Easy bulk addition of database records in iFreeTools CRM & Creator

Apart from the existing support for importing data in bulk using CSV files, we have now enabled support for bulk-addition of database records directly within our online apps.

From the list views (under More Actions) and from the details views (for adding Related Records), you will now find an option to add multiple entries of the records. Using this you can easily enter details for multiple database records in a single page and then save them all at once.

The form for adding multiple entries will be like the one given below..



In the above screen capture, multiple tasks are being added for a lead. By default the attributes which are marked as requiring a value along with a few other attributes are made visible in the form. One can change the attributes listed in the form by clicking on the Show/Hide Attributes link on the top-right.

When adding new rows, the values from the first row will be copied. So you can set the defaults in the first row and then have them copied to the new entries. You may also remove entries from the form, before you save them to database.

Once the details are added to the database, you can return back to the page from where you came to this form and see the records you had just added.

This feature is available in both the Free CRM for Google Apps and the Free Online Database Builder for Google Apps.

Hope you like our new feature. Feel free to send in your suggestions.

Private deployment of iFreeTools into your own Google App Engine account starts at $99/year for upto 25 users. For unlimited users it is just $299/year. Additional customizations are optional and are billed at Indian rates. If you are interested in such a private deployment, contact raj@sahasvat.com.

Importing Google Contacts into CRM database is now supported

We have now added support in the CRM for Google Apps - iFreeTools CRM, to directly importing Contact entries from your Google Contacts into your CRM database.

In all contacts list views, you will now have an option to "Import from Google Contacts". Clicking on this, Google will prompt you to ask if iFreeTools CRM can be allowed access to your Google Contacts. Once you provide access, you will be redirected to your list of contacts from Google Contacts, from which you could selectively mark and import into your CRM database.

You will have options to list contacts based on Contacts Groups you had assigned in Google Contacts, change the sort order (by default the latest updated entries are listed on top) and the page-size (default : 50).

If a contact is already found in the CRM database, it will be skipped during add. But you could change this behavior to either add a duplicate record or to over-write the existing record with values from Google Contacts.

The following snapshot shows the options available during import. Here "random" is one of my Google Contacts groups.


You can also preview the details of the contact, before you mark it for import. The following snapshot shows such a preview of one of the contacts..


After marking the entries you want to be added to the CRM database, you could then click on "Add Contacts". This will add the marked entries in batches, displaying you the status of the progress.

Once added, you could view these contacts in the CRM database. Apart from the standard details, additional details will be added to the Contact record's Notes attribute. Snapshot of a sample record imported from Google Contacts is given below..


By default, the user who imports the entries will be set as owner for those records. You could use the bulk-edit feature to change values as required.

Hope you find our new feature useful. Keep sending in your suggestions on how you think we can make things better & easier for you.

Import Field Mapping now available in iFreeTools CRM / Creator

iFreeTools CRM - the free CRM built over Google App Engine, for use with Google Apps - now supports import field mapping.

Now you can map fields from CSV files imported from other sources by providing the field mapping in an easy to use interface, instead of having to manually mapping them in the CSV file. The source can be address book from Outlook or from Google Contacts exported as CSV, or even from your old CRM/database system.

Such field mapping can be saved and reused multiple times.

To enable this mapping, the import process will now contain 2 steps. First one will be similar to the one which we had earlier, where you could provide the CSV file to be imported..


The next step will be to provide the mapping. By default, the app will try to match the fields in the CSV with the property in iFreeTools record. The unmapped fields will be highlighted as shown below..



You may now provide the mapping for all fields which you want to import into iFreeTools. You could even map multiple fields from CSV to a single field in iFreeTools. The multiple values will be joined together and stored in the property.


You can view the reverse mapping to see if you have covered all important mapping.


In CRM, if the records require an "owner" property, it will be set to the user who performs the import operation. You could later use the Bulk Edit feature to reassign owners as required.

You could also provide a name for the import field mapping, so that you could just select it from the selection box the next time you need to import a similar CSV file.

This feature is also available for custom database apps created using iFreeTools Creator.

iFreeTools now opens up for all Google Apps User Accounts

iFreeTools CRM - our free CRM built over Google App Engine and iFreeTools Creator - our free online database application builder, which were - until now - open only to users with Google Accounts, have now been opened up to allow all Google Apps users directly.

Thanks to adopting new features enabled recently by Google, for its Google App Engine platform, Google Apps users need not look for work-arounds and request separate deployments to use iFreeTools.

Users can also continue to login with Google Accounts, as before.

