VTiger Blog – News, Common Errors & Helpful Tips

VTiger 7 Workflow Customization: Set Scheduled Activity/Task Start Time XX Minutes from Current Time

October 3, 2017
Article
  VTiger has a very flexible and powerful workflow/automation capabilities. Utilizing VTiger workflows, you can automatically schedule activities, tasks, send emails, updated fields, create records, invoke custom functions and much more. As we were working with automatically scheduling activities, we realized that there’s no way to set dynamic start/end time of the event/task. This mean, that every time there’s an activity created via workflow – the start/end time will either be “the time activity was created” or you have to preset the time to be e.g 8:00am. One of our customers have a very strict SLA/change management process, which requires activities to be created right away and the start/end time set based on the time of the creation, meaning that “Start Time should be 60 minutes from now”. We have customized VTiger workflow actions (Add Task & Add Event) and added a new field next to “Start Time”, which allows

VTiger 7 Customization: Contact Relationship & Referral Management

October 2, 2017
Article
  VTiger does not currently have any way of managing relationships between two or more contacts, meaning that you can not link 2 contacts and set relationship as “Spouse”, “Husband”, “Referral” or whatever it might be. We have designed a module that allows exactly that. It was built in a way where it does not modify any of the core files and is completely independent, compatible with workflows and  reports. It’s a custom module that has 2 contact lookup fields, one for primary person and the second for the secondary contact. There are also 2 fields to select relationship as well as description fields for any additional details. It can be used in variety scenarios, such as family relationships, referrals, hierarchy, custom assignment and many more. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give us a call if you need such solution or anything else related to VTiger.  

VTiger Tip: How to hide fields based on other field conditions/values?

September 28, 2017
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If you are looking to hide field in VTiger based on another field value e.g “Hide Contact.Billing_Country if Contact.Type is “Local Supplier” or any other field – you can do that utilizing Conditional Layouts VTiger Extension, which helps to transform standard VTiger layouts into powerful forms.   It only takes few seconds to setup such forms, here are the steps:   1. Open Conditional Layouts Area Go to Menu > Settings > Go to Extension List > Conditional Layouts     2. Hit “+New Conditional Layouts” This is where all conditional layouts that have been setup are shown.     3. Select Module Select any module and name the condition e.g “Hide XXX,AAA,BBB”     4. Add Conditions You can add as many conditions as needed, the action(hide fields), will only be triggered once conditions have been met.     5. Add Tasks This is where all your tasks are,

New VTiger Extension: List Export to XLS (Excel)

September 26, 2017
Article
We are excited to introduce new extension to our VTiger Extension Pack! The extension was designed to export lists/filters into excel. As you probably know, standard Support for VTigers exports to .csv, however .csv files can be messy, hard to manipulate and the formatting does not always save. Our List Export to XLS VTiger extension, not only exports data to XLS files, but also only includes columns that are selected in the list, unlike .csv – it exports all the columns and kind of defeats the purpose of export. It supports all custom and standard VTiger modules and is now available for anyone with extension pack subscription!. For screenshots & video, go to the product page: https://www.vtexperts.com/product/vtiger-list-export-to-xls-excel/    

VTiger 7.1 Features Development

September 25, 2017
Article
We have some exciting news for VTiger open source community! VTiger developers have been working on a VTiger 7.1 release and just informed us on the new feature that will be introduced. The original message below   We would like to update you that we have been working on Vtiger Open Source V7.1 features and planning to release it in couple of weeks. Following are the list of features including differed issues from previous version. Features : Follow A Record (Click on Star icon to follow a record. By following any record, you get updates on it as other users of your organization modify the record. these updates are notified to you via channels enabled in the Notification Center Settings. De-select the Star icon to unfollow the record.) Duplicate Record Prevention (Prevent duplicate records in Vtiger from all sources by enabling duplicate check) Webform Attachments (Allow user to attach files to

VTiger 6 Customization: Customized Email Templates with Sharing/Permissions + Workflows

September 25, 2017
Article
    VTiger has built-in email templates, which can be used in workflows as well as sending emails from the CRM. For most businesses standard vtiger email templates are sufficient as they provide ability to quickly send templated emails. We received multiple requests regarding the permissions/sharing as well as workflow capabilities that related to email templates. In standard VTiger you can not share or restrict a user/group/role from accessing certain email templates, which makes it difficult to use them for business with multiple departments. To overcome that, we customized email templates to support sharing/permissions where you can select users/groups/profiles/roles and assign them to the email templates. This layer of permissions really helps to separate the departments and restrict visibility in certain cases. Next, since templates can be used in workflows, and some of the templates are created for workflows only – it wouldn’t make sense to see them when sending regular

