Newbie Question - integrate Sugar with existing CRM?

[Pance]

I'm a PHP and MySQL programmer - and we have a developed a farly sophisticated CRM for our company. But now we have decided to use SugarCRM (the open source version).

I was wondering if there are any notes for programmers on how to integrate an existing database with Sugar.

For example we have "Company" and "Individuals" tables which are linked by ID numbers. What's the best way to import into Sugar? Should we use the built-in "Import" function? Which tables are Company/Individuals and how will Sugar maintain the current links/relationships?

Once this is done - we are wondering if it would be possible to use Sugar to maintain the Company/Individual tables - but to use my own CRM to integrate Sugar with our own business data/logic?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Pance.

[Scott_Savage]

What answer do you want? :-) There are so many variables in your question.

SugarCRM is Open Source, so you can do whatever you want. Anything is possible, but to change the table structure of Sugar to fit your existing application is not practical.

Personally I would map the tables from the old CRM system to the new one. Then create a migration script which moves all the data over. If you want to keep them synchronised then you can modify your migration script and add some synchronisation checks and operations. I would suggest that 2 systems is going to get too complicated and difficult to maintain. Make the decision and make the move, don't sit on the fence cause u will get a pain in the ass...

[stevec]

For migration purposes, a tool like jitterbit might be useful. http://www.jitterbit.com/

[aboo]

Hello All,

I am looking for the architecture of sugarCRM open source?
Our plan is to design and implement add-on modules for SugarCRM. (To the specifications of our company)
These documents would not only aid us in understanding the structure of sugarCRM, it could also be a bases for our design.

On the document sites i can't find anything like that.

Regards,
Aboo B.Auckbur
aboo@dclweb.org