Projects of the Month - December 2006

Description of project

Trove Info

Describe Xoetrope

Xoetrope is a Dublin based independent software vendor established in 2001 by Luan O'Carroll and Val Cassidy. Xoetrope specializes in Java and XML based applications for product selection, configuration and business productivity.

Today the XUI library has been extended through many iterations and forms the basis of all of our products. So you can say that we are our own best customers. The idea of simplifying and automating the process of application development is the foundation for all of our products.

Xoetrope has been identified as a high potential startup company by the Irish government and as such receive support for product development and exploration of new markets.

What is CarouselCRM and what problems does it solve?

CarouselCRM is a XUI-based Rich Internet Application which speeds up the data entry and browsing of a SugarCRM database. It provides...

• Caching of SugarCRM data.
• Off-line usage (browse, edit, create, delete)
• Synchronization of data when a connection becomes available
• A plugin which allows Outlook information to be manipulated from the CarouselCRM application. No need for separate Outlook plugin and configuration.
• A developers API which allows plugins to be integrated with the application
• A skype plugin which allows incoming and outgoing Skype calls to be made and call records created for them

How large is your development team? What is their background?

There are 3 developers who have input into the development of CarouselCRM and it's plugins. Between us we have almost 30 years of development experience in the banking, engineering and marketing sectors to name a few.

When did you start work on CarouselCRM?

We started CarouselCRM in early 2006 as a means to showcase the capabilities of the XUI platform and we received such a positive response from it that we decided to productize it. The first early access version of the application was made available on SugarForge in August of this year and the first full release was made in October.

We are working hard to develop the functionality of version 2.0 and we hope to have a beta version available before the end of the year.

What can you recommend to new Sugar developers?

We have a slightly different perspective to many of the developers on SugarForge insofar as we don't write php or javascript code which executes within the main SugarCRM application. From the approach that we took, I would recommend that anyone attempting to interact with the SugarCRM database familiarise themselves with the SOAP API and its capabilities as a lot of time can be saved in not reinventing what can already be done through it.