Hi all,
We run a sales operation on EspoCRM and needed our agents, team leaders, and management talking inside the CRM instead of scattering conversations across personal messengers. Nothing we found fit, so we built it. It has been in daily production use on our own EspoCRM 9.2 install for a while now, and before we put effort into a public release, I want to see whether anyone else would actually use it.
What it is
A native module providing one-on-one chat between users, with a management layer on top:
The part that makes it different
It is built for supervised teams, not open workplace chat:
Technical notes
What I am asking
Not trying to sell this yet; we mainly want to know if a public release is worth maintaining. If there is interest, I can post screenshots and more detail.
Thanks.
Marcus
We run a sales operation on EspoCRM and needed our agents, team leaders, and management talking inside the CRM instead of scattering conversations across personal messengers. Nothing we found fit, so we built it. It has been in daily production use on our own EspoCRM 9.2 install for a while now, and before we put effort into a public release, I want to see whether anyone else would actually use it.
What it is
A native module providing one-on-one chat between users, with a management layer on top:
- Two-pane chat page with unread counts, previews, and a contact picker
- Attachments: file upload and direct clipboard paste (screenshots), images and PDFs, validated server side by actual file bytes
- Voice messages recorded in the browser, playable inline
- Notifications: chime, tab title unread counter, desktop notifications, per-user mute
- Canned replies for staff
- Read receipts
The part that makes it different
It is built for supervised teams, not open workplace chat:
- Four permission levels: Super Admin, Admin, Team Leader, Agent, assigned per user. Agents can reach leadership but not each other.
- Oversight: Super Admins can read every conversation; Admins can read team leader and agent conversations. Oversight is read-only and silent, participants cannot tell a thread was viewed.
- Retention first: nobody can edit or delete messages, so the history stays a trustworthy record. The single exception is a Super Admin line delete (soft delete, with the conversation preview and counters repairing themselves).
- Everything is enforced in the service layer through dedicated endpoints, not client-side hiding. Entity scopes stay locked with no role grants.
Technical notes
- Native module, packaged in the standard extension format, installs from Administration > Extensions
- Three custom entities, attachments in native storage, files served through an authenticated entry point (no public URLs)
- Polling based (10s open conversation, 30s global badge), so it runs fine on ordinary shared hosting. No WebSockets, no external services, no data leaving your install.
- Requires EspoCRM 9.0+ and PHP 8.1+
What I am asking
- Would this be useful to your installation or your clients?
- If yes, what is missing for your use case? Things already on our backlog: message search, export a conversation to PDF, presence indicators.
- Any interest in group/team channels, or is one-on-one with oversight the right shape for how you use Espo?
Not trying to sell this yet; we mainly want to know if a public release is worth maintaining. If there is interest, I can post screenshots and more detail.
Thanks.
Marcus
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