Once user has logged in using either Google Accounts or Google Apps User Accounts, our app will check for the email-id of the logged-in user to identify the user and to authorize operations. We also plan to enable full OpenID support, very soon.

What was until now just "CRM for Google App Engine" is now happy to call itself the "CRM for Google Apps, built over Google App Engine".

Hope you find our new feature useful. Feel free to check out our apps and send in your feedback.

Support for Unique Field Constraints in iFreeTools

Though Google App Engine does not yet support modifiable unique fields, we believe that this is an important requirement for many business apps. So, we have added this feature in our framework layer over Google App Engine to enable unique fields in our Free CRM for Google Apps Engine and in our online database app-builder for Google App Engine.

This feature has been turned on for the email-id fields in iFreeTools CRM - for Lead, Vendor, Contact and User records. The value entered for these fields will be trimmed to remove spaces and converted to lower case, before a unique constraint check is performed, when adding or modifying records.

We will see how this feature can be used in a custom application over iFreeTools Creator. Vehicle registration details in one case where unique values are to be stored for each of the vehicle records. You do not want a duplicate entry to be entered inadvertently into your database. So for the this field, we will enable the Unique constraint and also use the transformation functions trim and upper.


Now, we will proceed to add a record with a duplicate value for this unique field. Notice how the value is given in a lower case and with additional spaces prefixed and suffixed..


When trying to save this record, we will be shown the error message as given in the image below. You will also find that the value has been trimmed and turned to upper-case..


The unique constraints are also enforced during bulk import of data from CSV.

Hope you find the feature useful. Feel free to send in your feedback.

Export / Import Data as CSV & Bulk Delete in iFreeTools CRM and Creator

A new upgrade to our Google App Engine powered CRM application and Online Database App-creator, has added support for Exporting and Importing data in CSV format, along with support for bulk-delete.

Exporting and Importing of data as CSV enables you to

• store a backup of your data
  
• import new data in bulk
  
• restore back old-data at a later date, if required, from the back-up
  
• take away your data at any time from our database - No vendor locks.

In this blog post, we will have an overview of this new feature, as used in iFreeTools Creator, the approach will be similar in iFreeTools CRM too.

In the default list views, there will now be an option under More Actions to Export as CSV and Import from CSV as shown below..


First export the data as a CSV file and store it locally. This file acts as a backup of the existing data and can also be used as a template to add new data.

You can use any spreadsheet application which supports editing of CSV files. We will use Google Docs for this feature preview. Use the upload option to upload the CSV file to Google Docs..


The spreadsheet will be loaded and will show the entries as present in the iFreeTools database..


We can now add / modify entries in the spreadsheet. We will add 2 new records - of which 1 record will have values in unicode (Tamil language) and update the existing records by adding some notes. The changes made to the spreadsheet are highlighted in the image below..


Now download the modified file from Google Docs, by choosing from the menu File > Download as > CSV (current sheet). Now you can upload the file to iFreeTools. Choose the Import from CSV option and specify the file downloaded from Google Docs and click on Import..


This will import the data into iFreeTools' database, as shown below..

Notice that 2 new entries have been added, with proper handling for unicode characters and that 3 existing records have been updated with notes. The status message on top also provides the details of the import.

Further changes to the imported data can be performed using the Bulk Edit feature, which was added recently.

This update also includes the Bulk Delete option, available under More Actions.

Hope you like our new features. If you face any issues or have suggestions, feel free to use the feedback form in our application.

Bulk Edit feature now available in the Free CRM for Google App Engine

Our recent upgrade now enables Bulk-Edit feature in our Google App Engine powered Free CRM and Free Online Database Application Builder apps.

While many could have used such features in other apps, just giving an overview of the feature for those who may be new to the feature.

From the list views, select one or more records and then click on the "Bulk Edit" button.


This will bring up the bulk-edit form. In this all the form input elements will be disabled by default. You may enable the form elements for attributes to be modified by selecting appropriate check-boxes and then proceed to enter the values for those attributes. Once you have updated the required fields with values, click on Save.


This will update the previously selected record instances with new values, changing values for those attributes enabled in the form. Other disabled attributes will remain unchanged. (The modified records, with the changed value for owner, are shown highlighted in the following view..)


Coming up next will be options to create "Custom Actions", using which frequent edit operations can be saved as a Custom Action and invoked with a single click, instead of filling in forms again and again.

Easy Visualization of Data with Auto-Charts in iFreeTools CRM & Creator

Automatic Chart View options are now available for all views -- pre-defined views, as well as Custom Views -- in our free CRM and app-creator for Google App Engine.

iFreeTools will automatically detect attributes which can be used to group data together and enable auto-charting options for those attributes, as shown below..



