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pbartecki
20-04-04, 02:44 AM
I just wanted to move/gather thoughts on CRM module posted to previous forum on SF. It's here in case old forum would become unavailable.


First post by Juan Carlos González - jcgonz:

1. Be able to have tasks templates. For example, if the organization's process to make a sale is to:
- First talk with customer
- Hand in the first budget
- Call the customer to verify that the budget arrived correctly
- Start project / hold project / cancel project
Let's enable the users to create those templates so each the module helps all users to follow procedures

2. Be able to create concurrent tasks until the project's end date

3. Have formats to register meetings, phone calls, emails that enable the user to register information such as:
- Goals
- Achieved goals
- People that went to the meeting
- Negotiations result
- Tasks created within this contact

4. Enable the system to send emails using user's email in order to mantain a centralized mail repository

5. Be able to get a report, any time, of all the contact that the project team have had with the customer (mails, phone, meetings)

6. Filter reports by type of contact

______

Other thoughts

Roman Locher - romanlocher:
CRM module should also have a keyword (e.g. customer, mailing2003, supplier) search / filter

I think of an editable keyword list and you can assign one or more keyword to a contact. After that it's possible to filter the contacts with and/or/not + keyword constructions. For example you have customer, private contact and marketing as keywords. Then you can filter your contacts like this: customer AND NOT private contact AND marketing, saying you can find a specific contact group (not only one contact) in the contact list. With this data, you can now create mailings and such things. With most CRM tools I know, you can also filter every contact field, e.g. city, name...


[side note] Yep. Definately. We should be able to assign a contact to different predefined marketing groups/categories/keywords and then be able to pull those groups (if you need say to call/mail/fax only specific group of your customers).[/side note]

______
About other ideas that Roman Locher sent me in an email:
- Phone calls assinging
- EMails to an specific contact (through the system)
- Export contacts to enable user merge documents

______
Perry Smit - perrysmit12:
MoreRelations between modules.

When you work behind your desk, you got todo with the following information objects:

Agenda
Companies
Contacts
E-mails
Documents (in and out)
Todo´s
Projects (products)

All of the modules should have a many to many relation between each module.
To explain:

When you search a contact, and you have find the contact, you always want to know:
- to which companies this contact is related and kind of relation it have.
- which documents are sent in the past?
- which documents are received
- which e-mail received
- e-mails sent to this contact etc..

You want this also when you searching a document, when you have the document, you want know which companies should have read the document and why.

THis means, we should have more tables to get the relations between each module.

In the interfaces we must add the possibilities to create the relations between the modules.

There is no crm program we can do all above of the wishes, while it´s just so basic.....

Perry

______

rich knowles - richk2003
If I may suggest a couple more things:

o Requirements validation tags such as PROPOSED, DISCUSSED, APPROVED, WAIVED and REJECTED.

o Traceability links to the WBS so that specific requirements can be tied back to actual tasks via the overall breakdown structure.

o Establish a workflow surrounding the requirement approval process to link up with a Configuration Management process. Perhaps a template which includes the names, routing, etc. for those individuals needed to validate and approve requirements.

o A documentation generation process that will take all the requirements and extract them into a human readable form. During the requirements definition process for large projects, the entire set of requirements may be extracted and printed many times.

o A versioning system so that several generations of requirements can be managed.

o Effectivity dates? Some requirements turn into pumpkins after a certain date, or requirements may become mandatory after a certain date (due to legal implichations for example).

o The capability to link from a document to a specific individual requirement such that when the requirement changes, the document will reflect the change.

o The capability to lock a requirement such that it cannot be changed except by certain individuals.

I'll think of more.

Just fired up dotproject and I'm impressed! A requirements management module would enhance its functionality!

[wow, pretty extensive list.. :) ]

pbartecki
20-04-04, 02:58 AM
There was also interest in mailing list and invoicing.

One can have a look at Invoicing mod in cvs: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/dotmods/invoices/

Newsletter/mailing list: I'm using PHPlist (www.phplist.com) at the moment. Great piece of app and main dev Michiel has plans to make the code embeddable in other projects. It's worth wathing.

cosy
01-05-04, 07:07 PM
Hi

I found following errors can someone correct pls This is grt module.
1. Table 'dotproject.costcodes' doesn't exist
2. Images Not working
3. Can not edit cost or total

ThomasEskebaek
09-06-04, 06:31 AM
Hello List,

It's a really good idea to expand dotProject to be able to function as a CRM tool. Most basic functionalities are already or almost already there. Here is a list of a few simple extensions which would greatly help my use of dotProject as a CRM tool:

- Enable relations and interrelations between/within tasks, customers, and contacts. I would like to be able to have one contact which refers to another etc.

- Differentiation between tasks and meetings/phone calls/etc
- Enable historics for contacts - i.e. a list of tasks and meetings ordered and related cronologically
- Report showing the entire cronological development of tasks and meetings for a project.

