Field with link to file on local server?

[miavfw]

I am helping a non-profit organization setting up SugarCRM Community Edition on their ISP servers and one of the thing they'd like to do is be able to have in some of the sugar records links to files that are stored on local servers in their offices (accessible only when accessed from inside their intranet of course).

For example they have a Windows server called FileServer and a directory called ProjectFiles and a file Project321.doc in there. This file would be accessed through the window network as \\FileServer\ProjectFiles\PRoject321.doc

They would like to be able to enter this "\\FileServer\ProjectFiles\PRoject321.doc" in a field in SugarCRM in the various Edit Views and when the field is displayed in the Detail View it would be clickable and when clicked it would open the file (here "Project321.doc") in the default document editor for this type of file (on the client machine).

Bonus would be, in the Edit View, to use a browser to actually point to the file and create the "\\FileServer\ProjectFiles\PRoject321.doc" string automatically.

I tried to play with the various field types in Sugar Studio, but wasn't able to get close to any of this.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[jjwdesign]

I tried to do something similar with our Intranet system. People didn't take to it as well. I wouldn't suggest it.

The Documents module within SugarCRM is more integrated than you may realize. The documents can be related to cases, accouts, etc. The documents module also provides revision controls, something a file server usually doesn't have. More importantly, you can attach documents to emails which improves the control of your sales team to always send out the most up to date / correct documents.

Just a suggestion.

[miavfw]

I tried to do something similar with our Intranet system. People didn't take to it as well. I wouldn't suggest it.

The Documents module within SugarCRM is more integrated than you may realize. The documents can be related to cases, accouts, etc. The documents module also provides revision controls, something a file server usually doesn't have. More importantly, you can attach documents to emails which improves the control of your sales team to always send out the most up to date / correct documents.

Just a suggestion.

I agree with you, but... my approach is one step at a time. It's already a big enough step for these folks to move from an in house, custom designed, antiquated system to SugarCRM that I don't want to force them to use all the features of SugarCRM from the get go (again, they aren't tech savvy people, their focus is making a world a better place).

Did you investigation with your intranet system yield any usable results?

[jjwdesign]

Yes, the Intranet content management system works very well and is simple enough not to scare too many people away. We had to standardize our network mapping of drives (C:, H:, M:, etc.); instead of using the server name

[keli]

I'm also looking for a similar solution. The SugarCRM is co-located with our (Linux based) file server, and since we don't want to store everything twice, and most of those documents are used outside of Sugar as well, it's somewhat pointless to upload them over and over again.

Instead I'd like to use a link to point to existing documents on the server. I could use both network paths or http links as well. So what I'd need is something like:
Upload file OR Add URL
in the documents module ... any ideas?

[sebek]

I'm also looking fore someting like this.
Just able to add a link to a file that sits on a local server. No need to have duplicate files on two servers.

Could this be done as a Documents sub-panel with links to files. (in modules: Accounts, Contacts, Oppurt., etc)?

Thanks.

[wdroush]

Text field, then use custom code to format a link properly (can you even link to network items??...)

[sebek]

I don't know, just trying to do it

My main goal is that Leads have sub-panel named Documents (this is no problem), but don't want to use existing Documents module for uploading files, but same Browse filed to link them to our file server (or any local file server).

Thanks.

[Rich2]

We have also tried to accomplish this task by using the 'link' type field and text fields and html fields and the problem seems to be that the sugar site is appended to the front of the html field if you use 'generate URL'. And also if you use the 'link' field type, the main site URL is appended. Does anyone know how to work around this?
We are trying to access a file on a local network, preferably using an html anchor to keep it clean.

[sebek]

I did some testing and if you put a link to any text filed like file:///share/home/user/File.xls then FireFox and IE don't open this link. (If you put it to browser manually then you can open file).
Other test: Linking files in Windows. Example. H:/folder/File.xls then sugar rewrites url to h:/folder/File.xls and the file cannot be opened.

So this should somehow work, but need to figure out how to persuade Sugar to correctly link and to be able to link as you would upload file (Add file -> Browse -> Save, but instead of uploading just link to this file in a sub panel.

Thanks.