This feature is added to our core engine layer and hence available to both iFreeTools CRM and iFreeTools Creator applications. The following screen shot shows charting options in the Property Management application, we had built in our walk-through for iFreeTools Creator..



Current aggregation operation used is count - count of records, grouped by another attribute. We will soon be supporting other options like sum, which will be more useful when we introduce currency data-types.

Go ahead and check out our auto-charting feature available in..

• Free CRM for Google App Engine and
• Customizable Application Builder for Google App Engine.

and let us know your feedback.

Instant Search now available in iFreeTools CRM

We told you search was "Coming soon.." when we introduced Advanced Views late last week and now, it has arrived in iFreeTools CRM.

This comes a day after Instant Details and Customizable Columns were added to Advanced Views.

Advanced Views now have a "search as you type" feature, shown in action below..

The search string is matched against values from all the columns in table view. If you want to include a property for the search, just add it as a column of the table and proceed to search.

Advanced Views is Javascript powered and works best in modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox - which we use extensively for our testing. While it does work in IE (it can be a bit slow), we recommend better browsers.

There is also an option to disable "Search while typing", which makes search operations to begin only after clicking on the Search button. This can be useful when using browsers like IE.

Keep sending in your feedback on Google App Engine powered iFreeTools CRM. We listen, and more importantly we act and we deliver - fast.

Instant Details and Customizable Columns now available in Advanced Views

Another upgrade and iFreeTools CRM now has support for Instant Details and Customizable Columns in the Advanced Views. This comes soon after the initial support for Sorting and Faster Paging (Next/Previous), added late last week.

With today's upgrade, Advanced View has been made the default list view. If required, one can always switch back to Simple View and the browser will remember your preference the next time list views are loaded.

Within the Advanced View, one can now view the details of the records instantly by clicking on the row in the table.

When the view loads, you will see something like..


Now click on any row in the table to load the details..


Notice how the visible columns are marked with a star image. You could click on the star (or the property name) to toggle the visibility of the property in the table view.

For example, when you want to remove the Salutation and First Name and instead add Lead Source and Lead Industry, click on the relevant property names in the details view and see the changes getting reflected in the table view..


Once the property becomes a column in the table, it can then be used for sorting. Options to save the view settings either for self or as default settings to all users will be available soon.

The usual details view is still available, where you can also view the lists of related records.

We would be glad to hear from you on what you would like to see in our Google App Engine powered iFreeTools CRM. Check out the features and feel free to send in your feedback.

Sales Opportunities Pipeline (Funnel Chart) is now available in iFreeTools CRM

Sales Opportunities Pipeline (Funnel Chart) which was in the works, is now available as part of iFreeTools CRM.



This comes after our initial support for charts added in the Leads module.

As an additional option, we have also included a horizontal-bar-chart in all chart views.

Apart from the Sales Opportunities Pipeline, two more chart views have also been introduced in the Opportunities module, which are Open Opportunities By Source and Open Opportunities By Owner. These charts show the opportunity amount (or potential) aggregated based on source/owner, displayable in Horizontal/Vertical Bar charts or in Pie charts.

We would love to hear your feedback on the application.

Support for charts was actually taken up earlier than planned, after users got in touch with us requesting for the same. Go ahead and check out the CRM built for Google App Engine / Google Apps and let us know what you would like to see soon in this application. You can use the feedback form in the application or send a mail to raj@sahasvat.com.

Google And Its Effects on CRM - You have seen nothing, yet !!

We Blog CRM has post on Google And Its Effects on CRM (a couple of months old).

The blog post points out how applications like Google Docs and Calendar can be good CRM tools and goes on to describe how the current players like Salesforce and Zoho CRM are integrating with Google applications.

Another aspect of Google's effect on CRM has not been given specific mention and rightfully so, because, though there is a potential in that angle, there were no concrete examples to talk about - at least at the time of that post.

That angle is : The effect of Google enabling more low-cost CRM vendors to come into picture due via the App Engine platform. Google App Engine has evolved a lot since its debut in April 2008. Now the platform has a lot more features and JVM support (which enables Java and other JVM based languages)

One such app to take advantage of the platform is our very own http://crm.ifreetools.com, which came out with the Alpha version less than a month ago and seems to be the only application working to be a full-fledged CRM app, based on those listed in App Engine's Application Gallery.

We at iFreeTools believe this will not remain so. There will be a lot more players dropping into the CRM / business software scene, which is now becoming more of a commodity. I had mentioned this in a comment on Zoho's blog titled "Why we compete with Google" - at that time I was still an employee of Zoho (then called, AdventNet).

