Bye Bye Outlook, Hello Espo

[Howard]

Hello all,

My first post after doing some digging - would like some basic advice, feedback, please.

Goal: Drop Outlook like a hot rock (Look Out!) after building a simple CRM integrated with our phone system.

Because it is similar enough to Outlook, easing the transition, Espo is my first choice.

And by simple CRM, I do mean simple: inbound caller ID triggers a contact lookup in Espo, (or brings up a new, blank contact panel if ID is unknown). For outbounders: look up a contact and hit the "call" button. That's really it.

During the transition from Outlook to Espo, I'll need to periodically export the .PST / .csv and bring it into Espo.

To my knowledge, Micro$oft's PST is an uncracked, proprietary file format unusable for importing into any contact manager. I assume, everyone just does the traditional export -> import via a .CSV file or vcard - but I can't use vcards because of custom fields). The so-called PST conversion programs I assessed were dysfunctional at best.

1. Can the base EspoCRM do .cvs imports - or do I need to purchase some outlook-related extension? (We are trying to keep costs down, of course.)

2. Since Outlook's note field can include a comma char, exporting its data using the comma as the default field separator can cause field mangling. Can I change the default separator in Espo? Prolly would use "|" pipe as that's very rare in texts. (Also, that way, I can quickly scan the .cvs exported in Excel to check / preen it without a lot of grief.)

3. We aren't running Outlook on Exchange, nor are we using it for emails. The exported .csv will be contacts only. However, we have a few custom fields as part of the Outlook workflow. A .csv export from Outlook does include these. Can the base Espo consume them?

Our intended simple telephony integration topology: VoIP-Provider <-> Asterick <-> EspoCRM Both Asterick and Espo will be on a standalone Linux box.

4. Am I correct that I can use Espo's API to do this without needing to purchase any extensions? (Again, the workflow is dirt simple.)


Thank you all so much for reading this and for taking your valuable time to reply.

- Howard in Jacksonville Beach, FL

[heint]

Greetings, Howard,

All that's written above sounds like a pretty cool idea!

I'll try to give you quick feedback on your questions:

1. By default, you can freely use import functionality in Espo by using CSV file types. More information can be found here: https://docs.espocrm.com/administration/import/.

2. Yes, you can choose what field separator to use while importing your CSV file, the same as many other options:


3. You can create additional entity types and fields for them, so before importing your file, you just need to create a corresponding field for this data type. As always, all information regarding EspoCRM configuration can be found in the documentation: https://docs.espocrm.com/administrat...anager/#fields.

4. And another Yes, you can use API functionality by default to implement different 3rd-party logic if they support it. API documentation link: https://docs.espocrm.com/development/api/.

[shalmaxb]

additional to what heint wrote, don`t worry about the field limiter, as the import to espoCRM uses the field limiter and a separate text limitter , e.g. ", so your note field will be wrapped in "" and inside that, the comma isn`t considered a field limiter.

Importing can cause quite some work, it all depends on the exported data. To see, wwhich formatting is necessary, create your custom fields for the contact entity first, the input one record and export it. Look at the exported csv (beware, has to be UTF-8 without BOM), which will serve as kindo otf field template. If your data exported from outlook, match the exported record from espoCRM, you are good to go.
If imports fails on any point, it will be cancelled and the error ist displayed. Any doubt about what the error means, post it here, so we can help.