vtiger

[chimaster]

Now that I got your attention. :-0

To be honest, I'd hardley call this a solution, but I've managed to get vTiger Syncing with Zimbra, Syncing with my mobile. I'm working out the bugs, but if someone else trys as well, then I'm looking forward to your comments.

Unfortunately the solution involves Outlook. Active Sync, vTiger plugin and the Zimbra Outlook connector (network edition). Tie them all together and you have appointments working between each other.

I'm only using outlook as I can't sync my linux box (amd64) with evolution at all to Zimbra, vTiger, or my cell.

I'm sure this would work for Thunderbird if you wanted to take outlook out of the equation... now if only I can get over the air sync with Zimbra I can do it all on thunderbird with no dependency on Windows VM Sessions.

[chimaster]

Following on from there...

I've got Zimbra syncing with my mobile via "microsoft push" technology, so I don't need outlook for the phone side of things. However. In my quick research to get calendar connectivity via mozilla lightning thunderbird ( and need no VM sessions) I've found this is distinctly lacking. Zimbra does have a module however, vt doesn't.

It's already been requested as a feature in 5.0.2 and 5.0.4 so I'm not going to whinge. Looks like I still need outlook as middleware to sync Zimbra and vtiger. vTgier Developers ical ical ical ical ical ical ical ical (echo echo echo)

Whilst I'm echoing... Zimbra plugin directly would be pretty nifty too.

Cheers team, keep up the hard slog.

[cheros]

I'd post a me-too. Integrating with Zimbra Open Source would be a MAJOR enhancement to both packages. I'd consider that a good combination to set up the core IT for your average small to medium company wanting avoid the security risks and costs associated with Outlook/Exchange use - it would create quite a bit of impact on the current Salesforce market.

Re. mobile use - I did hear some noises about a Funambol SyncML over-the-air synchronisation. Anyone any more news?

[gfoxjr]

Ditto!

We've used zimbra for several years now and it's rock solid. A tight integration would be most valuable.

[hnock]

As I am working with both Zimbra and vtiger I am facing the same problem. A close integration of both systems seems more than necessary to me. The outlook bypass is kind of a knock out for the open source community.

[prasad.a]

Hi,

We are certainly interested in getting the integration of vtiger with Zimbra. Would be nice if we can nail down some of the requirements to start with.

Can you please put down few points for us on what integration features your are looking forward at?

Regards,
Prasad
vtiger Team

[chimaster]

I'll bite.

1. Calendar scheduling.
I can sync outlook and vtiger, outlook and zimbra, but it's a cumbersome process. Getting all appointments, tasks and events into Zimbra or vTiger from either Zimbra or vtiger would be nice. Currently I've dropped outlook in my vmware session and am all web based for zimbra.

I've installed the .ics export extension for vtiger, I setup my calendar and events in vtiger, export the ics and import into Zimbra. But I don't do this very often.

It would be important to me to have tasks / todos appearing on both sides.

They would need to appear whether entered in vtiger or zimbra.

That to me is number 1. Being organised.

2. Contacts syncing.
getting contacts from Zimbra to vtiger and back again would be a big bonus, so would duplicate checking on the way through. Also, choosing between "group" contacts and "personal" contacts. Quite often we assign contacts / accounts to a group as we are a team of people. Having them assigned to a single user is a hassle as when we do sync (to outlook in the past) only accounts assigned to me would be imported, but as I manage a team of support people I need all accounts to turn up.

3. Email managment.
Tonight I'm going to play a little with IMAP and Zimbra on vtiger, but it's still cumbersome from what I can gather. Being able to email and associate that email with a client is nice, but what happens when we that email is moved around from there? Using the zimbra mail client would be optimum, but that is being greedy as most people don't use zimbra.

Zimlets.

this is probably more of a thing for the Zimbra team / community, but a vtiger zimlet would go a long way to addressing these items without potentially having to change too much code. I believe Zimbra has a well developed API for their zimlets. What the zimlet could do is a combination of the above or ... possibilites are endless.

Having a good calendar / mail program integrated / communicating with vtiger would take it from begin fantastic to being worshipped.

Some reads for current community interest..

http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/ziger/
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24807&page=3&pp=10
http://www.zimbra.com/forums/zimlets/5160-vtiger-zimbra-2.html

If I should'nt post the above, please remove. just my 2c. ;-)


P.S. I'd love to do testing / assist, but I am no code monkey,

[chimaster]

Sales force have already produced a zimlet

http://gallery.zimbra.com/gallery.php?act=viewProd&productId=18

[jherington]

Hello,

This is actually my first post.

I work for a financial services company and we use Zimbra and think it is very stable. I have been investigating both SugarCRM and vtiger and I can tell you from first hand close investigation that a Zimbra integration solution for vtiger would cause quite a stir among many of the Sugar faithful.

So far I like vtiger's look and feel but a Zimbra solution would have made my decision easy two months ago.

I look forward to a post from the vtiger folks soon on this topic.

[prasad.a]

Hi,

We are planning webservice API's for vtiger CRM in our next release, with this it should be possible to have external application like Zimbra integration possible.

Regards,
Prasad
vtiger Team