Yes/No (Boolean) fields support in Custom Views and more

We have been making improvements over the past few weeks to the Free Online Database App Creator for use with Google Apps and in our Free CRM built over Google App Engine, based on feedback/suggestions from our users.

Filter based on Yes / No checkbox (Boolean) fields

We are glad to have rolled in support for Custom Views which can filter records based on Yes / No checkbox (Boolean) fields.

Apart from Yes or a No, you may now also see a --not-set-- value for fields which do not have a value already set for that field. This can happen in iFreeTools Creator, when you add a new Yes / No checkbox (Boolean) attribute to an existing entity which already has records in database. While the new records will have values for this field, the older records will show a --not-set-- value.

The records with --not-set-- value *will not* turn up in the results if the filed is used in the filtering criteria for that Custom View. If you would like it to be available, you can use the bulk-edit to set the values for that field to either Yes or a No.

Customize the order in which the Custom Views are listed

We have also added support customizing the listing order of Custom Views based on View Listing Index value, which you can now provide in the Add/Edit Custom View form. The views will be listed under the module based on this value, in ascending order. That is, views with smaller View Listing Index value will be listed first.

And more..

Apart from these features mentioned above, we have also rolled in a few bug-fixes/improvements, including in the recently added Calendar Views feature.

Do keep sending in your valuable suggestions, on how you think we can make iFreeTools better.

Image fields now supported in the Free Online Database builder for Google Apps

We have now added support for defining and using Image fields in iFreeTools. This has been enabled for the Products database in iFreeTools CRM and can also be used for your custom online databases, using iFreeTools Creator.

A sample view of such a database listing is given below in a snapshot of a Travel Desk application built using iFreeTools Creator. The thumbnails of the images are listed in this table view..


When you proceed to the individual record's details page, you can see a bigger image..


When adding/editing records, you have options to either upload a new image or using an already uploaded image from the database of uploaded files. The options available for editing the image fields are show in this below image..


All uploaded files can be managed easily from Back-end Data > Uploaded Files, where CSV files used in importing data are also listed..


You could rename the files and change the descriptions or even, download the file from the details page..


When adding/editing the attribute you could specify the maximum file size for the image. For free versions the options available are 10, 25, 50 and 75 (all sizes in KB). If the uploaded image is of bigger size, the app will try to resize and reduce the file size to confirm to your settings..


You can go in for bigger image sizes when we open up our paid plans or if you go in for our custom deployment options, which enables you to use the 1 GB free quota from Google and to purchase additional resources directly from Google at $0.15/GB/month.

The rates for custom deployments start at $99/year (works out to $8.25/month) for upto 25 users (or $0.33/user/month). For unlimited users, it is just $299/year.

Hope you like our new feature. Do feel free to send in your suggestions using the feedback form in our apps or directly via mail to raj@sahasvat.com

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.

Custom Actions now supported in Google App Engine powered iFreeTools CRM and Creator

When we added the Bulk Edit feature recently to our Google App Engine powered CRM and our Online Application Builder for App Engine, we had mentioned that we were to make "Custom Actions" available next.

And with today's upgrade, it is now available.

When performing bulk operations, you will now have an option to provide a name for the bulk-edit operation. For admin users one can additionally specify if the Custom Action needs to be available for all users or just for you. In the sample screen-shot below, we are adding a Rented-out custom action, which sets Vacant property as False (unchecked in form)..

And after this proceed with the bulk-edit operation as usual. This will apply the bulk-edit changes and also create a custom action which will be available under More Actions, as shown below.. In the screen-shot the bulk-action buttons (Bulk Edit and Rented-out) will remain disabled, until one or more rows are selected.

You can get to know more details of the Custom Actions by clicking on Action Details. This will list the details of the accessibility of the Custom Action, along with details on the attributes that get changed by the action and if you have the privileges, an option to delete the action, as shown in the image below..

While one can also provide the same custom action name in the bulk-edit form to update an existing custom action, it is just as easy to just delete the action and add it again.

Hope you like the new feature. Feel free to send in your feedback.

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.

What's Cooking : iFreeTools "Brahma"

Few days ago, I had tweeted about starting work on iFreeTools "Brahma".

For those who were not sure about what that meant, Brahma is believed to be the Hindu god of creation [wikipedia.org].

So it was iFreeTools Creator, the "Online BigTable Database Application Builder", for which work was started. iFreeTools Creator is probably the first Google App Engine based online application builder. It gives users the access to iFreeTools Engine, which powers our Free CRM application.

Below are some screenshots from iFreeTools Creator..

Currently in testing, the following screenshot shows a Custom Entity created for storing information on Real Estate Projects..

The application in the screenshot above uses the default CRM entities, but one might as well start from a clean slate. This feature (custom entities and attributes) will be rolled into the default CRM application as well, at a later date.

So, that is what is cooking at iFreeTools.

I am still working on alternate heading captions for the home page wordings and am also open to changing the image. Feel free to send in your suggestions to raj@sahasvat.com.

Follow @ifreetools in twitter or add this blog [feeds] to your reader, for updates on iFreeTools Creator.

Have a great weekend !!

iFreeTools in The 451 Group's report on SaaS M&A

iFreeTools gets a mention in Sector IQ report titled "Buying in the cloud: Where SaaS players and others may look to make M&A moves for apps", by China Martens, dated 14 Jan 2010.

This report is filed under the sectors..

• Application software / Customer relationship management
  
• Application software / Enterprise resource planning

(click to view larger image)

Glad about being part of that report.

Not sure about the exact context or quote, but I think I can guess - based on the title. (Hint: iFreeTools will not acquire any of those companies, listed along with it.)

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.

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.