VTiger 6 Customization: Custom Quick Create Quote From

September 22, 2017
Article
  VTiger has a “Quick Create” option for most of the modules, however the more complicated ones such as quotes, invoices, sales & purchase orders does not have that option. One of our customers goes through a lot of quotes daily and found themselves spending too much time creating quotes and requested for a solution. Usually it takes about 1-2 minutes to create new quote by filling out all fields, searching and selecting products/services and so on. To make this process a little easier, we created a new Custom Quote Form, which only contains 7 key fields (specific to their business) and the item details section was customized to show the head or each ‘item family’ with ability to select items from the dropdown as well as add new rows, set qty and price. In addition, as the quick quote gets saved, it runs multiple back-end processes to preset all the other

VTiger 7 Customization: Attach Files/Documents to Calendar Activity/Task

September 21, 2017
Article
  Calendar Activities (Tasks & Events) is considered a special module due to it’s custom design. That makes it harder to integrate with all the other extensions, add related modules and most importantly – customize. Events/Tasks in VTiger are used differently by many business, some use for scheduling jobs, reminders and others for actual to-dos, tasks and checklists. One the key features VTiger Calendar module is missing – is ability to attach documents/files to it. One of our customers requested to add such ability and we designed in a way where you can attach multiple documents/files to the activity as well as include those into the emails generated by workflow. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give us a call if you need such solution or anything else related to VTiger.  

VTiger 6 Customization: Custom Statement + Invoice Summary

September 20, 2017
Article
    VTiger has a built in “Export to PDF” function which allows to export Invoice into PDF, however it is limited to just one invoice a the time. In some cases that sufficient, however most businesses require a monthly/quarterly/yearly invoice statement or summary and that’s where VTiger is lacking the functionality. Based on one of our customer’s requirements, we built a custom invoice summary/statement page, where the user can access it from the organization and see all the invoices there. In addition, we added a date filter, so the invoice can be filtered to specific date range. We also added totals at the bottom, so you can clearly see the received, balance for individual invoices as well as the total. To make the process more efficient, we added an “Export to PDF” button, which create a statement/summary for all the invoice shown as well as the totals, company information

VTiger 6 Customization: Custom Order Module + Item Depletion

September 19, 2017
Article
  VTiger has a built-in Sales Order module which supports products, services and has a lot of features such as taxes, discounts and so on. It works fine for a standard order processing, however when it comes to custom orders with requires item qty depletion, bundles and 3rd party integration – it does not do that out of the box. One of our customers is running a clinic and requested for a simple, easy to use custom order module to track their services (individual or bundles) as well as the qty and the depletion. We designed one that allows them to quickly add new orders by just filling out few mandatory fields such as selecting the bundle, payment method and adding few notes. Each bundle/item has a qty preset and allows the user to ‘use up’ or deplete certain items, for example, the client purchases a bundle of 5 SPA

VTiger 6 Customization: Convert/Generate Licenses from Sales Order/Invoice/Quote

September 18, 2017
Article
  Every business has it’s own unique workflow and it is very likely that after the transaction has been made, there are steps to be taken to process the order. One of our customers is selling software with different types of licenses e.g locked, floating, annual, lifetime and requested to build an extension to VTiger Sales Orders which would allow to generate licenses for purchased products. To accommodate that, we added a button “Create License(s)”, which triggers a popup where the user can see the products on the sales order, specify expiration date and see additional information the the product. Once the user clicks to create licenses, it creates new license records (custom vtiger module) and connects to their licensing server via API to generate unique license key. This VTiger customization significantly improves the efficiency. Similar customizations can be added to invoices, quotes or any other module as each business

VTiger 7 Customization: Add/Create Opportunities from Mail Manager (Actions)

September 14, 2017
Article
  Mail Manager for VTiger 7 has improved significantly compared to the previous versions. It’s more responsible, modern and a lot easier to navigate and manage emails. As in previous versions, Mail Manager has a feature (action) that allows users to create new records from the email e.g contact, organization, lead, tickets and activities. The only thing it is missing is an action to add new opportunities. To accommodate that, we added an action to “Add Opportunity” right from the Mail Manager. It opens a quick create modal popup and creates the opportunity + links the email message. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done, if you are looking for a similar customization e.g adding other modules to Mail Manager or customizing it in any different way – please shoot us an email at help@vtexperts.com

