Hi,
Storm and Storm contributed module are becoming a major addition to Drupal and it is great to see how it comes along.
As I keep looking at it and am testing it for our use - I tried to adapt it and failed.

What I would need is system to create records of contacts with clients.
I created this with CCK and Views.
Scenario:

  • Intranet for a company / team working across remote location and in the same building.
  • The team workers are discussing projects with others (people in companies - or freelancers).
  • Each form of (key) contacts are recorded (calls, emails, conversations as general term).
  • The record is a node - but not too relevant - because what team members need to see is a view listing all conversations by date and sortable by other fields used.
  • Basically the actual record should then not be altered any more. Certainly it should never be deleted as the event happened and is fact. Amendmens may be needed to correct spelling & other mistakes. - All this is easily configurable in Drupal.

I created a Content Type called Contact Record and added a few CCK fields such as:

  • A Project "trigger" reference - (Taxonomy term created from the title of a Node defining a potential project & agreed by management to pursue) - required.
  • date time of contact - may be different to the time of recording - required.
  • team member making the contact (User reference) - required.
  • person contacted (Taxonomy - allowing tagging to add new contacts) - required.
  • company contacted (person may be freelancer)(Taxonomy - as above - dif. vocabulary) - not required.
  • Contact note - record of the conversation - required.
  • Action (note) - what needs to happen - required.
  • Action by - who needs to do that (User reference) - required.
  • Deadline - for the Action (Calendar Date adding it to Calendar Views) - not required

I tried to add this to the Storm Note Content type - but then the Storm functionalities stopped working.
Storm Note could be the right Content Type for this - but then this might be one of it's own.
Right now I will use this Contact Record System and when this leads to a contract we will try to see if Storm will work for us.
One might to think to use Tickets for this - but the problem is there are not the right fields and one would have to create too many records first.
A key aspect of the Contact Record Logging is to have a simple, quick system not to loose contacts made - before they become Clients (or Projects). The system I described does not need any setting up of records with a lot of fields to fill in.
There is only one "trigger" Node. Management has to define a "Project" - a marketing campaign say - to allow team members to spend time and to record the Contacts again.
It is also essential that the content can be read in a Table View and not requires referring through listing of nodes.

In this context it would be good if the Storm Content Types would allow more flexibility to add customisation and CCK fields. This might be difficult - I have no idea.
What might be a solution is to keep all as it is and to add Customisation for additional Content Types. I am sure people with the necessary skill can add these functions themselves, but a lot of people interested in using Storm will not have the skill, not the time or funding and would prefer to be able to customise Storm Content Types with their (basic) knowledge of Drupal.

Comments

carsten müller’s picture

Hi tryitonce,

i think you are talking about a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) like Sugar CRM. It is alos on our list after the main functions are stable and after the redesign. We are not sure if we want to integrate a third party CRM like Sugar CRM or if we enlarge Storm Contrib.

We also want to track our contacts and the relationships. But at the moment we still focus on the main functionallity of storm and we want to make a redesign including a special theme for storm.

So please be patient, we have this issue on our list together with our wishes. But i don't this this will happen this year. Maybe someone has a solution for the meantime...

tryitonce’s picture

Thanks Carsten, good to know ....