crm software request

[wuxmedia]

CR -what?

I'm getting some web design clients on the side and my inbox is falling apart a bit, it's ok at the moment, but if it keeps up it will be a mess.
I'm tempted by a paper ledger but it would be surely better to have a Customer Relations Manager.

I'm not even sure that's what I need:
contacts list with notes.
worksheet, or timesheet, time spent on who an on what.
invoice generator from contacts and time sheet.

ticket system, where emails turn into a ticket linked to acct

does anyone know of anything which isn't huge bloat?

tried; dolibarr, looking at sugarCRM, most of them are excessive, fat freeCRM is OK but it doesn't have an invoice thing that i can see.
going through github, see if there is anything interesting.
There was a nearly perfect one, but contact was just a name and a email. no other info.

and yes, I'm sure emacs has a mode for all that..(really, i'm sure it does)

half tempted to code one, but i have no idea.

anyone?

[machinebacon]

Yes, at our company we have set up a CRM named vtiger.

- contacts management (not only customers, but also suppliers) - very detailed and customizable, so you can add your own fields if the 28 or so fields per contact info are not enough ;)
- these are then again organized in Organizations (you can eg. put several single contacts into an organization, like "wux, ivan, rho" -->> "linuxbbq")
- tag contacts and organize them in groups (so, you can eg. tag all those that "requested sample")
- you can even add where you got the contact information from and connect a contact to a certain representative, independent of the ticket.
- project management, who took whom, who did what, who waits for what
- documents can be created using the information sent over vtiger's API
- ticketing (we do have it, but we don't use it because we don't track issues or we don't have LTS agreements)

I am pretty sure all of these are quite bloated, you can always remove elements (for example, the API for e-shop, products, etc)
https://www.vtiger.com/

[franksinistra]

suiteCRM maybe? it even has plethora of plugins/extensions.... seems like overkill though

[wuxmedia]

Thanks guys, i saw vtiger, didn't really look at it, the demo scared me a bit.
yeah, most of them seem overkill.

[machinebacon]

as said, you can turn on/off modules. I kinda like it. I had set it up in a few minutes using bluehost (company uses them), so it was a no-brainer. Probably much more of a headache when you have to do it manually. I was also searching for something much lighter, but I think it is all more or less the same. I checked also zoho and sugarcrm. Had to make a decision and took vtiger for being free and quite detailed, still easy to use for the girls in the office (sorry, ladies!)

http://blog.capterra.com/free-and-open-source-crm/

[wuxmedia]

just remembered https://getbrimir.com/ this is really pretty and a bit more ticketing style which I'm used to, if only they had 'more info' or a 'notes' on the customer contact page.
as it's on github i might fork it. Just have to learn ruby and shit...
suppose a ticket system might be more useful for what i'm doing, looking at them now as well.
http://blog.capterra.com/the-7-best-fre ... are-tools/

All I really need is; list of things to do, note how long they took, for whom and consequently how much they owe me at the end of the month.
really don't need sales and other jazz.
think pen and paper will do me..

[machinebacon]

Okay now we come closer.

You want something like clock-in, clock-out. That's org-mode. Emacs, yup.
http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-work-time.html
http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-commands.html
Once org-mode, always org-mode. I think this is the best piece of code ever written.

I know, I know, whacky keybindings etc. Actually org-mode is just markup-style, you can neatly link to other org-files, they can be connected to each other or not. You don't really need to know the depth of Emacs (especially when you remember F10 opening the pop-down menu). I use org-mode for everything. It changes your life to the better. Give it a try. If you need assistance, I am sure that Gekko and humble me will assist you patiently. The following article is exactly what you were asking for (the ticket numbers can be linked to a contact later)
http://thewanderingcoder.com/2015/02/be ... rg-mode-i/

[GekkoP]

^ What the man says.

[machinebacon]

The "work.org" file would contain the following header, we imagine your job requires you to restart the server, to answer a support mail, a chat or a phone call, edit somebody's website.

Code: Select all

#+STARTUP: overview
#+TAGS: SERVER(s) CHAT(c) MAIL(m) WEBSITE(w) PHONE(p)
#+TODO: TODO(t) WAITING(w) | DONE(d) CANCELED(c)

save this file, and then continue adding your tickets:

Code: Select all

* Ticket 001

you move the cursor to the "Ticket 001" entry, press Ctrl-c Ctrl-c and then press the letter of the tag that describes the ticket best, for example 'm'. You can then move to the next line and describe the steps that will lead to the fix of the problem, prepending two asterisks (take make them foldable), for example:

Code: Select all

* Ticket 001 ::MAIL::
** read and understand
** restart mail server
** check status
** answer mail

;; next ticket starts here ;;

after each step, you can press Ctrl-c Ctrl-t to change the workflow status from nothing to TODO. If you press Ctrl-c t again, the next workflow status would be added, in our case WAITING, or DONE, or CANCELED. I like to use these workflow statuses because you can make all open tasks appear in an agenda or timeline later.

Then you start clocking in. Move the cursor behind the ticket number, press Ctrl-c Ctrl-x Ctrl-i
When you finished your shit, you press Ctrl-c Ctrl-x Ctrl-o and your clock will be stopped.

That's all. You can add the next ticket under this block.

At the end of the month you can create a report for all the tasks, how much time was spent, etc. See the link posted above.

If you want to integrate a contact database, there are several ways. The easiest is simply creating a separate document like contact.org, link it to the work.org file by referencing it, and then assign ticket numbers as TAGS to customers. They will be then linked to the work.org document.

Code: Select all

#+STARTUP: overview
#+TAGS: 001(1) 002(2) 003(3) 004(4) 005(5)

* May 2016
Mister Miller ::001::
Ms Smith ::002:: ::004::
Mom ::003::
;; and so on

[GekkoP]

^ Basically exactly what I do to organise things here.

I also use deadlines on particular tasks (Ctrl-c Ctrl-d) and check them on daily basis with org-agenda (Alt-x org-agenda-list).

[machinebacon]

^ just edited the last part while you were posting. Thanks for the feedback, seems we both do things the same way (wrong or right hehe)

Just wanted to add, you can even put the customer contact into the same file and then soft-link, like in wikis.

[GekkoP]

^ I don't know if this can help Wux but this is how I organise my work (and other extra activities):

- a main file: ~/org/organizer.org
- a binding (F5) to open it quickly, because that's the entry point to my daily workflow
- specific tags to group tasks: reasoning about group of tasks helps me a lot
- deadlines for the super-important stuff (payments, for instance)
- a bunch of other .org files directly linked in my organizer.org for extra info

[machinebacon]

^ exactly the same here...

[machinebacon]

Actually, I'd love to split this into an own thread later sometime, it might be useful for others - different requirements, but they can all be solved in a similar way.

[wuxmedia]

dammit.
I tol'ya'all - I knew it had a mode for that. ok so I'd like that but on the web (I suppose those files can be remote as opposed to local, with an sshfs perhaps)
just so I can use it on a different computer. and backups.
well might have to give it a go now...

[GekkoP]

^ If you go the Emacs way, you can use TRAMP to edit files remotely. Even better with bookmarks to your local and remote directories. That's what I do when I need to edit files on the local server here.

[wuxmedia]

oh sweet jesus.
down RMS's rabbit hole...

[rhowaldt]

^ hahahaha damn that sounds dirty.

i'm reading all this and thinking "i would totally use Excel for this" XD

[machinebacon]

^ excel? there's a mode for it in Emacs :D

[wuxmedia]

about last week I realised (or forced via work) that excel spreadsheets had like a tab system where more than one sheet can be kept.
That's how much I care about spreadsheets.