SugarCRM Research

Started to look into sugarCRM a little.

It appears to be the 'big daddy' of OpenSource CRMS, according to this list:

http://www.insidecrm.com/features/top-open-source-solutions-121307/

Although that articles a little dated.

One anxiety about the Sugar approach is perhaps the tendency to hive off all the sweet features into the commerical offering: eg Word plugin looks like it's gone that way.

The ability to auto create form documents with contact/workflow info from the db would be a killer deal for me :-)

An Open Office plugin would be even better that an M$ one and there are a number of people trying to do this. Zucker reports is the most popular. I can't get it to install though? In fact I can't get any (zip'd) modules to install using the loader? A permissions issue perhaps?

google domain name change

alter domain records for google apps pointing to your own URL:

In the dns section of your hosting services control panel create cname files thus:

docs	CNAME	3600	ghs.google.com.
mail	CNAME	3600	ghs.google.com.

etc.

note the final period at end...

so now:
http://docs.thecrossing.co.uk

points to google docs app for The Crossing, etc

Sharing Address Book in Google Apps

One issue which at present is prohibiting a move away from egroupware is the addressbook. The MySQL backend of eGw allows address info to be shared with considerable granularity and control, it is arguably onw of the best aspect of the app.

Having now replicated all eGw users in The Crossing's google apps domain, we are on the brink of migrating email from eGw, but there is one issue - there at present would be no shared address book.

It is possible to export the entire eGw addressbook (in vcard format) and import it into a users google account, (this works nicely, including import of eGw categories as google groups). The addresses don't show in other domain users accounts. one short term owrkaround would be to invite all users to import said addressbook. How are ammnedments and additions then dealt with? They wouldn't be...

Possible solutions?
1. Google Shared Contacts API, according to this, by using the aforementioned, users outside of the apps domain, can become shared. Not sure how this works...

2. LDAP backend for google apps? see here.
This wouldn't have to be iphone compatable as an iphone can also (read only) an LDAP address book. see here.

Google calendar setup

There are some things to note when setting up the calendars using google apps, especially if you're trying to work with more than one domain as I am.

Sharing calendars

Viewing another users' original calendar can be added in the 'Add a friend's calendar' box, but it's possible to share secondary calendars that users create by sending out a link with the calendar's address.

There's also the question of whether such shared calednars show as 'my calendars' or in the 'other calendars' pane. I think the issue is determined by whether you give permissions for the other user to manage the sharing on that calendar, not whether the users happens to be an apps admin as some suggest (eg here). I'll report back on this after more experience.

A Survey on Collaborative Working and Sharing in Church Communities

Thanks for coming to look at the survey! The form can be very easily completed online and should only take a minute or two.

The main survey questionnaire is here

The purpose of the main survey, part of my sabbatical, is to establish in what ways Churches at present manage the pastoral administration of the life of their Churches. The survey also seeks to gain an insight into desirable developments in this area, facilitated by technology.

I have tried to make the questions as generic as possible, with no particular denominational emphasis, consequently some questions may not perfectly fit your situation.

If you're interested to know what I'm specifically interested in developing with this piece of work have a look at this post.

A second questionnaire for those interested in being part of a team to work on a project to develop software is here. This is not just for those with IT software development skills, the input of end users/practitioners will be important as well.

Moving from eGroupWare?

Will it really be possible to make an easy transition from eGroupware?

One problem is that Felamimail is proving difficult to use because of it's slowness.

I'm drawn to using google apps as it works nicely with my iphone. I never got a mobile solution that worked with egw. eg caledar sharing is working well, with multiple calendars.

The important issue centres around migrating the addressbook. At present, by using different eGw addressbooks we have grouped contacts for different Churches in the Circuit, and also for some departmental groups at The Crossing Church & Centre eg 'cafe contacts', 'mark's work contacts' etc etc. By doing this we have been able to control which eGw users see which contacts. By also using categories we have been able to sub-sort groups of contacts.

Even if we import all users into our google domain as shared contacts using the shared contacts API I don't see how we can replicate the granular control we previously had? Does the API work with the free (standard) version of google apps? (This program only works with pro/education versions. This is an example of the kind of software application that can be developed using the API.)

In the short term perhaps this is not an issue. In reality the eGw addressbook is rarely used for creating printed lists of members etc, as they can only be printed from the web application in a basic form. Accessing the SQL database directly for the purposes of creating reports has proved tricky as well, although in theory that should be quite possible.

I found importing the vcf export of the eGw addressbook into my google account worked very well (with the exception of the birthday field). This does not make the contacts shared however, that needs doing by the API.

A quick and dirty short-term solution could be to let every user import their own contact list using the the vcf? These lists would soon be come unsyncronised of course. Would that matter as long as someone held the master one which records Church membership?

Interesting example of what someone in another profession (legal) to achieve many of things above here
hmm

setting up google apps for domain

As suggested by google I'm creating a CSV for importing the accounts.

here's where you'll find them on a linux machine:

/etc/passwd - Where the user's name, and other pertinent information are stored. This includes the password unless your system is using shadow passwords.

Tip: copy the text into a wp, change the ':' for ',' ; save the file as a csv then you can open the file in calc, columns are sorted for you to drop into the google-formatted csv