- Enable specification of focus area/topic for projects
- Larger and more easily accessible notes fields
- Attachment of files to meetings, tasks, companies, and contacts

- Integrate calendar, tasks, and todo via e.g. ical
- Integrate Contacts with addressbooks (synchronize e.g. via vCards)

Some of these may be redundant - but combined they would enable use of dotProject for simple CRM. Further, these are all fairly simple to implement.

Kind regards and thanks for a great program,

Thomas Eskebaek

marke
15-07-04, 06:07 AM
We would like to use DotProject as a piece in a large-scale internal/external solution for customer/project managment.

We have over 1000 customers where we provide an ERP package and additional addon packages. It would be most helpful for us if DotProject was designed to work more efficiently as a customer facing tool in addition to an internal tool for the company. One way to do this would be to better integrate with existing php systems like Mantis so we could use their issue tracking ability (which we do) and your project managment facilities. The issues are with web boudaries. User authentication needs to be centralized so a user can login to one thing and seamlessly move from the CMS portion to the project management portion to the issue tracking portion.

It would be very helpful if the CRM aspect of DotProject had a greater focus on a customer facing interface. The ability to create a customer login that was easily configurable to ONLY see their own data.

User management would need to be improved to manage users by company or by user alone. When you may have 10 users for a given customer that need to interact with the system and you have 1000+ customers user management becomes significant. The ability to create roles or groups of permissions is very helpful.

Classifications of Project types would be helpful too. When a customer migration to our software is a multi-month project in itself, it would be nice to group projects where I could view all projects of a certain type, or all for a customer, or all with my involement. I believe the last two already exist.

Another thing that would be helpful is the ability to export information to something else. An Excel-friendly format would be most helpful. While I hate management by Excel (which is the reason I'm wanting to use DotProject and integrate it with other systems) it is a reality that many organizations use it. Having a way to export data that could be emailed to someone would be helpful. I agree that letting them use the system would be prefered, however, it is not always possible to dictate what will be done.

I'd be interested in hearing any feedback and thoughts on the idea.

Mark E.

cyberhorse
15-07-04, 07:22 PM
- groups of permissions are being addressed as we speak and are going to be one of the major issues for the next release.
- you can group projects by using the in planning/in progress/... tabs - you can change the words for them and deal with them as categories - you can change them in the system administration -> sysvals
- csv (comma separated export for excel) is available in a separate module (import_export) on dotmods on sourceforge. It's still work in progress, but it works even now and should be ready soon.

emagin
27-07-04, 06:40 AM
Is anyone in the dev team doing anything about bugtracking?
There was a nifty little module for this, but it was a global bugtracker, ignoring the security architecture of DP, allowing multiple users to stumble over each others' bugs.

A mantis integration would be very cool, and we could help, but I want to make sure it's not already started.

mytto
28-07-04, 12:43 AM
emagin: helpdesk module is great for bugtracking, you should test it out!

caseydk
06-08-04, 11:34 PM
I'm hacking some stuff together to tie Mantis into dp. I've been doing this on the side for a while, but it just become a critical action....

We (the company I work for) has been using Mantis for a few months and they've loved it. After showing a demo of dp two days ago, we deployed and started using it yesterday morning.

They nearly wet themselves, so I'm trying to get it down this weekend. I have some other things that I will be tying into it eventually, but those are lower priority now...

Rgerla
28-09-04, 04:18 AM
I'm hacking some stuff together to tie Mantis into dp. I've been doing this on the side for a while, but it just become a critical action....

We (the company I work for) has been using Mantis for a few months and they've loved it. After showing a demo of dp two days ago, we deployed and started using it yesterday morning.

They nearly wet themselves, so I'm trying to get it down this weekend. I have some other things that I will be tying into it eventually, but those are lower priority now... Hello Caseydk,


I'm hacking some stuff together to tie Mantis into dp. I've been doing this on the side for a while, but it just become a critical action....


above you mention just the part We are looking for as well. Being able to integrate the projectsstuff from dotproject with the bugtracking from mantis would give us the best solution yet.

Have you finished the integration? and if so are you going to publish this?

greetings

caseydk
28-09-04, 07:04 AM
Rgerla,

I just put the *barely functional* version into the Mantis system here. I've uploaded the code along with some notes about it.

It's high on my personal priority list on things to accomplish, but my personal priority list doesn't pay the bills right now...

mschiavo
05-01-05, 03:24 AM
I saw the great list about CRM, and would ask to everyone....

Why dotproject could not integrate with one aready opensource and clomplete CRM software called VTIGER (http://www.vtiger.com), they have all almost done... we be so excityng have those togheter....

Why could not be so nice???
I could contact them if no one already did it...


Tks a lot,
Marcelo

patrick24601
06-01-05, 04:30 AM
Vtiger is just a copy of SugarCRM. From an ethical standpoint I'd avoid vtiger like the plague. They took a complete copy of the open source version of SugarCRM, rebranded it as a new product - giving NO credit to the orignal authors, and they are now pushing it as the latest and greatest things in CRM.

If you are going to go with SugarCRM you might as well stick with the original authors and the original code. I have made a personal visit to the HQ of SugarCRM and can tell you that is a hard working company with great leadership. Not to mention that they are VC funded and have plans for a family of products that are coming out.

