crm recomendation

[noworldorder]

I am looking fro a simple crm to work with Vicidial. I looked at vtiger at the instalation seems beyond my abilities. Is there a simpler solution that is easier to install?

Thanks ~ chris

[Op3r]

vtiger is the most simplest thing you can integrate with vicidial .

[noworldorder]

do you think installation is beyond a total newbie or do you know of fool proof step by step instructions - thanks

[josh1856]

Chris try out Vicibox Server which I believe is the official platform now.

http://www.vicibox.com/server/index.html

Very simple install and the instructions are included.

seems the site is down currently but I am sure it will be back up soon.

-jp

[mflorell]

Site seems to be up to me. If it is down can you provide a traceroute?

[williamconley]

SugarCRM is quite easy to install and professionally maintained. It does not allow "Private Label" but will certainly allow your logo top left corner (but you WILL have a powered by SugarCRM logo at the bottom along with the 3 line license requirement).

It also has a nice installation package which has checks for compatibility and pre-req's and will even install its own database.

I have installed it on LOTS of ubuntu boxes with no issues.

[williamconley]

Site seems to be up to me. If it is down can you provide a traceroute?

i've watched it daily for a while, never seems down at all.

[ruben23]

@williamconley

But how do you synchronized SugarCRM with vicidial..? like as i see vtiger can be able to integrate directly to Vicidial.

[williamconley]

ordinarily "syncing" is not what one needs between vicidial and the CRM. ordinarily your Dialer agents handle a completely different class of client than your fulfillment center. Sales center agents operate in Vicidial and Fulfillment/Customer service operates in the CRM (Sugar). So usually it's more of a "push sales to the CRM" scenario. We charge $99 for a custom "Push based on Disposition" from Vicidial to Sugar.

If there is a reason for the sales agents to work in the CRM, the data can be scripted to be shared based on your operational model.

Do all your agents have access to all the data in sugar and in Vicidial? or only their own sales? or do your vicidial agents work in groups for specific account managers in SugarCRM?

every business model is different for this. we have many implementations for it.

the most important point: it's all MySQL data. So you can write a script to move/copy/sync whatever data needs to be shared (which is what we do for clients who require a CRM).

[noworldorder]

For some reason I find vtiger to be anything but intuitive. Am I the only one? I have used Maximizer and Act and both are so easy to use. But with vtiger nothing seems natural.

I was looking at SugarCRM but I am confused. It says open sourse but then it says there is a 7 say evaluation period. Is this for an enterprise version? Is there a free open source version and if so is it sufficient or is the enterprise necessary?

And what is Sugar like to use? Do you think it is intuitive and simple?

Thanks,
Chris

[mflorell]

Vtiger is a fork of SugarCRM that is free and GPL licensed. If you were confused by Vtiger, then Sugar might not be any better.

[williamconley]

SugarCRM CE (Community Edition) is free. Fairly easy to install. And there are a few online demos as well. I've even found (in the past) a couple VM's with it pre-installed.

Their licensing is not pure GPL, it's a modified version requiring that the license lines and "powered by SugarCRM" be visible on the page at all times. Their code enforces this requirement. If you attempt to take off the "Powred by SugarCRM" or the three lines of license notification at the bottom of the page, it will bork the sugar install.

It is, however, different enough from vTiger to give a different feel. And considering the price it's worth checking into if you are capable of an installation.

[mflorell]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13 ... ?art_pos=1

"Open source doesn't mean free and was never really meant to mean free," Martin Schneider, senior director of communications at SugarCRM

[williamconley]

i guess we'll be sticking with version 5.5 for a while yet. until they're done milking the money from the "i must have the latest!" users and release the new interface to the (free) community edition.

the community edition has always lagged behind the pro edition. but in my opinion is still far superior to anything else on the market. even most of the paid versions of other software pales by comparison.

but that's just me.

