mixing personal and CRM in SugarCRM?

[jsbenson]

Hi, I'm currently straddling SugarCRM and my Thunderbird/Sunbird applications. Sometimes I wish I just had everything in one place, especially for calendaring.

In terms of best practices, does anybody have advice to offer on how to work around this problem?

[mapm]

I feel the same, specially about birthday dates and private stuff....
The way I'm doing this is with a special account named personal-USER_NAME and then I add everything to this account, personal contacts and stuff

[susiewilliams]

Hi all,


One thing you may consider is whether your company (if you're running this in a business environment) considers the data in your CRM system as it's property. A lot of businesses consider the contact information, leads, account names, etc. that live on their systems as the property of the business, so loading your personal contact list into the company's database might not be what you want to do in the long run. You may find that your personal friends will end up on Marketing's email lists!

Third party products like VisiblePath (which maps relationships using your Outlook or other database contacts) can reach into your private contact list and can display that information to others if you're not careful with the configuration settings.

I have worked with a lot of sales organizations, and sales reps are careful to make sure they have a copy of the contacts they have worked with when they leave, which often goes against company policy. It's a fine line you have to walk, and remembering whose database you are using (and who pays the bills for the equipment) might be a smart thing.