VTiger 7 Customization: Convert Opportunities to Organizations, Invoices, Tickets & More

September 13, 2017
Article
  VTiger 7 has new neat feature, which allows the Opportunity to be converted into a Project. In addition, it has an area where you can map the fields from Opportunity to Project (similar to Lead to Opportunity/Contact/Organization mapping). Opportunities are widely used in almost every business and each has it’s own way of handling them. One of our customers had a request to add an option to convert Opportunity to an Organization and Invoice. To accommodate that, we added a button “Convert to Organization” on the opportunity view. Once the button is clicked – it opens up a popup to fill out/verify mandatory fields before create new organization and invoice. We also added mapping area where the user can configure how the fields will map from one module to another, so no data has to be reentered. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give

VTiger 6 Customization: Add new Picklist Values while Creating a record (Without Going to Settings)

September 12, 2017
Article
  Support for VTigers multiple fields types such as text, currency, picklist, multi-select, date and many more. These fields have to be created in administration panel, which we would expect to, however picklist/dropdown and multi-select fields also require administrator privileges to add selections. We came up with a solution, where you no longer need to go into “Picklist Editor” (which requires admin access) to create picklist/dropdown options, but instead – it can be done as you are editing or creating record in VTiger. We added a “Add New” as one of the picklist values and once selected, it will prompt the user to enter new value, which will be saved as a picklist option and will be available for everyone to be used going forward. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give us a call if you need such solution or anything else related to VTiger.

VTiger 7 Customization: Reconcile Invoices, Charges, Deposits & More

September 11, 2017
Article
  VTiger has a great accounting suite built-in, however it’s lacking a reconciliation piece. One of our customers receives donations and deposits which have to be reconciled at the end of the month. To accommodate that, we built Deposit and Reconciliation VTiger modules, which allows them to record all the donations/deposits, by doing so – they input the amount for each. Next, reconciliation process starts – the user knows exactly how much they should have received for both deposits and donations and they start reconciling by inputting total amount and lookup all the donations/deposits that have not yet been reconciled. At the end of the day, the user will have reconciliation record with all the deposits linked as well as amounts matched. In case where totals don’t add up – we builtin an alert system, which will not allow to close reconciliation record unless the amounts match up to the

VTiger 6 Customization: “Click To Call” Functionality Compatible by Most Softphones

September 8, 2017
Article
  VTiger and Asterisk/PBX integration can be challenging and requires a lot of resources (direct asterisk integration, extensions, server changes, etc..)  to get it right. We  have come up with a more simpler solution that converts phone number field into softphone compatible hyperlink also known as “Click to Call”. The phone call is triggered by “tel: xxxx” hyperlink and each phone field in all the VTiger views (list, detail and edit) has an icon can can be clicked to trigger the call on your softphone. It’s a very elegant and cost efficient solution to quickly place calls from VTiger using your own softphone or skype.   That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give us a call if you need such solution or anything else related to VTiger.  

VTiger 7 Customization: Do not allow out of stock products to be added to Invoice/Sales Order

September 7, 2017
Article
    Inventory management is a crucial part of every business. VTiger already has it built in and allows you to “in” and “out” inventory as the invoices, orders and purchase orders get created. Standard VTiger functionality warns you when the product you are adding is Out of Stock, however it does not prevent the user from adding it to the invoice or sales order – you can see where that might become a problem. We customized Invoice and Sales Order section to prevent out of stock products to be saved on the record. The way it works is – the user can still select the product and see that it’s out of stock, however once record is being saved – it will show a notification and will not allow the record to be saved until the product has been removed or quantity adjusted. In addition, the user can override

VTiger Customization for Public & Private Ticket Comments

September 6, 2017
Article
  In the latest VTiger 7.0 release a feature was introduced which allows the comments to be set to Internal (private), meaning that only the users (vtiger) will be able to see the comment, while the portal users (contacts) will not. This feature is really helpful to restrict the visibility for the portal user and keep sensitive or technical details from the customer. One of our customers requested to enhance this feature where they would be able to slip the switch and set the comment to be internal (private) or external (public). In the standard VTiger, if the comment is set to internal or external – it can no longer be changed, however – we added the switch which allows that – see #1. Next, we added a “Post to Resolution” field, which basically creates a comment as well as updates “Solution” and “Status” fields on the ticket. This eliminates the

