Project of the Month - July 2006

Sugar Maps

Description of project

Trove Info

Why are you a leading contributor in the SugarCRM community?

I caught the bug. I found Sugar to be a piece of software that I could understand and Sugar has a large community that had needs. I wasn't always successful in fulfilling them (there's always more work to do!) but am working on a new plan and plan some new 4.5 code. Sugar Maps is an example of taking a common request from the Sugar community and acting on that request.

What are the benefits that you experience from your involvement?

I’ve learned a lot about Sugar and I can allow others to significantly shorten their learning curve. I got just about every question in the book thrown at me. I enjoy being a key member of the Sugar community. Sugar Maps is a live example of many of the concepts I cover in the Forums.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Not letting it take over my life. I made too many commitments early on and lived to regret them. Everything in moderation. I’ve seen more "Ken Brills" on the forums now as the Sugar community has gotten larger. And Sugar Maps serves as a good model of how to develop upgrade safe Sugar modules.

What inspired you to create this project?

Sales people. The only drivinig force I know.

What business pain points were you solving specifically?

Mainly sales mapping and call planning, but the new version also brings up talking points like the weather, stock prices and recent calls via an asterisk server. My overall goal is to provide a comprehensive sales productivity environment centered on Sugar and incorporating other tools vital in a sales reps' function.

Our sales team uses it every day, and a few companies we work with have started working with it and making suggestions. We have a pretty popular project on SugarForge (http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/timeentry/).

I hope to make a Suite of upgrades that are all installable simultaneously. Maps, Weather, admin functions and a lot more. Once 4.5 comes out. Then I can offer these packages on SugarForge and, soon, SugarExchange. I hope they take off because they are really popular here where I work and I’ve heard good things from others' as well.

I need to finish the admin suite once and for all, but will wait for 4.5 for that. I have a project already under way for that: http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/adminupgrade/