SugarCRM

How does authentication work in Sugar 7?

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Different application’s approach: Sugar 7 framework

For whoever is reading this article and is not familiar with Sugar on the most recent version 7.x of the product, it is important to note that the application’s core is now a RESTful based API.

The presentation layer is based on SugarCRM’s framework “Sidecar”, that uses quite a few Open Source libraries (including Bootstrap, jQuery, Handlebar and Backbone.js).

The framework’s MVC layer is cached/stored within the browser at the first application’s load and interacts with the REST API on every subsequent call, creating a more powerful experience as a Single Page Application.

The great concept around the newer application’s framework is that everything can now be achieved interacting with the application via API calls, if it can be done in the application by using the interface (except BWC functionality).

By doing so, the framework provides extreme flexibility and huge integration capabilities, and therefore it allows customers to build any business process around the application.

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Customise SugarCRM Case assignment from Inbound Emails

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Creating Support Tickets from Emails is one of the core functionalities of a ticketing system and it can hugely benefit any organisation if the ticketing system is directly part of the global CRM implementation.

SugarCRM since the early days has included on any version of its CRM product a great functionality that is commonly used between my customers: the Inbound Email to Case creation (as in Email to Support Ticket creation).

To know more about how to set-up the functionality out of the box, for a Sugar v7.2.2.0 (latest Sugar version while writing this article), please refer to this section of the manual.

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Arduino and SugarCRM 7 – Do we have un-handled support tickets?

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Following up on my previous post about connecting an Arduino to internet with an Ethernet module, I wanted to build a quick solution to notify the support team about un-handled customer issues on the CRM system.

Arduino Sugar7 Case counter
Arduino Sugar7 Case counter

The objective is to connect via the REST API to SugarCRM and give an immediate feedback to the team using an Arduino. The output can be anything; from an awesome smoke machine, to a rotating light, a small set of LEDs, a LCD display, an audio alarm, whatever really. In this specific case it will be a set of 5 LED’s and a buzzer.

This practical example shows how to bring together Arduino micro-controllers, basic electronic skills and software web technologies. The result creates a physical device that gives real time feedback for software users about something that needs immediate attention.

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SugarCRM using multiple MySQL databases

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Let’s assume you currently have a MySQL Setup with one “Master” and multiple “Slaves”, and you do want to make sure your Sugar system uses the “Slave” instances for reading purposes. Alternatively, if you are looking at deploying MySQL Master/Slave instances with a click of a button to test this out, you can achieve the same setup using Amazon AWS RDS, by deploying one MySQL database with additional read replicas.

SugarCRM commercial editions already have a feature that allows to connect Sugar to a slave database for Reports and/or an additional one for module’s ListViews, providing additional performance and scalability to the application. The feature is provided out of the box and it is available by changing a configuration file, for self hosted systems.

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Can I remove Team Security from SugarCRM?

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Any SugarCRM Commercial Edition has a great feature for segmenting data, called Team Security.

In a nutshell, all non Administrator Users can only see SugarCRM records associated with at least one of the Teams they are part of.

…but what if in my organisation I do not want to limit who can see which records on the CRM system? Keep reading to find out the answer!

Not everybody knows that SugarCRM recently introduced the Visibility and ACL Layer that gives Partners and tech savvy End Users, a great granular control when customising record visibility and permissions.

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CRM, SugarCRM and a RESTful integration

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At InsightfulCRM I have been involved with SugarCRM projects of various sizes for quite few years, and I was recently asked to present at the Sydney PHP Meetup group about SugarCRM and REST integration.

Let me share the presentation I prepared for the Meetup on my blog as well:


To give you an overview, the presentation starts with an introduction about CRM and why businesses that do not have a CRM strategy should definitely consider implementing one.

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