Multi Contact/Organization Relationship Field (stores multiple records)

September 5, 2017
Article
  Standard Support for VTigers custom relationship fields for contacts, organizations and all the other modules. The standard functionality only allows to include ONE record in the field, meaning if you have a “Contacts” lookup field – you can only select one contact. We designed new custom UITYPES (field types) to address this issue. Using our new field types – you can now select multiple contacts or organizations into one relationship field. It is very convenient to add additional people (contacts or organization) that are potentially related to the record e.g project, opportunity, ticket and so on. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done – please give us a call if you need such solution or anything else related to VTiger.  

VTiger Item Details Customizer (Advanced)

July 1, 2017
Article

VTiger Document Designer and PDF Maker + Digital Signature 2.0

June 30, 2017
Article

Advanced ‘Horizontal Calendar’ View In VTiger

June 11, 2017
Article
VTiger standard calendar only supports a ‘vertical’ layout of the calendar. Meaning that you can have your day, week, and month views. However, those views are displayed as columns where all the events for all the users (if using shared calendar feature) are crammed into one spot. Such setup makes it very difficult to maintain calendars for multiple people, or even see a who has what scheduled. Imagine, if you had 10 people on your team and you need to look at standard calendar – you wouldn’t be able to tell who has what booked. We enhanced standard VTiger calendar by adding a ‘horizontal’ view, which is a must-have for organizations that rely on calendar and scheduling. It was designed to show all the users/groups as rows, while the days/hours/weeks remain as columns. This allows users to see events assigned to each user without them overlapping onto other users/hours. In

VTiger 7.0.1 Patch has been released

June 6, 2017
Article
VTiger 7.0.1 GA Release   VTiger 7.0 GA (Stable) was released on May 23rd, 2017, however the release had few critical bugs that needed to be addressed right away. On June 6th, 2017 VTiger 7.0.1 patch was released. Here’s the list of issues fixed: #546 – Unable to open the Mail Converter from the menu #554 – Migration errors from V6.5 to V7 #526 – google sync not working #559 – Project Summary Broken #552 – 1st Comment not show in summary #566 – Calendar Issues #517 – pie chart doesn’t have legend In addition to the above, we also have a few minor changes. #551 – Extension banner show also 6.x extensions #493 – change organization associated to opportunity from summary view   Latest source code can be downloaded from git or official vtiger website. If you already installed VTiger 7.0 – you will need to go through the

Upgrading Table Block Extension to VTiger 7.0

June 4, 2017
Article
VTiger Table Block extension will no longer be supported in VTiger 7.x. Table block has a lot of limitations such as no way of creating filters, including in reports, exporting/import  and permissions. Instead, it will be replaced with combination of “Related Blocks/Lists” and “Custom Module Builder“. If you are currently using Table Block extension and want to migrate to VTiger 7.x or already did – here’s what you will need to do in order to properly convert table block data.   ***We recorded a quick video that will talk you through each step:   Create table blocks(new custom module(s)) in VTiger 7.0 To create new tables blocks – first we will need to create custom modules which will store table block information. Say if you have a table block “Cars”, you would create a new custom module called “Cars”. Next, within that module – you will need to create custom fields

VTiger 7.0 GA (Stable) has been released

May 23, 2017
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VTiger 7.0 GA (Stable) Release   We are thrilled to announce the release of VTiger 7.0 GA (Stable). New version of VTiger  was completely redesigned and has new user interface(theme), which a lot more responsible and user friendly. In addition, it has many new features along with the security updates. To find out more – please see offical vtiger announcement.   VTiger 7.0 GA can be downloaded from vtiger.com. Official VTiger 7.0 GA (Stable) Download Link   VTiger 7.0 GA interactive demo is available as well, please follow the link below VTiger 7.0 Open Source Live Demo   The upgrade patch for VTiger 6.5 to 7.0, has already been released and the instructions can be found below. Step by Step Guide to Upgrade VTiger 6.5 to VTiger 7.0   Our VTiger Extension Pack has been already converted and will work with VTiger 7.0 right away. Note, that not all of the extensions have been