SugarCommunity and Outlook

[irishtitan]

Hi Everyone,

New poster, and lapsed Sugar user but now returning...

I've helped a client assess CRM tools and we've identified Sugar as our desired tool. However, we're going to start with SugarCommunity, b/c the client feels that they need all 15 employees using the tool, and the paid version of Sugar is cost prohibitive for them right now.

One of the things I've done is employed the "people, process, technology" mentality with this client, so that they don't think that the CRM tool is the silver bullet, and they realize we need to develop processes and then adhere them, in order for them to be successful.

One of our key requirements is outlook integration. This is a group of people who will use poor outlook integration as an excuse to not use the tool, so we need to cut that off at the pass.

Can someone confirm for me that there is some level of outlook integration with sugarcommunity? Contact integration is the main requirement, far and away...It seems that Sugar's official Outlook plug-in is only in the paid version, but it looks like after searching the forums, there are some other, opensource, outlook plug-ins.

Is that true? Please...all help and comments appreciated.

[Angel]

There definitely are some available for CE, but they are not open source.

Kinamu Outlook Connector is one of the more popular links. Take a look at sugarforge.org and you should be able to find them there.

[irishtitan]

Good info...many thanks. I'm just trying to get in front of this, and stay in front of it, b/c this client really needs CRM, and is sold on that. But this isn't my first rodeo, as they say, and I can tell that they're fragile in their adoption likelihood, so I have to make sure that this Outlook integration will work reasonably well.

Any other comments and suggestions will be much, much appreciated...