Request for comments: towards CRM functionality

[Chris Travers <..hidden..>]

Hi all;

Back in 1999, I decided to learn PHP by writing a CRM program.
Naturally the codebase became unmanageable, and was not that much
better than the SQL-Ledger codebase.  However, the program was based
on my experience using four higher-end CRM programs at Microsoft and I
think the CRM side was fairly well developed (and arguably more
flexible than SugarCRM).  Among other things it supported were:

1)  Nested tasks/support tickets/etc
2)  Appointments
3)  Time/labor/materials tracking
4)  Task queuing (i.e. so you can do some work on a task and queue it
for another team to pick up)
5)  Collaborative task tracking.

Over time I would like to implement all these features on LedgerSMB
that don't exist currently, re-using whatever LSMB functionality
works.

My current plan is to map these functions as follows:

tasks -> projects
Time/labor/materials tracking -> time and material cards.

Basically my roadmap (not sure how much will make it into each release) are:

1)  Project classifications, priority, and nested projects
2)  Project ownership, assignment, subscription and queuing.
3)  Appointments
4)  A CRM dashboard screen listing assigned and subscribed projects,
appointments, etc.

Any comments on the broad outlines?  After 1.3 branches off, I will
create a discussion on the nested projects, priority, and
classification side.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers