We have been searching for a new CRM to implement with Community Server. Unfortunately, have found an amazing CRM, Infusion Soft. Infustion Soft runs on MySQL. At this point it seems that we would rather go with the CRM and sacrifice all efforts made in my Community Server development phase.
From what I've read on the forums (and all posts are from last year or earlier) there is little to no chance of getting to the two systems to work together. I understand that the MySQL and MSSQL are very different, but what are my options here?
InfusionSoft offers APIs which I am looking into now... does anyone have any suggestions or prevoius experience with this sort of thing?
I would use sub domains, that way you can seperate out things. If you need the same membership stuff, then you can use the cookie auth addon for community server.
Nick - nb development
Hi TechLINKS, we use MS CRM and I think its great...I was wondering whether you compared the two?
At a very high level, your options really depend on what you mean by "getting the two systems to work together". This could be anything from shared authentication & membership to shared content and seamless integration between the two applications. With some more specific requirements, I could offer some better suggestions about the course to take.
There are lots of options for integration. Community Server offers REST API's that allow other applications to retrieve and manipulate its data. From what you're saying, Infusion Soft also offers some kind of API interface, but unless it's web-based, I don't know that it would help very much. And of course, Community Server is a completely customizable application.
Let us know if you have any more specific integration requirements and I may be able to help point you in a more specific direction.
John Bledsoe
Sr. Software Specialist - ATGi
I am very new to this CRM stuff, so forgive me. At the bare minimum we are going to need to have similar/matching tables to reflect our user memberships; and it's likely the Infusion Soft CRM will need to know much about user activity within Community Server (which blogs they are looking at; which groups they are enrolled in, etc).
Luckily, the API for InfusionSoft is web based; and they offer some examples written in C# for adding a user entry to the membership table. These lines of code just need to be implemented when each new user is created.
Is this throwing up any red flags for anyone yet? Thanks for the responses!!
A web-based API for InfusionSoft is very good, and makes this project a whole lot easier.
Keeping membership synchronized is one of the most basic tasks that needs to be done when combining CS with another application. You'll want to choose one application as your "primary" membership location. (This is the application where users actually sign up.) If you choose CS for this, then a CSModule will allow you to create an InfusionSoft user whenever a CS user is created. Without seeing more detailed requirements, it sounds pretty straightforward.
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