[noworldorder]

VERSION: 2.4-256
BUILD: 100523-0840
asterisk 1.4.30
dahdi-linux-complete-2.2.0.2+2.2.0
vtigercrm-5.1.0
Vtiger510_vicidial_002_noclose.patch


I wonder if anyone can suggest the best setup for my needs.

Currently I am using Vicidial for manual dialing. I am setting appointments for a salesman and have a few different projects on the go. I have 10000 leads I am calling. Ideally I would like to call with Vicidial and once I make contact with a decision maker, have the lead transferred to a CRM that has a click to dial feature.

Vitiger seems to meet these requirements but, what bothers me about Vtiger is that all leads seem to be present from all the different campaigns. I am used to the idea of separate address books. And something I find annoying is when I schedule a call I have to input the start date and end date - this is unnecessary and tedious for what my needs are.

Based on what I need to you thie vtiger is the best option?

Regards ~ chris

[williamconley]

vTiger and SugarCRM share codebase. they are virtually identical from that standpoint. properly programmed either one will "do the job". the customization required to "create an appointment" when agreed upon with the vicidial agent is pretty much the same on either one.

vTiger and sugar each have capabilities without customization, but once you actually customize the interface to fit your needs and modify the exchange of data as well, they can fit your needs almost perfectly.

i still prefer Sugar to vTiger, but that's merely my preference based on the choices of many clients choosing sugar over vTiger.

[noworldorder]

@williamconley

The customization you are refering to... is this done at the code level or is it at the GUI level somewhere. I have found the documentation to be a bit lacking.

Thanks[/i]

[williamconley]

both, depending on your methodology.

[TroyD]

Just my 2 cents worth here, in my opinion, SugarCRM is a more viable option than Vtiger, IF you need something custom. If the "out of the box" functionality in Vtiger gets you what you need then it may be easier to integrate. The lack of a custom module builder in Vtiger and easy field level security along with workflow triggers made SugarCRM Pro the choice for us since Vtiger was lacking this.. We use MSSQL 2005 as the back-end so making sugar 'feed' the dialer and getting the dialer to update CRM was easier as you can link MySQL (vicidial database) from within MSSQL and write queries, etc to manipulate data. I wish Vtiger had the module builder built in and had easier field level security because it would save us a ton in licensing for pro $$. If you can build modules for Vtiger then it may be cheaper! There is kind of a module "builder" for Vtiger, (not built in) but it is not nearly as easy to create modules (from what i have read, I never tried to use it). We have 2 custom modules we created for SugarCRM. A phones module to track all numbers we get for a client good or bad and an address module to do the same with addresses. We research the phones and addresses of our clients so we had to be able to track this way.. It was not an easy task, but basically MSSQL creates a import file for us based on our criteria then dumps the .csv file in a folder that the dialer watches, and then gets imported, de-duped and feeds the Vicidial_list table with numbers that we can dial. Another job in MSSQL takes the results of the calls from Vicidial (using openquery to talk to linked MYSQL server from MSSQL) and puts this info back into CRM to our custom phones module.. This is of course the ten thousand foot view of our processes, but gives you an idea of what you may encounter trying to work with and sync CRM with the dialer and vice-versa.. When its all built and functioning, its a BEAUTIFUL thing!!

[williamconley]

My clients prefer not to $pend, so it's SugarCRM CE (free, no licensing limits) which has the module builder but is missing Group Security and Triggers. But single call centers don't generally NEED group security, and you CAN just duplicate the entire app for anything that needs to be segregated (or make a new module and don't allow access to it, based on Roles which is a fake but functional method of group security).

Then all the 'customization' of vTiger and Sugar is about the same, but Sugar works out of the box just fine.

I will say that the need for it is diminishing (custom fields, hello? thanks matt!). But so far, considering its price, Sugar has been very effective. I still have only one or two clients using vTiger (and those DO use it straight from the box without mods).

[mflorell]

Keep in mind that the new version of SugarCRM has a new license and is technically not free for business use anymore.

