How to classify (tag, label) a contact or lead?

[martin.huber@canoo.com]

Hi,

we are offering several different products and services.
Very often it would be useful for us to find and use lists of all contacts or leads that are using one of the products or were using a service.
For example:
one of our employees is having a conference talk about one of the products and we would like to inform all customers that are using it.
Or we want to follow up all leads that we contacted in a given context (related to one product or service).

Is there already the "sugar way" to accomplish that?

We could think of a list of "contact types" or "products" or just "categories", that are customizable and allow a multiple selection on contacts and leads. And these tags would be found in searches, they could be used when preparing lists for emails, ...

Or is there perhaps an extension that could help us? Doesn't anyone else have a similar need?

Thanks!
Best regards,
Martin

[blebrozec]

Hi Martin,

I'm having the same concern at the moment... did you find a solution in the end to have access to tag/label feature for contacts, emails, etc?

Your answer would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards,
Ben

[martin.huber@canoo.com]

Hi Ben,

yes, we could resolve it for some of us. Please have a look at the following 2 threads:

http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18652
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17439

Maybe the bugfix for the Multiple Value Field Search is not necessary anymore for the most recent sugar version.

Best regards,
Martin

[blebrozec]

Martin,

Correct me if I'm wrong but your solution doesn't allow creating tag/label on the fly through an input field a la del.icio.us, does it?
For example a field where you can type: "tag1, tag2, tag3"... with a suggestion with already existing tags.

Thank you very much for your help Martin btw,
Ben

[martin.huber@canoo.com]

Hi Ben,

yes, you are right.

We have to add new predefined values in the Admin Panel - Studio - Edit Drop Downs.
The applicable labels then can be chosen from a multi-select listbox.

Best regards,
Martin

[blebrozec]

Hi Martin,

I'm really surprised that nobody has implemented a solution a la del.icio.us yet. If I've got time I'll try to implement one. In fact, we just need a basic input box with a separator between tags. And then the search engine has to parse this field. Later a suggestion mechanism can be implemented as well to display the existing tags when you want to tag a new contact, lead, product, etc

I'll keep you posted if I manage to have enough time to do that....

Cheers,
Ben

[martin.huber@canoo.com]

Hi Ben,

the reason is, that we didn't want to implement much but use the standard customizations that sugar is providing.
The only implementation that had to be done was the temporary bugfix for the multi-value search.

Implementing an own widget with an own parsing of the arguments probably needs more in depth knowledge of the way sugar works. And I did not have the time to go so much in depth.

But it will be interesting, how your solution will look like.

Best regards,
Martin

[blebrozec]

Hi Martin,

I'm thinking of solution like del.icio.us. The user can enter several tags in an input box and have a suggestion with existing tags. Technically there are two different ways to do that:
- either one specific field needs to be added into the database and then this field is parsed using patterns (with tags separators, etc).
- or each tag is a new DB entry and the search is done over several DB entries.

The first solution is more basic and might be easier to implement. But it's less flexible and not great performance wise.
The second solution is more flexible and more complex to implement.

As you said the drawback of customising your own instance of SugarCRM is when you want to upgrade to a new official version....

Ben