Deploying such App Engine applications on Google Apps domains is as easy as "Add a Service" from the dashboard and then adding a CNAME (DNS entry) to map a sub-domain.


But, how far can such apps go ?
Will they be able to at least match the core features of the current breed of SaaS applications ?
How feature rich can such applications be, given the restrictions inherent in the App Engine platform ?
Will Google Wave have a bigger role to play ?

All this, we will have to wait and see. All I can say now is, watch out for more of Google's effects on CRM.

Add Logo to your Rebranded CRM

As part of rebranding iFreeTools CRM, you may now provide the URL for your logo, to be displayed in the header of the CRM application. The URL can directly point to the logo on your website - example : http://www.mydomain.com/static/images/logo.png . Uploading images to iFreeTools is not supported, for now.

To help your logo blend with the application, you may choose a header out of "default", "cloud" or "full-white", so as to match your logo better. Transparent PNG logos are also supported.

The following samples show the use of a transparent PNG logo, used for rebranding with the 3 different headers..

With "default" Header :


With "cloud" Header :


With "full-white" header :



Also, you may include the rebranding text (organization name, appName1 and appName2) along with smaller logos, as shown below..

Logo with Text :


Check out the features and feel free to send in your feedback on our Free CRM for Google Apps.

Related Post :
iFreeTools CRM on your sub-domain, with rebranding !!

iFreeTools CRM on your sub-domain, with rebranding !!

Update (September 2016): Google has been migrating this feature out of Google Apps to Google Cloud Console and if you domain was migrated to the latest version of Google Apps, this feature may not be available for configuration any longer. You will still be able to go in for a paid single-tenant deployment of iFreeTools (starts at $99/year for up to 25 users), where you will get access to the Google Cloud Console of your iFreeTools deployment and can map the application to any domain (the domain need not be associated with Google Apps).

Yet another upgrade just happened at CRM for Google App Engine. This upgrade enables mapping of iFreeTools CRM service to one of your sub-domains and also to configure it with simple rebranding.

Note : The details provided here are also applicable to iFreeTools Creator, our online database app builder for Google Apps.

Sub-domain mapping

To enable sub-domain mapping, like say http://crm.yourdomain.com, you will require to enable Google Apps for your domain and add iFreeTools app as a service.

In the old version of the Google Apps dashboard, you can click on the Get more apps and services link under Common Tasks.

In the new version of the Google Apps dashboard, you can click on Other Google Services control. If you are not seeing this control, kindly try More Controls option at the bottom of the page.

In the Other Google Services page, click on the Add Services icon, as shown below :

In the resulting page, add the Google App Engine service, by providing the App ID. The App ID for the 2 iFreeTools applications are given below :

• iFreeTools CRM : sahasvat-ifreetools
• iFreeTools Creator : sahasvat-ifreetools-creator

You may now proceed to configure your sub-domain, by configuring the Web address, as shown below.

You may also be required to add CNAME entries in your DNS configuration to map to ghs.google.com. These steps are not covered here. Kindly follow steps as detailed in Google Apps.

After the web-address is configured and the CNAME entries are added, you should be able to access iFreeTools service from the configured sub-domain.

Rebranding

When you login into the application, you will see the header with default configuration having values which suggest you to make changes (currently it will be something like "Your-Biz-Name-Here")..



Proceed to Admin::App Settings to view the default settings currently used by the application, which will be similar to the one given below..



Now proceed to modify the configuration. Notice that About Page and Feedback Page have been disabled (unchecked) as part of Rebranding..



And after the modified app settings takes effect, you will see the specified names being used in the header and that the About and Feedback links are removed from the application..


As of now, feedback mails when enabled (with "Show Feedback Page" as True) will be sent to ifreetools.com, behaviour of which will be modified soon.

Hope you like the new features.

Play with the app and feel free to send in your feedback on iFreeTools CRM.

Related :
Add Logo to your Rebranded CRM

Customize selection values in iFreeTools CRM

iFreeTools CRM (alpha) - the CRM for Google AppEngine, just got an upgrade. With this upgrade, iFreeTools CRM has added support for defining enumerated values for selection fields.

Admin users can now define Enum values to be listed for the following selection fields..

• lead.salutation
  
• lead.leadSource
  
• lead.leadIndustry
  
• lead.leadRating
  
• account.accountRating
  
• account.accountType
  
• account.accountOwnership
  
• account.accountIndustry
  
• contact.leadSource
  
• contact.salutation
  
• opportunity.type
  
• opportunity.leadSource
  
• campaign.campaignType
  
• product.productCategory
  
• case.origin
  
• case.reason

For using this option, go to the Enum module under Admin and add comma-separated values for the fields. If no Enum is defined for a property, the default application level settings will be used.

