads and with sugar, and would like your advice on how it could help us. Our email account is accessible via pop as well, so as long as we have sugar up and running (it is up right now) we could forgo using IMAP.

[niche]

Its real strength lay in the fact that any inbounds are automatically related to Leads, Contacts, etc. This is how it was designed from day one, and how it will continue to develop in the future.

Hi Chris, we are very new SugarCRM users, first starting with 4.0 and just recently upgrading to 4.2 -- which is a huge improvement!
We're evaluating a lot of stuff but have the intent on going up to Sugar Professional.

My problem is this:
When we get an inbound email from someone and click on CREATE LEAD, they are created correctly and that FIRST EMAIL is then listed in their history.

But when the customer sends subsequent email messages and they appear in our group inbox, the newer emails are NOT listed in the account history, only the first message is listed.

I don't see any way to make this happen manually, but really it should happen automagically, no?
Am I doing something wrong?

Worse, if one of our sales people saw the 2nd email and clicked the CREATE LEAD link from the group inbox, then it would create a (GASP!) duplicate lead.
This is really problematic. Duplicate bad!

I've had to train them to open a new sugar window (so they don't lose their place in the group inbox) and do a SEARCH to make sure that the lead isn't already in the system.

Help! I hope that I'm doing something wrong and that this is an easy fix.

Thanks!