Learning EspoCRM and Design

[esforim]

Hi tothewine ,

Did a quick search and it look like you can't do a Pull Request on it, and if you want to do that, it is quite a hassle to do so.

However, I can invite you as a Collaborator I believe, so you can have full access to it. I assume as a Collaborator/Admin that all your edit can be update instantly and directly in the page (I just need to find out how), what your Git username, PM it or Post it here.?

[tothewine]

sure, i'll pm you

[esforim]

Hi guys,

Just notice an "CRON not enable" message today in the Admin panel so I investigate and it seem that this error is related to it:

Espo.ERROR: Uncaught Exception PDOException: "could not find driver" at /home/public_html/crm/application/Espo/ORM/EntityManager.php line 272 {"exception":"[object] (PDOException(code: 0): could not find driver at /home/public_html/crm/application/Espo/ORM/EntityManager.php:272)"} []

Searching around it seem to be related to the extensions PDO; I had a look at my PHP options and it is enable (PDO_mysql). My host also have nd_pdo_mysql available as well, if you enable one the other get disable.

Anyway it seem that PDO_mysql does not work for me so I decided enable nd_pdo_mysql and my CRON get enable again.

Thinking about this, I have a feeling nd_pdo_mysql is what causing my email not to importable and I keep getting.

Espo.ERROR: Uncaught Exception PDOException: "SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away" at /home/public_html/crm/application/Espo/ORM/SqlExecutor.php line 72 {"exception":"[object] (PDOException(code: HY000): SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away at /home/public_html/crm/application/Espo/ORM/SqlExecutor.php:72)"}

[esforim]

People been telling me it due to too much "user" (ie. connection), hence it timing out. But I have a feeling it due to one of the non-working extensions or compatibility. They just want me to to upgrade to a higher user package.

Reading your post I decide to change/disable some of the extension. Hopefully I see a miracle and it start working again. My email usage isn't that much so it shouldn't affect the CRM like this. I don't use Mass Email.

[item]

How Many Users ? How RAM ? HDD or SSD ? espo version ? mysql ? php ?

[esforim]

There is only like 1-3 user (just myself mostly, and it only get access through browser website), usage wise it my server got plenty that still can be use (RAM), it is a SSD from what I was advised.

The 'user' in case is "User connection to mySQL server", I believe each request to a database = 1 user connection, it outside of my knowledge aside from reading article online in relation to the error. For some reason when it come to email fetching it make 20+ connection to mySQL server and the server must have timeout the connection causing no email to be imported.

I tried reducing the email fetching concurrent setting but still not luck. Going to keep playing with it

A quick check (as I post this) that I'm only using 1.5% CPU, 157MB RAM (of 3GB), so something is amiss here.

[esforim]

PHP 7.4. Here current extensions list (I recently disable pdo_sqlite) and see how it go.

[item]

Hello,
pdo_sqlite is not needed by espoCRM.
for me, if SSD.. ram is enough (i have 4mb) .. php7.4 it's ok.. you problem is in setting of mysql/mariaDb or maybe in last php.ini setting.

As Yuri say, the bootness (le goulot) is database..
I know i have same bug in the past : 150000 record import by cron ... "database go away"... we have tuned my.cn (mysql setting file) and change to SSD and no more issue.
i think this is our file :

[client]
port = 3306
socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

[mysqld_safe]
socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
nice = 0

[mysqld]
user = mysql
pid-file = /var/lib/mysql/web01.pid
socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
port = 3306
basedir = /usr
datadir = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir = /tmp
skip-external-locking

bind-address = 127.0.0.1


# InnoDB parameters
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 256M
innodb_thread_concurrency = 8
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1
innodb_log_buffer_size = 1M

# MyISAM parameters
key_buffer = 16M
myisam-recover = BACKUP

# Query cache parameters
query_cache_limit = 1M
query_cache_size = 128M

# Table cache parameters
table_cache = 64

# Global timeouts
wait_timeout = 120
interactive_timeout = 120

# Various parameters
max_allowed_packet = 16M
thread_stack = 256K
thread_cache_size = 8
log_error = /var/log/mysqld.log
expire_logs_days = 10
max_binlog_size = 100MB
max_connect_errors = 4294967295

# Max connections
max_connections = 150
max_user_connections = 0


[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
[isamchk]
key_buffer = 16M
!includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/ 

[esforim]

Celebration time!

I have finally manage to make some success with an "open" Mobile CRM App. For the boring history lesson it is below.

For those that want to contribute to making it and working on it with me feel free to check it out here:

https://www.figma.com/file/AqQHW11GREeFa7J9ojkCVm/Espo-app

So Figma is the GUI design and Bravo Studio is the code and building the app.

It is fairly easy to use from my initial test (and it working unlike my other test and trial!). If you have any question feel free to ask or discuss it in here, I'm fairly new to it but I will slowly make progress to it and you can adopt your own version or help me create it. I can send Edit invite through PM.

---

History (for learning):

My coding is terrible, even after all many tutorials and guide I still make almost no progress to creating an Mobile App. There is a few that exist currently but it is Closed Source or Subscription Pay, some doesn't work on my version either but more importantly I or no one can't make change to it or creating their own version.

Anyway I eventually came across a few other option (such as Webapp but at the end of the day those doesn't fit my criteria and need). Finally I found out about these "Codeless" or "Low-code" App creator, but most from what I see have restriction that won't work in the long run.

Finally, yesterday I decide to give it another try, to see if there is "something" out there yet and came across Bravo Studio. On the initial testing with their Sample Apps, it look great, work well with their existing database and structurally and skill-wise it is something a Programmer-less like me can work on.

My first goal is to get some of the basis function working so I can use the App.

There is some weakness in the Free Plan which is what I'm using though, and that is it can only do "Get" (get data), it cannot do "POST" (send/update data), you have upgrade your plan for that.

[esforim]

I'll post some Screenshot to show-off in the future to gather some interest

[esforim]

Hi guys, I finally delved into the Webhooks feature of EspoCRM.

In my way to simple explain Webhooks is basically, "Send EspoCRM Data to another website". In term using this feature I haven't figure out what to use it for yet. Maybe I can use it to write an article in EspoCRM and it get post into my Wordpress Blog.

Anyway I'm still trying to figure it out here is some learning for any one is who interested:
---
Since I already create my API user I don't need to do it again: follow this guide here if you haven't create your API user (username account) yet: https://forum.espocrm.com/forum/gene...0758#post60758

Firstly I use this website as a test website since I don't have a website/API readily available yet to test it yet.

Go to: https://webhook.site/
Copy the "Your Unique URL"
To go your EspoCRM, for example: https://crm.com/#Webhook/
Click on "Create Webhook"
Under Event, let test it with "Leads.Create"
Under URL, paste what you copy from "Your Unique URL"
Choose an API user
Wait for the Webhook CRON job to be finish (default setting is every 5 minutes).
Go back to the website tab of https://webhook.site/ ; on the left side you should see it did a "POST".

Congratulation, you just Webhook from EspoCRM to another website. Next time I will explore some real usage example, but at least there is something to get started.

Anyway here is the official documentations which was quite meaningless to me considering my skill level. https://docs.espocrm.com/administration/webhooks/

[crmclients]

Thanks so much for this write up. My client has asked if Espo can send the data from the Attendance module I created to Salesforce (they are still holding on to SFDC for lead capture and gateway payment).

They want to use the days logged to calculate employee pay which the were doing in SF with bar codes. Espo is simpler on the one hand (no more paper, printing, scanning) but the lost a process on the other.

I might explore this with my Trailblazer SF account; maybe it can be done although I would prefer eliminate all need to have SF

[esforim]

Yes, it just too much work to get a SF demo version (have to contact them and it is very limited time frame). They don't have "open" demo; for example: demo.espocrm.com/
where we can just do test. From SF marketing campaign they got some niffy feature I would like to see to get innovation from but too much hassle to get a hand on their demo.

Hope you manage to get it to work, I'm still playing with Webhook at the moment.

[esforim]

Too Long Didn't Read - Use this PDF Template code to print Email's Attachment (image only):

{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{imageTag ./this}} {{/each}}

---

Hi everyone,

More learning today. I got an email that is basically asking me to do a print out of it, more specifically the attachment image, I can just use Ctrl+P (Print) using my webbrowser but sometime it look ugly, and it got data I don't have in printing (URL detail, date and time of printing, page numbers and total, etc). My second option is to save the image individual, open it and print individually.

I usually use the "Print-to-PDF" system of it, unfortunately it quite difficult to print the attachment and it is not straight forward in term of using the formula. It not difficult though but took experimenting to do. Eventually I came up with the code above to do Attachment printing (image only), I haven't tested how it will behave to other file such as .pdf, .docx, etc.

But otherwise it look good. Here is the code sample I did my testing with over time until found one that worked. In total there is 3 working formula, the important part is the #each and the ./this is where the magic is.

Code below is for learning only. Number 3, 8, 9 is working. The code in TL_DR (too long didn't read) used number 9 full page page printing.

attachmentsEmailId {{attachmentsEmailId}}

attachmentsIds {{attachmentsIds}}

attachmentsNames {{attachmentsNames}}

attachmentsEmailNames {{attachmentsEmailNames}}

{{#each attachmentsEmailNames}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag width=150 height=150 ./this}} {{/each}}

{{#each attachmentsNames}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag width=150 height=150 ./this}} {{/each}}

4


{{#each attachmentsEmailId}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag width=150 height=150 ./this}} {{/each}}

3 - working


{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag width=150 height=150 ./this}} {{/each}}

5


{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{/each}}

6

{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{imageTag attachmentsIds width=50 height=50}} {{/each}}

7

{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{attachmentsIds}} {{/each}}

8


{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{imageTag attachmentsIds}} {{/each}}

9 - work


{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{imageTag ./this}} {{/each}}

8 - work


{{#each attachmentsIds}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag ./this}} {{/each}}

1


{{#each imagesIds}} {{#ifMultipleOf @key 4}}
{{/ifMultipleOf}}{{imageTag width=150 height=150 ./this}} {{/each}}




2


{{imageTag attachmentsEmailIds width=50 height=50}}

{{imageTag attachmentsIds width=50 height=50}}

[esforim]

It look like the code also work for PDF attachment however it have 2 issue (probably because the "Helper" doesn't support it).

(1) Quality and resolution it terrible, very ugly, and whitespace area is converted to black. It pretty much ugly.
(2) It only do the last page (?), a PDF attachment I test got 3 pages, but it only print the 3rd page.

[esforim]

Learning string\replace; for reference see this thread: https://forum.espocrm.com/forum/gene...ula-replace-v6

Surprisingly, maybe it just me but the example code I was having great difficult with and have to open a thread with back and forward question to figure it out.

Using the example code both item and Maximus based on that code and provide example, which work but not as intended to be, as everything is fixed with that code. It can be use for other purpose and that "array" style will be useful in the future to make complex replacement but right now I just need a simple change "Hello" to "World".

Following item linkage it is quite useless to help learn a bit on how it work: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

The issue is that these "$" won't work for EspoCRM formula, secondly the order of the formula is different. However, the documents say we can use $, maybe I'm just using it wrong: see https://docs.espocrm.com/administration/formula/#syntax

And I believe there is also difference in using " and ' too. For PHP it is:

search, replace, subject (string)

Example: string\replace("Hello", "World", name)

Whereas EspoCRM:

string (subject), search, replace

Example: string\replace(name, 'Hello', 'World')

Search and replace is quite obvious, but the string/subject is where it confused me at most. I eventually tried the formula:

name = string\replace({description}, 'Hello', 'World');

Then
name = string\replace(description, 'Hello', 'World');

And to my surprise it worked, my name field copy all my description information but it change all "Hello" to "World". Thinking that it not possible to use 'name' instead of description because it will do a infinity loop:

name = string\replace(name, 'Hello', 'World');

But surprisingly it worked!

To break down the formula (final) above:

For the field name "name", I want to replace a word (string\replace), the word I want to search for is "Hello", find these "Hello" for me and replace it with "World"

Also please note that it is Case Sensitive, "Hello" will only work for "Hello", it won't work if you write "hello". We need to use regular expression (regex) for this. Which will be another learning but I think there is plenty of tutorial out there for regex.

[esforim]

Email and downloading (multiple) attachment:

Received an email today with about 10 attachments in the email. As you may know there is no "multiple" download button for attachment. And clicking them one by one, then choose the folder you want to save in can take a bit of time.

Previously I have either use my email browser to download them (Roundcube was my front end); or an offline software (Thunderbird) to mass download the email. But today I thought, "why not try the download add-on I usually use for other thing", to my surprise it worked! Although the filesize being so small made me questioned it but upon opening the file it look fine.

Anyway if you want to download multiple attachment quickly, I recommend using DownThemAll ( https://www.downthemall.org/ ); I used it with Firefox but it also available for Chrome and Opera. Whether it work as well on those other two browser is something I don't know.

[esforim]

Came across this community today when I searching for EspoCRM contact syncing

https://forum.cloudron.io/category/17/espocrm

Might contain interesting thread and post, but it look good that there other community out there.

[esforim]

Also came across this feature request for n8n, a workflow/integration/automation system, be good if we can just input our own API (maybe you can, I haven't test n8n yet). n8n sound like something I would look into.

https://community.n8n.io/t/integration-for-espocrm

If you want to help get EspoCRM be integrate into n8n be sure to create an account and voted on it. Not sure how many vote is require for developer to start developing though.

[esforim]

Was looking around for more EspoCRM community and came across capterra listing. From their chart it look like EspoCRM is quite lacking overall in term of features. However it does also seem to be outdated and EspoCRM should get that fixed up.

Here is a screenshot. For example, "Email Template" exist and working out of the box but it not checked here. Same thing with many other feature, such as API.

[esforim]

And a tutorial on how to install it in Debian (Linux)

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/debian-espocrm/

A call center that have 11m records and 200-300 user

https://sapient.pro/blog/our-experience-in-espocrm-migration-and-building-ml-models/

A "de-duplicate merge and delete" service provider, they planning to add EspoCRM but I don't think it officially supported yet.

https://dedupe.ly/espocrm/

A Thailand real estate company using espo:

https://tradingplacesthailand.com/

An Open Source listing website

https://osdn.net/projects/sfnet_espocrm/

https://awesomeopensource.com/project/espocrm/espocrm

Service provider for SMS intregration

https://integrations.clicksend.com/listings/espocrm

EspoCRM facebook, didn't know they have one

https://www.facebook.com/EspoCRM/

Work Directory for Artist and Consultant (Artwork) - Website is in German(?) language

https://kunstservice.net/

[esforim]

TL-DR: Date field support word too, for example 30 MAY 2021 will work when you copy/paste.

Been so long since I posted here; made a discovery today that might be of interest in regard to Date. I have previously talk about it before but if I edit it then it get lost and never to be seen.

Anyway I'm trying out PDF scan then using OCR it. Make it bit easier to do Copy/Paste instead of data entry. One of the OCR was a date field, for example 30 MAY 2021, I copy and paste that area using muscle memory and just pasting it in the Date field. To my surprise it work when I saw it was written as May, instead of 30/05/2021 or similar acceptable variation.

[esforim]

Was looking around Github and ran into this page: https://github.com/MrFriendly-B-V

MrFriendly seem to have a few interesting integration from reading the repository name, look like it code in Rust.

Maybe someone can find something interesting or usable in there, as there is no instruction (or issue talking about it) so I don't quite sure how to test it. Have fun I guess.

Also added this to the "Wiki" but it might go unnoticed so here the link:
Wordpress contact form plugin https://github.com/Dafnie/CF7-to-EspoCRM

[Jesswade]

As per my knowledge CRMs are relational data bases, the relationship between them is important to note. For example, more than one related lead or contact may exist in an account. Chances can be linked to a ro-contact account (or both). Better odoo CRM consulting can change relationships to suit your requirements (whether they be one to one, many to one, one to many, or many to many). You should also be able to link your activities, tasks, meetings, calls, etc (however your CRM labels these things, as it will differ from program to program).