The first thing I have to say is that I am a relative new-comer to CRMs and SuiteCRM in particular, so this is probably going to be a stupid question.
I am trying to get my head around how to add new functionality to my SuiteCRM. Currently I have got Email-to-Case enabled. Some of these Cases may be sales enquiries, so need to be converted to Leads. This will have to be a manual process, since Leads require a certain amount of information that need to be extracted from the email (such as Last Name).
As such I would like to add an action to the Case menu that when selected displays a form that shows the Case on one side and a blank Lead on the other, allowing the user to copy information from the Case to the Lead and then save the Lead.
I was wondering what the best way was to do this? Is there a standard way to generate these kinds of forms, or is it a case that I create an Entry Point and craft the form in PHP?
You can do it, because you can do anything in an open-source program :-)… but I wouldn’t advise it.
You will find that SuiteCRM is complex to change, when you step outside its normal way of being customized (through Studio, or through PHP metadata definitions). If you can stay inside the way its meant to be customized, you’ll have a much better experience.
In your situation, I would use a double monitor setup, or a simple split screen between two browser tabs, one for the case, one for the Lead.
If you really want to customize the screen, I would go for a more lightweight customization. For example, showing some simple case information on a Lead’s Edit View.
You said "If you really want to customize the screen, I would go for a more lightweight customization. For example, showing some simple case information on a Lead’s Edit View. "
Can you provide a few more details about how I would do this, or point me at the relevant documentation?
Specifically the “Views” chapter. Then you better search online for some simple example of an Edit view customization, and try your luck with that. Eventually it will grow into a Lead’s Edit view customization that can grab information from a related bean (Case).
It works, but I wanted to check if all the files are in the correct place, specifically the first one. Should it be under the “custom/Extension/modules/…” directory structure rather than under “custom/modules/…”
You can try making changes in Studio and seeing what happens to the files, or see which files are getting picked up or created on the QR&R.
The only error I see newbies making is creating stuff in the files generated by the QR&R, instead of the ones it uses as a source. Then their customzations geet wiped out on the next QR&R.
To avoid this, my rule of thumb is: don’t do stuff under any “Ext” directory, unless it’s under “custom/Extension”.
