Version 3.5 of Sugar and Popsicle?
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Anyone tried this yet?
Hi,
check out this thread:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1268450&forum_id=449584
I would also like to hear some user comments on this.
Regards,
Vlado
I am a newbie and I have spent some time looking at email integration and SugarCRM. Here are some findings / thoughts - I hope these are useful and please accept my apologies if I have made any blunders through ignorance. I am not a PHP expert.
I am running SugarCRM 3.50 (using SSL), PHP 4.2.2 and MySQL 4.0.25.
I must start by saying that automated email integration is an essential feature and all credit to people for creating popsicle / blendo.
Some Questions on Popsicle
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Here is what I did...
1) Sent test mail 1
2) Ran pop3.php
3) Logged on, selected mail from pop up and chose Junk
Result: email stored in SugarCRM against user admin
Lots of white space in the body
(Accounts) added to subject.
4) Sent test mail 2
5) Ran pop3.php
6) Logged on, selected mail from pop up and chose Junk
Result: email stored in SugarCRM against user admin
Lots of white space in the body
(Accounts) added to subject.
7) Sent test mail 3
8) Ran pop3.php
9) Logged on, selected mail from pop up and chose contact. Made up a contact to match the email
Result: email stored in SugarCRM against user admin
Lots of white space in the body
(Accounts) added to subject.
10) Sent test mail 4
11) Sent test mail 5
12) Ran pop3.php
13) Logged on, no mail popped up
Result: 2 emails stored in SugarCRM.
User is the user the contact is assigned to now, not admin.
Contact is listed as the contact I set up
The mails has lots of white space in the body
(Accounts) added to subject.
14) Change the contact to be related to an account, sent another test mail and ran pop3
Result: 1 email stored in SugarCRM.
User is the user the contact is assigned to now, not admin.
Contact is listed as the contact I set up
email is related to account (previous emails are not)
The mails has lots of white space in the body
(Accounts) added to subject.
Since I don't know what popsicle is designed to do I cant be sure what are bugs but I have the following questions...
1) Mails are being loaded even if the contact is new. I thought that emails for unknown contacts are held until user specifies what to do with them?
2) Should there be so much white space in message body?
3) Why does account get appended to the subject?
Some thoughts on email integration
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I had a look at the blendo email loader - the main benefit is that is loads attachments but I imagine this is an easy change for popsicle.
I also purchased and reviewed the outlook add in. Perhaps 3.5.0 is a bit new but I found it to be very buggy and generally slow.
I think it is worthwhile reviewing the objectives of email integration. If my client likes SugarCRM then I need to integrate email effectively and I may have time to help develop an open source solution. I'd like to get other's options on what email integration should do and how it should do it so here are my ideas to hopefully stimulate a debate...
a) What it should do
* automate storing of emails in SugarCRM against client/account as a historic reference. All incoming and outgoing emails should be routed to another mailbox by the email server after virus/spam/phising checks. (Popsicle / blendo are close to this, outlook addin is completely manual)
* Create and maintain a list of unknown contacts. User to specify what should be done about these before any emails are loaded into sugar. This can be used to exclude any personal mails. (I think this is what popsicle has over blendo)
* Facilitate better service management by automatically creating cases for emails. The user would need to record if follow up actions are required for an email. If replies are sent then the subject line can be used to associate a new email with an existing case. If an email comes in for a case that was closed then it will be re-opened (an interesting statistic in itself).
What I was thinking here is that the subject matter could be examined to look for related emails. A case would then group these together and prompt the user to update the status of these collected emails. It may be a response is required and follow up activities are needed. This can be done as it stands but it requires the user to create the cases themselves which in practice they may not bother to do.
* Many users prefer their existing email programs and they should be able to use this or the email facilities in sugar. If they use sugar then the templates function would offer time savings but a reply mechanism (and maybe other functions?) is needed if the sugar email system is to become attractive to users.
* Avoid email dependence on sugar. Using a shadow mail box will mean email can continue if sugar is unavailable.
b) how it should do it
I'm new to Sugar so I have only questions...
* Is Soap intended as an API? IF we used this will future sugar releases require less re-work?
