Collaboration with BrowserCRM

Today, every organization needs more than e-mail for

effective communication. This includes a centralized contact-manag- ement

system, online discussions and calendaring/meeting scheduling. To cater to these

demands, vendors are coming out with what are called groupware solutions.

BrowserCRM is one such Web-based package that can act as a CRM, groupware and

e-mail solution. It's meant for small to medium businesses, and integrates

CRM, e-mail, task scheduling, calendaring, online group discussions and

invoicing. Here, we'll show you how to implement it.

The CRM part of the package includes a full-fledged

contact-management system. This can import data from most of your existing CRM

applications including ACT!, Goldmine, Maximiser, Outlook, SalesForce &

SugarCRM. You can even export the contact data to other applications in multiple

file formats including CSV, TXT, HTML, DHTML and XML. It even provides multiple

types of views for the contact data, such as people view and company view. You

can store data in hierarchical format. It also lets you track and evaluate sales

opportunities.

BrowserCRM checks for all required components including for AMP during the set-up process

BrowserCRM is available either in hosted or server

editions. We checked out the server version, which can be implemented on either

Windows or Linux. You also need Apache Web server, PHP and MySQL database for

the server edition.

The setup 



We used a Win XP machine to implement BrowserCRM. And to install Apache, PHP

and MySQL, we used EasyPHP. This bundles all the three components into one

package. If you install BrowserCRM on PCQLinux 2005, then you'll find all

these elements already installed. You can avail BrowserCRM from http://www.

browsercrm.com/content/view/123/ 109/. You will be asked to fill a registration

form and select 'server Edition' to download. Once you've downloaded,

extract the downloaded ZIP file to your Web server's www root folder. If you

are using Windows with easyPHP, then your wwwroot will be C:\Program

Files\EasyPHP1-8\www. On Linux, the location of the wwwroot is var/www/HTML.

After this open a Web browser and enter the URL http://127.0.0.1/browsercrm/setup.

This will open a Web page, and lead you to set up the BrowserCRM package on that

machine. On its setup page, select the language that you want for the CRM setup.

On the subsequent page, the package will automatically

check for all the components that are required for running BrowserCRM and will

show you a detailed report. Scroll down the page and click on 'Continue

Setup' link.

On the next page, there are two options 'Sample Data'

and 'MySQL Parameters'. If you want some sample data to play around with

BrowserCRM, then tick on 'Sample data'. Now under MySQL Parameters, give the

password to connect to the BrowserCRM database and also give the root password

for MySQL database (you can give any password). 

Finally scroll down the Web page and click on the Submit

button. With this your CRM solution is ready. To access the Web page, open the

Web browser and type in the IP address (http://127.0.0.1/browsercrm) of the

machine where you have installed it.

You can search for anything from anywhere, be it contacts, appointments, memo, task, documents or stored knowledge base

Using BrowserCRM



Now, when you access BrowserCRM from a Web browser, it will ask you for a

user name and password. Give the default username and password that you have set

during the setup process and get authenticated. It will open the admin homepage.

On the left side of this are links for creating contacts, appointments, tasks,

opportunities, mail, memo and documents. On the right side, you have links for

creating new admin and normal users.

Plus from this Web page you can change the admin password

and set the company preferences. These include setting of time zone, default

rights for groups, users and fine-tuning of search options.

From here you can change the overall behavior of the

BrowserCRM package. On the upper part of the Web page, you will get options such

as Search, Preferences, Help and Logout. If you want to give others access to

this CRM system, you certainly need to create new user at this time.

Consolidated view of all the available objects like Contacts, Appointments and Tasks

Creating new users



To create new user, go to the Admin link from the top



upper portion of the Web page, and click on it. This will open few admin options

on the same page. Here click on the 'Create New User' link. You will be

asked to fill in the details of the new user that you want to create. The

details include user privileges and the group to which the user belongs. From

here, you can restrict users to view only relevant information that one requires

for his working domain.

For example, you have two groups in your organization

called sales and purchase. Member users of your sales and purchase teams can be

made members of the respective groups in BrowserCRM groups. After filling all

the users contact click on the



Submit button.

Creating contacts, appointments and tasks 



For this go to the left part of the Web page and click on Contact. You will

get a contact template on the right side of the Web page; here fill in the

contact information which includes company name, contact person, his designation

and all required information that a contact would require. Here you can assign

groups to whom the created contact should be visible or accessed.  

After filling details of the contact, click on the Submit

button to save the data. In the same way the user can add his appointments,

mail, memo, documents and even a knowledge base relating to his own job.

In appointments and task modules you can smartly set up

alarms and alerts to remind yourself about your appointments and task in this

CRM itself. Plus the appointments are viewed



in a calendar form, which make easy for a user to plan, schedule the day

properly.

In its mail section, you can communicate with the user or



contact directly without a mail client. Not only this, you can even forward or

assign the task or appointments to your colleague, if you are unable to

entertain the task due to some unavoidable reasons.

Search your contacts 



BrowerCRM has a very comprehensive search feature, wherein you can find

contacts by company name, designation and even by phone number. Groups of

various departments can search for contact information from within the groups or

even from other outside groups, if you have a sufficient permission on your

account. Its search option is not restricted to finding



contacts, but you can even search through appointments, tasks, memo and

documents.

Overall, we found this solution very easy to set up having

some very interesting features. Besides the default features, you can also

customize it as per your requirements. This includes changing the appearance and

adding your company logo. The server edition with a five-user license pack costs

$ 999 and the platinum edition for 25 users costs $ 5,995.