The SugarCRM was fairly easy to setup and install but what I didn't realize that you need to do much more planning on the email side then just setting it up. SugarCRM appears to have a full inbox system with individual and glogal accounts. Something you do not realize as admin while doing the install and setup. But once logged in as user it hit me.
The installation and user manuals do not fully cover this aspect so I am trying to see if we can share pieces to learn about it.
I am using an ISP to host our mail boxes (running on an Apache server offsite). Simple and effective and has served us well for more then five years already. We have general and individual mail boxes but we are heavily leaning on MS Outlook 2003 to retrieve the emails. We must still be able to retain emails and export them in original format because they are legal accepted proof in the Netherlands. When setting up this system this is something important to keep in mind because the system does not seem to care about this aspect.
We will use most aspects of the system. Customer support, email campaigns, customer service, sales and leads etceteras.
What is the right strategy, planning and setup in such environment? We want to keep the emails as said and still intent to use the system as much as possible.
My first impression is that we use an general account like
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
over SMTP. This goes into the general inbox. We create a customer service account like
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. We create a technical support account like
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. And
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
of course. Those are for the CRM system to use and retain and where users can pickup the emails.
Then the individual email accounts are as usual with or without named address. Like
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
with my own SMTP account that I use in Outlook.
But how does or should this fit together? I like the IAH CRM interface but also appreciate the spel checker that I need because my English is not perfect. And to securely archive the emails of course. A large safe email system would be ideal but we are hosting the IAH CRM on a Windows 2000 server box for practical reasons. So there are limitations. We do not use MS Exchange, and do not intent to either.
Who has experience with this how we should fit this together?
