Product List within Meetings

[daniel.huber@whuber.de]

Hi,

I'm want to use EspoCRM for my service engineers which travel from customer to customer. For documenting their work they should use the EspoCRM Meeting and write down what happened. In addition to that, they should list spare parts they used. Therefore I purchased the sales extension. I imagined that I would be able to place a positions bock within the meetings detail view (like in quotes). The technicians can select for every meeting multiple products from database an add a quantity. Ideally they would immediately see the price, and give this information to the customer without any effort.
Sadly this seems not as simple as I imagined. When I look in entity manager for example in quotes, the item list is an json array. So I can't copy this to meetings.

Is there any chance to make this possible?
Basically it can't be more effort than some copy and paste from quote to meeting...

Kind regards
Daniel

[rabii]

you need custom dev for this to work. if you know programming you can achieve this easily with few lines of code.

[daniel.huber@whuber.de]

Hi rabii,
thank you for your reply and the good news.
I have some medium programming skills but not in php and I have no idea where to start. Especially the changes should be not messed up by the next update. Can you give me a hint which files to observe for this?
Or any idea where to find a programmer to do this for me on account?
Kind regards,
Daniel

[rabii]

Not only files, you will have first to create a custom entity MeetingItem then create needed relationship between the 3 entities Meeting - MeetingItem and Product and from there you can build the front end views required and backend logic.

[dreginald]

We have the required skills for PHP Programming and Customising ESPO CRM. You can see some of our works at https://youtu.be/Wuhp8PV8oz4

[rabii]

Hi,

I'm want to use EspoCRM for my service engineers which travel from customer to customer. For documenting their work they should use the EspoCRM Meeting and write down what happened. In addition to that, they should list spare parts they used. Therefore I purchased the sales extension. I imagined that I would be able to place a positions bock within the meetings detail view (like in quotes). The technicians can select for every meeting multiple products from database an add a quantity. Ideally they would immediately see the price, and give this information to the customer without any effort.
Sadly this seems not as simple as I imagined. When I look in entity manager for example in quotes, the item list is an json array. So I can't copy this to meetings.

Is there any chance to make this possible?
Basically it can't be more effort than some copy and paste from quote to meeting...

Kind regards
Daniel

Do you need to have a calculated amount on the meeting similar to what exist on opportunity (amount) ? Meaning when products added to meeting then a field called e.g amount on the meeting should be calculated as total of product price.
Do you need to apply tax on each product ?
I need more info to guide you or will be happy to help and provide you code

[daniel.huber@whuber.de]

The amount would be nice to have, but is not necessary if this makes it difficult. Tax is not needed. Appending this is what I would like it to look like.
Instead of products I would create a new entity SpareParts with less fields: name, itemnumber, price, storagePlace would be enough.
Then the MeetingItems which can append multiple lines of SpareParts and a quantity to it.
In addition, the line should show up the itemnumber, the storagePlace and the price from the SparePart.
Ideally it would multiply Price with quantity to amout and sum up all amounts to Full amount.

[rabii]

Hey i will try to build that. Just as a note i think it is better to remove storagePlace as that would be a category for spareParts meaning spareparts should be stored somewhere and the meeting item is just a reflection but the data should always stay with the sparepart.

[dreginald]

I recommend to use the builtin features of ESPO CRM to manage this requirement. Create a Relationship with Quote or Invoice and the service engineer can generate the Invoice with spare parts consumed. Also we can manage the inventory of spare parts.

[daniel.huber@whuber.de]

As far as I understand, I think meetingItem should contain quantity and a reflection of one sparePart(s).
spareParts should contain a name, a price, a storagePlace and a itemNumber.
With storagePlace I mean the location number in our storage where the technican can find it. It is just a string which can be stored in the spareParts database. No need to save it with every meeting Item. It should just be shown up when a sparePart is chosen, like price and itemNumber.

About using the builtin features (exensions) I don't know what is possible. But in terms of upgradability I think it would be great if it does not depend on extensions. The spareParts entity is simple to implement from the gui. The meetingItem block has to be done in php code anyway. I can't see the advantage of doing this with builtin entities.
There is no need to manage the inventory because we do this in our erp System. spareParts will be exported and overwritten from there, daily.

Kind regards, Daniel

[dreginald]

You have already purchased Sales Pack. Instead of developing meetingItem, create a relationship between Meeting (One) and Quote (Many) and bring to the bottom panel. Relabel Quote to Service Summary (or as appropriate) and QuoteItems as SpareParts consumed. Bring Quote Items (Spare Parts Consumed) in the layout.

[daniel.huber@whuber.de]

Thank you for this great suggestion. I tried it out and it almost meets the requirement. I have one quote connected to the meeting and can click on it to see the item. Unfortunately I can't find an option to see the items directly within the meeting. But as you write "Bring Quote Items (Spare Parts Consumed) in the layout." I still imagine to be able to put these items in the layout of meeting. Is this possible?

If it is not, I still would be interested in how complex and therefor expensive it would be, to have the items directly in meetings. My users are not that computer affine and I am pretty sure a direct spareparts list in meeting would increase user acceptance enormously.

[rabii]

You can't see the items within the meeting because these are quoteitems and has nothing to do with the meeting.

[dreginald]

Item List is a separate Entity with One to Many relationship with Quote and Quote is in One to Many Relationship with meeting. Even if you bring item List to Meeting, you will still be operating this way and your engineers will be consuming onethan one item in every meeting. With formulas you can get the sum and count in the meeing. You can hide the attributes of Quote in the layout and show only the item list. This is the faster way to do it. Getting Items directly into meeting involves creation of form within meeting