Default selection values before customization


Configure values for the selection field


Selection values after customization


Defining of Enum has been disabled for the following fields, since they are used in pre-defined views.

• lead.leadStatus
  
• opportunity.stage
  
• campaign.campaignStatus
  
• solution.status
  
• case.type
  
• case.status
  
• case.priority

Also, currently you will have to configure values for attribute for different modules individually. Example lead.leadSource, contact.leadSource and opportunity.leadSource will have to be configured individually. Since it is a one-time admin operation, we assumed it will be OK. Probably at a later date, we can provide a even more easier option to define once and refer in more than one field.

Check out the feature and feel free to send in your feedback on our Free CRM application.

iFreeTools CRM listed on Google App Engine's App Gallery

iFreeTools CRM (alpha) - the CRM for Google AppEngine, is now listed on Google App Engine's Application Gallery



Customized solutions over iFreeTools CRM can also be deployed to your sub-domain (like say, http://crm.yourdomain.com).

Such a deployment enables 2000 emails/day and 1GB of storage. Additional capacity can be purchased directly from Google.

For more details on custom deployment options, refer to : http://crm.ifreetools.com/about

CRM for Google AppEngine adds Authorization, Audit and Pre-defined Views

iFreeTools CRM (alpha) - the CRM for Google AppEngine, just got an upgrade. With this upgrade, iFreeTools CRM has added support for..

• Authorization
  
• Audit
  
• Pre-defined Views

Authorization and Audit :

Authorization will be based on the user roles, currently limited to "admin", "user" and "guest".

Audit records will be automatically added for all completed write operations and for attempts to perform unauthorized operations. Audit records cannot be added, edited or deleted directly by users and any attempts to do so will also be audited.

Apart from Audit data, authorization for views and actions are as listed below..

• admin - maximum privileges
  
  • viewing, adding, copying, editing and deleting of records in all modules (except for changing own login to non-admin role or deleting one's own login)
  
  
• user - normal privileges
  
  • viewing of records in all modules
    
  • adding of records in all modules, except Users
    
  • copying, editing and deleting of records for which the user is the owner
  
  
• guest - limited privileges
  
  • viewing of records in all modules.
  
  

Pre-defined Views

First cut support for views is now in. All modules by default will have minimum of two views, one to view all records (example : All Leads, All Accounts, etc.,.) and one to view records related to them (My Leads, My Accounts, etc.,.).

Apart from these 2 views, pre-defined views specific to the module have also been provided. For Leads the additional views are..

• Converted Leads
  
• Open Leads
  
• Lost Leads
  
• Junk Leads
  
• My Open Leads

The left-side tab-based navigation has been modified to include such views..


Go ahead and check out the features and send in your feedback.

---

BTW, the ads just got smaller on our free CRM application..
* Horizontal (on header) : From 728x90 ("Leaderboard") to 468x60 ("Banner")
* Vertical (on left sidebar) : From 160x600 ("Wide Skyscraper") to 125x125 ("Button")

So, you will see lesser distractions from competitors of iFreeTools.

---x---

iFreeTools CRM - Alpha Version

Sahasvat is happy to make available an alpha version of its CRM/SFA (Sales Force Automation) hosted solution - iFreeTools CRM

CRM/SFA will be first of the many business applications that will be made available by iFreeTools. The applications will be ad-supported and have restrictions on the storage used and on the number of mails sent.

The modules made available for this initial version are..

• Leads
  
• Accounts
  
• Contacts
  
• Opportunities
  
• Campaigns
  
• Products
  
• Users
  

Other deployment options
If you would like to have one of the applications deployed to run on your domain, we can help you achieve the same with our professional services. Such a deployment will offer you

• 1 GB of storage (and above)
  
• 2000 emails/day (and above)
  
• Rebranding
  
• No advertisements
  
• Additional customizations (optional)
  

Rates for application deployment start as low as $99/year for upto 25 users going to a maximum of $299/year for unlimited users. Customization charges are one-time only and would depend upon your requirements.

The application will be hosted in Google AppEngine and you need not have to pay more, if you stay within Google AppEngine's Free Quota. Additional usage can be purchased directly from Google at $0.15/GB/month and $0.0001/email.

iFreeTools.com is built over Google App Engine; but is not affiliated to Google.

In case you have any further queries, do get in touch with raj@sahasvat.com.