Intergration of additional functionality into sugarcrm CE

[pearsondan99]

Hi Guys,

Only just got with SugarCRM already impressed! I m looking to create a one stop dashboard for my company and am after advise from the community on the best way to approach them (via development an off the shelf package etc)

Requirement 1 - incorporate a booking system: we are a teaching based organisaiton that needs to allocate students (contacts) to classes at various geographical locations run by teachers (staff) - question can this be done (or is anyone doing this) in SugarCRM or is a third party product required (if so has anyone any suggestions)

Requirement 2 - Intergrate Paypal/MYOB functionality into SugarCRM. The process goes like this call centre operator gets client (becomes contact) - allocates to class - processes payment (either credit or paypal) - sends confimation email to contact once the process is complete - question has anybody attempted a process like this? if so could they provide example architecture

Requirement 3 - automated process flows - I ve seen a couple of posts regarding this, is there an off the shelf tool that can do this for CE or is custom coding required?

Requirement 4 - in ACT you can group contacts in groups (static and dynamic) how do you do this in sugarCRM?

A lofty list but i d like to maximise our deployment, after the limitations of ACT this looks an excellent product.

Thanks in advance, please PM me if youd prefer to discuss offline

Dan

[eNick]

Dan,

First the good news - Sugar can do all of that. What's more, they are all the kind of customisations it's designed for.

I'll go through your points in detail...

Requirement 1 (booking system) can be done using the existing module builder. You might also want to check out http://www.sugarexchange.com/ and http://www.sugarforge.org/ to see if anyone has already developed somthing close to this. I'd be surprised if they haven't.

Requirement 2 (payment gateway) can be done fairly easily. It's no more complicated than for any other system. There are a number of methods but the most basic would be to create a custom module entitiled "Payments" related to the Accounts module. Their the user can create a new "payment" which involves filling in all of the details. Upon clicking save, the "before_save" logic hook is triggered which would allow one to call the payment gateway and ensure payment worked.

Requirement 3 (automate process flows) can be done. Workflow is included as standard in the paid-for versions. But you'll find some modules on sugarexchange or forge to do this. Also, the book http://www.amazon.com/SugarCRM-Devel.../dp/1847192068 contains a worked example of adding workflow. (Though it isn't currently written for version 5.0)

Requirement 4 (contact grouping) is trivial. You'd create a Groups module, and then use studio to add a drop down field to the contact so that you may select the group to which the contact belongs. If you wish them to be part of multiple groups, then you can do that also.

So, as you can see, Sugar is designed for this kind of extension. Now the bad news....

You have to do it properly! You will read a lot about "upgrade safe" extensions. This isn't just about complying with Sugar's guidelines. It's about ensuring that when you upgrade Sugar to a newer version, you don't lose all your changes. So, if in any doubt, it's well worth getting a pro to do this kind of thing for you.

Development for Sugar is usually very fast and things that you would typically expect to take weeks in a traditional software environment usually only take a day or so in Sugar.

Hope that all helps!

[pearsondan99]

Thanks for the reply, i ll work though all of those one last requirement for now;

Log CRM activity within contact records - we plan to implement an additional field with the contact tab labelled customer registration number (CRN) this will be the unique client id reference used when they call our contact centre, within the contact record it would be really handy to have a activity log - what i mean by this, if the contact is assigned to a campaign or account it would have a date time stamp with the person who actioned the task.

This way if client (contact) where to ring up to find out where an application or activity was upto the contact centre operator could look up their contact record (via CRN) and see what activites have been undertaken by other staff in processing an application say. If you need more clarification on this requirement please PM me.

Thanks in advance

Dan

[eNick]

Thanks for the reply, i ll work though all of those one last requirement for now;

Log CRM activity within contact records - we plan to implement an additional field with the contact tab labelled customer registration number (CRN) this will be the unique client id reference used when they call our contact centre, within the contact record it would be really handy to have a activity log - what i mean by this, if the contact is assigned to a campaign or account it would have a date time stamp with the person who actioned the task.

This way if client (contact) where to ring up to find out where an application or activity was upto the contact centre operator could look up their contact record (via CRN) and see what activites have been undertaken by other staff in processing an application say. If you need more clarification on this requirement please PM me.

Thanks in advance

Dan

Again, that's do-able. Several ways you could achieve this one.

Adding the CRN field is no problem. Ensuring it's unique is a little tricky to do in a nice way, but we've just developed a module that let's you do that kind of validation real easy. Incidentally, our module would also add value to your "take payment" requirements.

Searching by CRN, is again, dead easy.

As for the activity log - that's automatic. Just tick the "Audit" field and the activity log will be created automatically. There's a button called "View Change Log" that shows things about changes to fields like this...

Field Name, Old Value, New Value, Changed By, Changed Date.

Alternately, you could download the Workflow extension (as mentioned in previous post) available on sugarforge, which would give you more control over that. Or purchase the professional or enterprise edition which comes with full workflow integration.

Hope that answers your question (as I'm off on holiday for two weeks tomorrow). So far, you'd be looking at probably a few days work for a pro to do this for you.