Deploy a CRM Solution in Minutes

CRM solutions help businesses streamline their customer management processes.

However, choosing and deploying the right CRM solution for your needs is not an

easy task. There are many proprietary and Open Source CRM solutions to choose

from. SugarCRM is an Open Source CRM solution that is easy to deploy and is

flexible enough to adapt to any business environment. Unlike other Open Source

solutions that need to be deployed on the Linux platform, SugarCRM can be

deployed on Windows platform also. In this article we demonstrate how you can

deploy SugarCRM on Windows or use its alternate virtual appliance version.

About SugarCRM



SugarCRM has a community edition which is available for free download from its
website sugarcrm.org. It has a commercial counterpart as well, which is

available as an installable application or as a cloud-based service.  It can be

used by businesses of any size. It does not require a core technical team to

support its deployment and installation. With its in-built web administration

console and backup system, it makes the management of the application easy and

user friendly. The core SugarCRM functionalities cater to various aspects of

customer management in an organization, which include sales automation,

marketing campaigns, project management, scheduling and many more.

SugarCRM is built on PHP and can support MySQL as well as Microsoft SQL

Server. Oracle database users would require a separate connector which is also

available from SugarCRM developer community. And the web server component can be

deployed on Apache or IIS. The alternate to all this is a preconfigured SugarCRM

appliance that includes the SugarCRM application pre-installed with PHP, MySQL,

sendmail and httpd on a Linux base. This appliance can be installed virtually on

VMware.

When the web server is running, point the browser to address http://localhost/sugarcrm and the SugarCRM web installation wizard's welcome screen is displayed.

After selecting MySQL as database, you are prompted to provide database configuration details. You can also choose to populate database with demo data.

Installing SugarCRM



To deploy SugarCRM on a Windows-based machine, you need to have installed

PHP, MySQL or SQL Server and Apache web server  before hand. On this month's DVD

we have given the latest version of SugarCRM Community Edition 5.2, as well as a

WAMP server package, which has PHP, MySQL and Apache web server. It is a simple

installation, and saves you from the hassles of installing all these software

packages separately. To begin the SugarCRM installation, extract the contents of

file SugarCE-5.2.0j.zip to www directory of the WAMP server, which would be C:\wamp.

Navigate to www directory and change the name of SugarCE-5.2.0j folder to “sugarcrm”.

SugarCRM lets you localize the settings as per your preferred needs. These settings are globally reflected on the installed SugarCRM instance.

Start the WAMP server, which will start the services corresponding to Apache

web server and MySQL database server. Now to begin installation of SugarCRM,

open a web browser and enter address as: http://localhost/sugarcrm. You should

get the welcome page of SugarCRM web installation wizard. This welcome page

displays the information corresponding to required system components, system

checks, and custom installation requirements. The rest of the installation is

pretty simple, and easy. A wizard will guide you through selecting your

installation type, your database local settings like date, time, and currency.

Incidentally, SugarCRM supports IVR. An interesting point to make here is that

you can auto-populate your databases with demo data. This would help you

understand features and functionality of the product, various widgets, charts,

etc. Once the wizard completes collecting information, it begins the

installation unless it encountered any error. Upon successful installation you

are prompted with a screen that displays the results of the installation

process. The installation of SugarCRM is complete now, and by clicking on Finish

button you are directed to SugarCRM login page. Upon giving the administrator

username and password you can now proceed to SugarCRM homepage.

Once the installation has been completed, the Perform Setup page is displayed with all successful processes that have been performed.

After logging into SugarCRM, on the homepage a user can view the details of his contacts and leads to be followed. He can customize the homepage as required.

SugarCRM as an Appliance



If you do not have a dedicated technical team and you do not expect a high

user load on the machine, then you can opt for using the SugarCRM appliance. The

benefit will be that you can keep copies of the VMware virtual disk file on a

regular basis, and if your server crashes, you just have to copy this virtual

disk file and start the server. All your data will be restored to the previous

backup. With this month's DVD you can get the SugarCRM appliance packaged in

sugarcrm-os-5.0.0b-x86.vmware.tgz. tar file. It is a VMware deployable

appliance. This appliance can also be downloaded from the SugarForge.org

website.

When the appliance boots in VMware, it is assigned an IP address, which can be used to access SugarCRM.

To deploy SugarCRM appliance, you need to have VMware installed on the

machine and once you have installed and booted the SugarCRM virtual machine

configuration file through VMware, all you need to do is determine the network

address and browse to it. Upon booting, the appliance starts the MySQL server

and Apache web server, and also detects and allocates a network IP address for

itself from the network DHCP. If the network address assigning fails, you have

to assign the IP address manually. When the appliance has booted, it displays

the allocated IP just above the login prompt. In our case, the appliance

assigned itself the address 192.168.5.73; you just now have to point your

browser to this address from any other machine connected on the network or the

web browser of the host machine, and you will have SugarCRM login page displayed

to you. The default credentials to login into SugarCRM as administrator are

'admin' as username and password as 'changeme.' If you need to change the

database settings or want to do any other installation setting you can do that

by logging into the system as root with no password. The default user for MySQL

database for SugarCRM is “sugarcrm” with password “changeme”.