VTiger comes with customer portal (which you need to install separately – instructions here). It has most of the functionality a robust portal would need – access to contact details, invoices, quotes, tickets, documents and much more. In order to enable customer portal for the customer, you currently need to go into contact record, scroll down to “Customer Portal Details” block and check the “Portal User” field. This will trigger an email to be sent out to the customer with link, username and password. We had a request to manually create password instead of having the system generate one, so we added a “Portal Password” field, which is masked by ********** and the actual password is only shown when switch (on/off) is clicked. It also only allows certain users to view the password. This is also used to reset the password, all the user has to do is
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 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 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 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
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 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 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
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
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 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
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 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 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.
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
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
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 has a very sophisticated record activity/history log. On the contact, lead or organization you can see associated comments, activities(calls, meetings, todos), tasks, emails and updates. Each history log is associated with the date, however that date can not be filtered by. Say, if you need to find all the leads which had no email or comment activity within the last 30 days – currently, VTiger does not allow you to filter by activity history dates. We created a workflow that updates record “Last Date Contacted” with the date the last email was/activity or comment added. To take it step further, we also created fields to track individual activity type: Last Email Sent Date Last Email Opened Date (part of email tracking extension) Last Activity Date Last Comment Date Those fields are automatically and are available in filters and reports. That’s just one of the VTiger customizations we’ve done –
VTiger 7 Customer Portal Customization: Set Portal Password