[williamconley]

Makes no mention or limitation of Commercial use:

http://media.sugarcrm.com/datasheets/Ed ... arison.pdf

Mentions commercial use as in "no warranty for commercial losses":

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/SPL

This is from the download, and states that its licensing terms are "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License":

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/support/doc ... _HTML.html

Which links to:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- ... /legalcode

Pertinent Restrictions: No "Sublicensing" allowed. No restrictions of the existing licenses. "You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation." (Section 3 allows for unlimited reproduction and distribution without the right to make Adaptations.)

Which translates (in my reading) to:

1) We may distribute the original SugarCRM source code to anyone for free, unchanged, without collecting money for "Distribution" of the code unchanged.

2) After distribution of the complete, unchanged, code to a client, if a Client wishes to pay someone to modify his code (which he is using for non-commercial purposes), said client may be in violation of the license if they pay someone to "modify" (adapt) the code to suit their needs.

3) However, since SugarCRM is specifically designed to be customized (without modifying the existing codes, as customizations are NEW code added to the "custom" folder, not edits of the existing code), there does not seem to be a lot of danger in that violation (even if a client modifies the SugarCRM instance running on their own box, I am not sure that anyone could enforce a "you can't modify the source code for this open source software" rule).

Mostly what I saw in it regarding commercial limitations was that one cannot sell the source code (reproduce or distribute for monetary gain). USE of the "work" was not restricted, only reproduction and distribution.

Which is really quite fair. I mean, charging someone $1000 for the SOFTWARE that's FREE (sort of like people do with VICIdial!!!) is just a pure ripoff. But they do not limit commercial USE of the end product, and merely require that it be distributed intact. In the case of SugarCRM, I don't see a problem with that.

As long as your client isn't looking for "private label with implication that it is THEIR software". (Which would be entirely unfair to the people at SugarCRM who made this software, right?)

I mean, WHO, in their right mind, would commercially distribute Free software with the author's name changed? No one, right? LOL

I can understand why they'd do everything they can to avoid "ripoff". They even went so far as to say that it can be included in a larger distribution which IS commercial, as long as their entire package is included, intact, with licenses etc. (Actually, quite happy to find that, because I translate that to "it can be included in an .iso image" as long as it is installed "intact"!!)

[mflorell]

I'm just referring to this actually:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13 ... pen-Source

[williamconley]

That one mostly just seems to relate to the "CE version didn't get the facelift". So far none of my customers have upgraded to 6.0, but missing the "cool new look" is not something I anticipate any of them grumping about, as long as it's still free and "whups" the paid solutions well enough to WORK for their purposes. And that it does.

I'm just happy they still HAVE a free edition. And the fact that they upgraded the module builder seems promising (from 5.2 to 5.5 they mostly just did "tiny bug fixes"). But I doubt it will have anything real cool in it that's new.

As long as it still allows custom module creation, custom page manipulation (by adding files to the custom folder without actually changing the original pages) and keep it free ... it'll work for my clients. Nowhere does it say you cannot use it for business, charge a fee for building modules or get paid to customize the interface for someone running the software ... just that they MUST have the Original SugarCRM and KNOW it's SugarCRM and FREE.

I'm good with that. (Just like VICIdial, only your system isn't anal about it like theirs is!)

You may wish to consider modifying your "License" in a similar fashion to theirs ... since the VICIdial logo (top left) is easily replaced, maybe you should require "Powered by VICIdial" as a bottom floater that links to the EFLO website as part of your "if you use ANY of this code, this MUST be present."

Powered By VICIdial could be considered a "Bragging Point", in my book. (I'm not suggesting removing any other part of the licensing, just adding that, and use the same form of it as SugarCRM does, they even have the "no interface" version covered where text-only must STILL have powered by SugarCRM included as Text somewhere LOL.)

[mflorell]

I added a copyright notice earlier this month in SVN/trunk actually. It is a link that goes to a page that explains trademark, copyright, license and has source code links. This is part of the AGPLv2 that we just recently decided to enable for our codebase. So legally now anyone using ViciDial cannot remove the link to the source code download from the admin.php.