XRMS offers great CRM possibilities. Perhaps we could add some of the XRMS basics to Drupal through independent modules and encourage XRMS integration.
There are several posts calling to add an XRMS equivalent, something just a touch more professional than CiviCRM, to Drupal, but all of it depends on adding a big chunk of code. What if we extended the Drupal user by the equivalent of CiviCRM and XRMS combined using several small modules?
We could then integrate XRMS using the Drupal extended user instead of the XRMS user. XRMS would be one step closer to Drupal integration. We could add XRMS one step at a time and, at each step, make CiviCRM, or any other CRM software, easier to install.
If most or all of XRMS was integrated by Drupal modules then CiviCRM could pick up on any of the XRMS integration modules to enhance CiviCRM. The XRMS developers could choose any point to implant XRMS into the womb of Drupal. You and I would benefit from a CRM a touch more business oriented than CiviCRM and slightly less restrictive than XRMS. The XRMS developers would be smothered in the thematic honey of Drupal.
Comments
Feedback requested on CiviCRM ....
Hey Peter:
We'd love to get your feedback on CiviCRM and how to make it more applicable to your business situation etc. We have a fair amount of momentum and while focussed on NPO's / Member / Political groups have a pretty flexible and generalized data model
a comparison of strengths and weaknesses against XRMS would be great
lobo
http://civicrm.org/
http://civicrm.org/blog/
http://wiki.civicrm.org/
http://lobostravel.blogspot.com/
Hi, At the moment I am
Hi,
At the moment I am looking at XRMS as well. After looking at SugarCRM and Vtiger and a dozen commercial packages, I have to say that I am impressed with XRMS. Its is coded as a CRM package should be. The projectleader over there is having a lot of experiences in huge CRM implementation and that is something you can see in XRMS.
I had a quick look at civiCRM and tried some but found out that it is not written with the salesperson/manager in mind. I do not mean that it is useless but to be a competitor of packages from for example salesforce there is still much to be done. I would recommend the civiCRM team to install XRMS and try to think how you would work as a salesperson/manager. See how things are done over there (and do not forget all the plug-ins they have over there).
In addition, I do not see the benefit of implementing CRM into your website. However, there is a strong pro to connect XRMS for example with Drupal since you can integrate webforms in XRMS. This means that form input on your webpage are directly put in XRMS and added as an activity to a certain person or group.
My PHP knowledge is to basic so I have no idea how to do it but there is a plugin at XRMS for these kind of things.
Everything including the kitchen sink
If CRM is in a Web site, you can access it equally as an Intranet, Extranet, and use all the standard access controls without having to do all the weird special stuff you have to do for some proprietary non Web CRM.
When your customer starts talking about not renewing a contract because of service difficulties, you can view your company's incident management system in the same Web site. If your company offers support through forums, you can look at the forums in the same Web site.
With CRM in a CMS based Web site, you have access to all your company data and all your applications with one login.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Drupal with XRMS - is there life
Is there still an interest to bridge Drupal and XRMS. There seems to be a great reluctance within the SNP arena to touch a CRM package that would have a business focus - much like a marriage between Drupal and XRMS would create. I may be able to bring some resources to the project, but will need some help.
Still interested in XRMS
I am converting sites to Drupal 6 and will look at XRMS again as a Drupal 6 based project. XRMS is now about 11 on my top ten list and will climb back into the top ten when the Drupal 6 conversions are finished.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
petermoulding.com/web_architect
We will be implementing XRMS
We will be implementing XRMS soon, so I would be interested in helping with Drupal integration where needed.
Status update
How is this coming along? Did you move forward with the install?
Please provide an update, as I'm looking into implementation now.
Thank you!
No update since 2006
XRMS have not released an update since July 2006. They expect everyone to download from CVS. That makes XRMS a moving target that is hard to hit. I will not attempt to mix or match it with Drupal. For my current use, I can leave it in a separate Web site.
Integration with Drupal requires a release structure where you can match an integration module with release x.x of XRMS. Imagine the support requests.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
petermoulding.com/web_architect
XRMS
XRMS has recently (February 2009) released a version upgrade.
I'm in no way associated with that project. I was pointed to it this morning by someone who has experience with commercial CRM applications used by educational institutions.
I was/am looking for a reasonably featured on-web relationship tool and will continue looking. The project I'm involved with may eventually be drupalized - that's part of what's in the in-box.
-Quid
Addendum to above post XRMS
I went back to the site and realize that the main page on the site makes no reference to this upgrade.
- it's in one of their forums.
The post states that the new release is not an attempt to fork xrms and it appears that they are going to put up a new public website.
There is NOT a stable XRMS 2.0.
That forum topic you linked to was from an overenthusiastic user who apparently was in on an Email discussion that included one of the original developers, and who was wanting to jump-start development of such a version.
Read “Walter”’s posts in that thread.
1.99.2 remains the most recent stable non-CVS version, and it does indeed date back to 2006, but that could be a good thing: maybe there really hasn’t been anything major to have to fix since then. There are some XSS vulnerabilities, but consider that XRMS is meant to be installed on an in-house server on an intranet behind a firewall (it’s generally not meant for general public access like Drupal usually is), and that becomes somewhat less important (yes if you’re hosting it on a shared server for some reason, this becomes much more vital, but if you must access it from outside, it would be way better to use an extranet or intranet with VPN).
As has been suggested above, the one thing Drupal really should integrate her would be finding a way to use the existing WebForms module in conjunction with the XRMS WebForms “plugin” (not really a true plugin, but more of a page template and example .PHP script) so that a customer visiting a Drupal site could fill out an Inquiry form and it would automatically generate an XRMS Company, Contact, Activity, and optional Opportunity, and optionally assign those to a specific staff member (either by user request or by some staff load-balancing algorithm).
The existing XRMS Webform template needed quite a bit of work on my part before I could use it on a recent customer project. For one thing, while XRMS itself uses PHP ADODB for database access and thus potentially supports a wide variety of databases, this module used the non-standard UPDATE-like “INSERT INTO … SET field1=value1, field2=value2, …” syntax for all INSERTs, instead of the SQL standard “INSERT INTO … (fields list) VALUES (values list)” syntax. I know for a fact that that non-standard INSERT … SET syntax would fail on many databases other than MySQL. I converted all of them in the version I use.
Not using jQuery
The XRMS development thread contains a discussion about using custom javascript versus jQuery. The discussion is leaning toward using a custom developed library because it will be smaller. They ignore the fact that there are lots of requests for extra features and their library will quickly grow to jQuery size without the advantage of testing in many browsers. They are heading down the right path for 2006 but the wrong path for 2009. In the long term, we might be better off developing a pro version of CivicCRM. ProCRM?
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Why not fork xrms? Have been
Why not fork xrms? Have been investigating alot of CRM systems in the past and xrms was just brilliant. Simple but yet very powerful it only was lacking some basic features. And as you can see alot op people tried to kickstart the project trying to put xrms back on track but without luck. Most developers over there are complaining that they do it for free in their spare time so shut up and do it yourself is basically the message. Which is uderstandable when you have to do the work in your spare free time of course.
On the other hand, look at drupal which started small and is now becoming bigger and bigger and thus attracting more developers every day. Since the basis of xrms is so good I do not see any reason why there would not be a great future for xrms as well.
Mambo - joomla
subarcrm - Vtiger
xrms - ProCRM?