parse XML email to create new lead

[badenoch]

I'm completely new to Sugar. I've seen some discussion in the forums about parsing email and converting it into a new lead within Sugar [v 5.0]. I looked at the developer Wiki as well without finding what i need to know. Unfortunately, I've either missed the thread with a detailed enough explanation, or there isn't an explanation that gets me far enough along the process.

I did see ContactGrabber in the Sugar Exchange. That may suit my needs, but I'd rather learn how this works and create something simple that I can tweak as needed.

The emails I need to parse are in the ADF Format which is basically just an XML file that contains specific information and follows a specific structure.

I guess the first thing I need to know is if I need to set up a specific mail account outside of Sugar to send the lead information to, process that externally with PHP and edit the database directly, or if this capability can be set up from within Sugar. Do I need to be researching Modules, Extensions, or something else?

Any help to get me started in the right direction?

[badenoch]

Subquestion... If I create a small PHP script that parses the email and directly updates the "Leads" table in the Sugar database, do I need to do anything else? That is... are there other places within the database that index or otherwise reference the "Leads" table that would need to be updated separately?

[Angel]

You could do the latter and use PHP (or other language) to insert the data into Sugar via Sugar's SOAP API and you wouldn't have to worry about which tables need to maintained and so forth.

Further info on the SOAP API is available in the Wiki: http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki