Tips & Tricks - Custom Activity Status Dropdowns

[matthew]

Here's a common problem we get at support, so I decided to write something about it, I hope it helps people.

When ever you create custom dropdowns in the status section for calls and meetings, the coded business logic doesn't look for your custom statuses. Even if it did, it wouldn't know whether it was a HISTORY item or an ACTIVITIES item in the subpanel.

The Result? Your meetings and calls aren't displayed in the activities or history subpanel when you assign them a status other than the "out of the box" values.

Also, they won't show up on the home page.

There is an easy fix and here's a quick explanation of it:

Custom status dropdowns

Dropdowns are arrays that contain KEYS and VALUES. The KEY of a dropdown is what is inserted into the database and thus is intergral to the logic of SugarCRM.

VALUES of a dropdown are arbiturary and only for the display on the screen.

If new KEYS and VALUE are added to a dropdown, often business logic is disrupted and the KEY needs to be added to the underlying code to query the database to produce the expected results.

EXAMPLE 1.: Adding a new status to Calls

If a new KEY and VALUE are added to the 'call_status_dom' dropdown; SugarCRM will need to be modified to accomidate the new KEY.

For example, if we add 'Voicemail' to call_status_dom a custom array - the array with the keys and values will be added to ./custom/include/language/en_us.lang.php (or the language in question). See the below example of the custom language file array:

 <?php
$app_list_strings['call_status_dom'] = array (
'Planned' => 'Planned',
'Held' => 'Held',
'Voicemail => 'Voicemail,
'Not Held' => 'Not Held',
);
?>  

Now we must add the new STATUS to the business logic. First we must determine if this is going to be apart of the ACTIVITIES subpanel or the HISTORY Subpanel. For this example, I will make it apart of the Activities SubPanel - but the process is nearly identical for History SubPanel.

Go to ./modules/Calls/subpanel/ForActivities.php, in the array $subpanel_layout find the sub-array that looks like this:

 'where' => "(calls.status='Planned')", 
  

And change to fit new business logic, like this:

 'where' => "(calls.status='Planned' OR calls.status='Voicemail')", 
  

The steps are identical for ./modules/Calls/subpanel/ForHistory.php

Finally, to ensure that this appointment appears on the HOME page under "Upcoming Appointments", the following code must be altered as well:

In order to we must add the following line to the ./modules/Activities/config.php file

 $open_status[] = "Voicemail"; 
  

This will load up the $open_status array with values.

These values for $open_status should match the "open" status you create for meeting_status_dom and call_status_dom.

[heathsanchez]

Hi Matthew!

Thanks for the helpful advice.

Just wondering if you could tell me how to make Tasks with Custom Status Dropdowns appear in the My Open Tasks Dashlet?

Thanks in advance!

[vishwasrao]

Thanx matthew,
Great work ,

Should this procedure is same for any custom dropdowns & for any custom field because i am going to add custom fields of type dropdown in activities of leads module.
Reply me as early as possible.
Thanx in advance.

[heta]

Thanks matthew,

That helped me a lot.

For other users who want to checkout upgrade safe solution please visit this.

[skyglassinc]

Thanks Matthew,

not only did this help, but it showed right up in Google first thing for "sugarcrm accounts activities custom status".

Will we need to remove this custom code before upgrades and patches and then reapply it?

EDIT: The files you're pointing to don't seem to exist in 5.2. Where do I put this code now?

It looks like I should modify this line in modules/activities/subpanelview.php:

foreach ($focus_calls_list as $call) {
	if ($call->status != "Planned") {

but the syntax is different, how do I add other statuses to this code?

[leemoney24]

To resolve in 5.2.0...follow these steps.

Go to /modules/Tasks/metadata/subpanels
Edit ForActivities.php

Find line

 'where' => "(tasks.status='Not Started' OR tasks.status='In Progress' OR tasks.status='Pending Input')",

Change to

'where' => "(tasks.status='Not Started' OR tasks.status='In Progress' OR tasks.status='Pending Input' OR tasks.status='Custom Status 1' OR tasks.status='Custom Status 2' )",

this worked for me...and I'm sure it's not upgrade safe

[skyglassinc]

Thanks!

I ended up just making custom "direction" dropdowns to note the status of the calls, which works fine except they don't show up in the (completely resistant to any customization) activities subpanel.

[kblackwell]

matthew,

Worked perfectly. Thanks for the example. You the man!!!!!

[samson smith]

Very nice!! thanks for this useful advice!!