Project of the Month - August 2008

VeryThinClient

Description of project

A very thin client for mobile devices that is installed in the SugarCRM root directory. VeryThinClient handles Accounts, Opportunities, Contacts, Calls and Meetings via the SOAP interface.

Trove Info

Why are you a leading contributor in the SugarCRM community? What are the benefits that you experience from your involvement?

After some years of programming and consulting for the content management system, Typo3, I started to get intimate with SugarCRM's architecture (see project 'German User Manual'). My first thought was, "Perhaps both systems, Typo3 and SugarCRM, can be brought together". My husband Harald looked for the possibility of connecting mobile devices to SugarCRM and that inspired me to develop VeryThinClient.

One nice side effect of working on this project was really getting to know SOAP.

What other projects have you been involved with on SugarForge.org?

I started work on the 'German User Manual' but had to put it on hold because we started work on VeryThinClient.

What inspired you to create this project?

I thought VeryThinClient would be useful to others and wanted to get feedback on the project.

What business pain points were you solving specifically?

SugarCRM is a powerful and voluminous system with very heavy web pages being loaded on every click. Developing web pages geared for mobile devices using the nusoap interface makes VeryThinClient fast and relatively independent of the SugarCRM installation.

Is there anything that the users should know about? Something hidden/new in this project? Think of this as an opportunity to describe how it works to a user.

VeryThinClient contains code that would be of interest for anyone who wants to use SugarCRM with the SOAP interface. With the possibility of entering a SOAP server address different from the server where VeryThinClient has been installed gives you a nice feature for testing other SugarCRM installations.

What would you say to encourage additional community participation?

The possibility to publish your own project at an early stage offers the opportunity to develop more demand oriented features. Aside from that, it makes sense and is fun to contribute a module, as well as to find a module for your own needs.

What do you want to build next for Sugar Suite?

I would like to bring the German User Manual to completion. Regarding VeryThinClient, my plans are to realize an interface for better customization, e.g. to specify the record fields which should be handled by the client.