Extending SugarCRM

Posted by Richard Thomas on 19 June 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: sugarcrm, customer relationship management, open source, extensions, google calendar, dimdim

As I said two posts back we use the Community Edition of SugarCRM as our Customer Relationship Management system. SugarCRM is very good and it has a good community behind it. There have been a lot of modules written that extend SugarCRM in various ways, many of which interact with other online systems. I have added a couple to our install of SugarCRM recently. They are connectors that allow interaction with Dimdim and Google Calendars.

The Dimdim Connector module allows us to start a Dimdim meeting directly from within SugarCRM. You set your default settings in Dimdim, install the module into SugarCRM and enter your Dimdim login details. This provides you with a new shortcut in SugarCRM which will log you into Dimdim and automatically start a new meeting with no other setup required. [Edit July 2011 We had a paid service with Dimdim.  Unfortunately Dimdim was sold and the new owners closed it down as it competed directly with one of their products].

The Google Calendar Connector module interested me as I use the iGoogle page as my homepage in my browser. I have a number of 'gadgets' installed that allow me to access various useful tools - twitter, google reader, google talk, gmail and, of course, google calendar. I use google calendar reasonably often. In fact, I use it more than I do the SugarCRM one as it appears on my homepage whereas the SugarCRM one requires me to open a new tab. This can cause problems for our staff from time to time. Entirely my fault but I am an obstinate person.

However, the SugarCRM google Calendar connector solves this problem. It allows SugarCRM to synchronise its calendar with the Google one so any appointment adds, moves and changes are reflected in both calendars. This pleases me no end. This also allows me to receive text message reminders when I have an appointment due as Google Calendar can be set up to send texts when something is coming up. Excellent!

These modules are very easy to install as SugarCRM has a module loader in which you select the module you want to install, click a button and there it is - up and running almost instantly. Of course it pays to make a full backup of SugarCRM first just in case. No problems so far though.