* Can we use a module to load this function? As unknown contact filters will be related to users then we could maintain them within sugar?
* Can we use a module to bring users to an unknown contacts page automatically?
So thats my pennies worth...
tia
patrick
Hello Patrick,
Its great to hear that people are still showing interest for Popsicle. I have to admit that Im not able to test Popsicle in a production environment but as far as I know Popsicle should work in a setup described by you. Downgrading SugarCRM would probably help trace potential incompatibility issues. I was not able to keep the pace with SugarCRM developers so it is possible that DB related parts of Popsicle are not up-to-date, meaning: they are producing unwanted results.
Here is the idea of Popsicle in short:
admin@company.com is the e-mail address of the SugarCRM administrator
crm@company.com is the e-mail address of Popsicle
user@company.com is the e-mail address of the user, user has configured its e-mail client to automatically Bcc/forward all the client related outgoing/incoming e-mail to Popsicles e-mail address
client1@client.com is the e-mail address of the client known to SugarCRM
client2@client.com is the e-mail address of the client unknown to SugarCRM
Popsicle consists out of:
- Installer in further text IN
- mail manager in further text MM
- daemon - in further text DE
Each of these three are php scripts. They relay on PHP (with IMAP module enabled) running on a same web server and with connection to the same MySQL database where SugarCRM is running.
IN reads user input and patches SugarCRM to work with Popsicle. It alters original SugarCRMs scripts to enable invoking of MM (opens popup). IN also creates two MySQL tables:
- temp_clients holds temporary data for clients
- temp_emails holds temporary e-mails
DE is the core script. It should be invoked on a regular basis (as cron job). DE logs into pop server, fetches all e-mails, parses them and saves their content in temporary tables.
MM starts when user logs into SugarCRM. MM checks if there are any new clients/e-mails in temporary table and if so shows list of them in a new browser window (popup).
Scenario 1:
SugarCRM user user writes e-mail to client client1. Bcc of this mail lands into crm@company.com inbox. Now pop3.php fetches this e-mail, parses it, matches this e-mail with client1@client.com and saves it into SugarCRM. Finally the e-mail is deleted out of Popsicles inbox on the mail server. Popsicle pop3.php should be smart enough to assign e-mail correctly, meaning assign it to correct user and client1 within SugarCRM. No extra user action is required for this step.
Scenario 2:
User receives e-mail from client1. E-mail client on users computer forwards this e-mail to Popsicle and the rest flows like in scenario 1. No extra user action is required for this step.
Scenario 3:
User sends e-mail to client2. When fetching this mail pop3.php fails to find it in SugarCRM database and stores this e-mail and contact data into temp_* tables. Finally the e-mail is deleted out of Popsicles inbox on the mail server. Extra user action is required next time the user or admin logs in. See bellow.
Scenario 4:
User receives e-mail from client2. This scenario is combination of scenarios 3 and 4. No extra user action is required for this step. See bellow.
Scenarios 3 and 4 require extra user input, meaning Popsicle was not able to automatically store e-mail and MM will be used for this. Upon next user login into SugarCRM MM is started. It displays list with all non-processed e-mails relevant for user (admin can see all of the non-processed e-mails). User can choose either to store client2 data into Contacts/Leads/Accounts or to Junk it (this e-mail address will be marked as inactive and any further e-mails related to this e-mail address will be ignored).
Thats how Popsicle should work. Initially Ive created Popsicle to use it with SugarCRM but eventually, since we decided to use solution other than SugarCRM, Popsicle went on ice. Ive made a sourceforge.net spin-off out of it and since than I made only few changes to its core 0001 version (changes include adding installer and some bug fixes). Please check out README, CHANGELOG and all of the forums related to Popsicle, especially those early posts in SugarCRM forum (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1194905&forum_id=370868) to found out more about Popsicle.
By now I probably spent more time writing posts to this forum than actually developing Popsicle :).
I hope this info was of any help to you sorry I didnt answer all of the questions please send me an e-mail reminder Ill try to reply you ASAP.
Regards,
Vlado
I appreciate the reply Vlado. This thread should be usefull for anyone getting up to speed with popsicle.
I will start a thread on automated email integration in the SugarCRM forum.
Thanks again
Patrick