[kwlug-disc] General Thunderbird development ?

[john at netdirect.ca]

We looked at this once and thought that incorporating a script on the email server could watch messages pass through and attach the messages automatically. The issue with this is that it captures useless emails. 

Thunderbird does use XUL (pronounced zool, there is only XUL ;) as a result you can write addins reasonably simply to add buttons to you message pane and right click menu (as well as other places). This could be used to attach messages to a client record. That means that the client rep would have to manually attach each email. The attach could use http commands to connect to your db and add the records. Add authentication as desired.  

Further xul allows for full gui experience and so you can program an interface to your crm to provide some functions. 

I'm not sure how you would do contacts. Ldap seems like too much trouble to implement in php. 



----- Original Message -----
From: "Insurance Squared Inc." [gcooke at insurancesquared.com]
Sent: 12/19/2008 10:54 AM EST
To: KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>
Subject: [kwlug-disc] General Thunderbird development ?



It seems I need to develop a CRM type database for my niche as 
everything I'm finding just doesn't work well enough.  The CRM is 
basically a client administration database, server hosted and accessed 
through a browser.  Our leads are inserted into the system then it 
manages them through to sales and afterwards.  It'll be developed in 
php/mysql.

It's all standard database stuff, with one exception.  I'd like to 
integrate thunderbird into the system.  But I'm not sure if that can 
easily be done, and if so, what functionality is possible.  Part of the 
confusion is that thunderbird is local, and the CRM is hosted on an 
inhouse server.

But ideally, I'd like to be able to somehow use thunderbird for emails, 
while still tagging emails to the client records of the CRM.  For 
example if I pull up client A, it'd be nice to view all the emails that 
went back and forth with that client, even if I'm not at the machine 
that sent and received the emails. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on such an integration?  I know it's a bit 
of a vague problem, but I'm not 100% certain exactly how much 
integration is actually feasible.

g.

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