(No I do not work for SugarCRM - but yes I am a business partner of theirs)

caseydk
09-01-05, 02:46 PM
Yeah, the only mention of SugarCRM that I can find on their site is:

This software is a collective work consisting of the following major Open Source components:
Apache software, MySQL server, PHP, SugarCRM, phpBB, and PHPMailer each licensed under a separate Open Source License. vtiger.com is not affiliated with nor endorsed by any of the above providers.

I've used SugarCRM quite a bit for 4 months along with making multiple deployment and it is pretty clear that their entire package *looks like* a re-skinned/re-themed SugarCRM installation. There's probably some custom code tying it all together, but the whole thing looks a bit questionable.

patrick24601
09-01-05, 03:03 PM
caseydk,

I've met with the CEO of SugarCRM in person about this (my hosting company is a recognized business partner with them. )

When they intially found out about it they contacted the vtiger people and asked them to abide by the rules of the GPL and SugarCRMs request to keep certain wording and graphics in place. Vtiger (which origiantes from another country altogether) completely refused. Sugars only recourse now is to basically ignore them.

Patrick

pedroa
20-01-05, 11:50 AM
Hi to you all,

Not trying to send wood into the fire, i must add that SugarCRM is effectivly the code base of vtigerCRM but if you look into Sugars roadmap you will notice that their Open Source flavour is not going quite exactly the same way as the commercial flavour. vtigerCRM as no 2 paths, if you see what i mean. I am betting on vtiger to be a better Open Source project than Sugar's, and by the way Sugar's is credited accordingly to the license of the source version used by vtiger.
I am no lawyer and i am not anyway associated to vtiger but i must admire the efforts of people trying to reanimate a project that might be on a road to dead, and that's SugarCRM Open Source.

patrick24601
20-01-05, 01:34 PM
I'll repost this same posting I made on SugarCRMs boards awhile back. Basically SugarCRM has one of the best futures that I can see out of any open source package. Primarily because they are a commercial company that has money that happens to release a subset of their features as open source. Please tell me again how many investors vtiger has?

This is a good read. And vTiger does not hold a candle compared to sugarCRMs future
----
You might want to check into the company SugarCRM a little more before indicating they are close to violating any spirits. I believe you may be used to working with something else where it is built by a guy in his spare time on the weekend. All your post says to me that you are looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I propose we take a second and look at the company from a different point of view.

SugarCRM is company with people. They have payroll, electric bills, and investors - just like any real company has. They are not coding this at their dining room table. And I don't believe they were put here on this earth to make a completely free feature rich application and just give it away to everybody. They are a commercial company that makes a strong commercial CRM product. It just so happens they chose to release a stripped down version to the public - lucky for you. They made it so that if you needed a good basic CRM package and did not want to pay the $200+ for the license you could get it open source. They also made it so you can modify it yourself, suggest changes, upload changes, and contribute to the future of the product.

At the same time they are a commercial company with some serious investors who are in business to make money. Always remember that. It is not your typical open source development project. Oh and by the way I have a client that just in the past 24 hours decided that SugarCRM in is base form is good enough to pay for - and now he wants the extra features. I'll be buying two license for him shortly - with several more to come. To him (yet another professional businessman) it is worth the money to get the product. It will pay for itself several times over. And paying the money will keep the lights on in Cupertino.

Karen
20-01-05, 01:42 PM
This discussion now has absolutely nothing to do with dotProject and we'd appreciate it if you could therefore take it elsewhere thank you.

Karen C

pedroa
25-01-05, 02:25 AM
Hi to all again,

Assuming that we are all here to share our knowledge and express our opinions freely, and maintain a certain level of respect for the others views, I must say that I read patrick24601's post with attention, and most of all I have tried sugarCRM 2.5 Open Source and I am glad to say that I was wrong as to SugarCRM 2.5 Open Source being dead.
Yes that's right I must admit that if it was today I was in favor of integrating Sugars in dotProject. This new 2.5 is Sweet, very Sweet.
Now the presure is on the tigers.

As to dotProject, I see that CRM is planned but too distant, but I guess Karen could say something more about this than I, since the dev site states some sort of researching on this.

Now, i am off to pay my bills.

Pedro A.

caseydk
26-01-05, 12:59 AM
This new 2.5 is Sweet, very Sweet.

Is this a bad pun?

As to dotProject, I see that CRM is planned but too distant, but I guess Karen could say something more about this than I, since the dev site states some sort of researching on this.

I did some initial poking into this and I found one problem right off the bat... both systems have tables called "tasks", "users", and "contacts" and as of my last research, neither of the two systems supported database table prefixes.

I was working on doing it for dP, but I've been flooded with other things... like things where I get paid for working. ;)

pedroa
26-01-05, 05:08 AM
casydk I meant that I liked it a lot, and that is good news to know that you are/were working on a fusion.
Keep it up.

Pedro A.

caseydk
26-01-05, 11:58 PM
haha... I didn't say I was working on it. Just that I took a little bit of time to do some research.

pedroa
27-01-05, 04:24 AM
Ok, no problem, one does what one can's. Patience is a virtue...