Address Book Integration

[gharris]

I'm looking at using CiviCRM, however, I am having a very difficult time finding information about Address Book integration.  I've found a very limited bit of information about creating a read-only LDAP view of contacts in the Developers Guide.  I've also found the CiviSync project, which seems to have some serious bugs at this moment.  (Doesn't sync phone numbers, etc.)  I need a product that will allow me to access information across a variety of e-mail clients.  How are you using Apple's Mail.app, Outlook, Android/iOS e-mail applications with data pulled from CiviCRM?  LDAP?  CardDav?  Direct syncronization?  As a last resort, vCard?

Thanks

[Eileen]

Pretty sure CiviCRM supports a vCard format

[gharris]

Well, it does!    However, it's not a searchable term in the documentation.   

Also, there is no mass export of vCards, and trying to sync info using vCards is going to get dirty, really quick.  I'm glad it's there, but I'm really hoping for something a lot less dependent on user management.  Are you using the vCard functionality?  Have you figured out a way to automate information updates, especially two-way?

[Eileen]

No, surprisingly no-one has asked us for it, except as a passing request. Last I heard discussion of it was at CiviCon in London & I don't recall anyone having a good solution in place. However, there was one UK consultancy that did demo some work they had done on Outlook integration. I'm trying to remember their name.

[gharris]

Wow!     I can't imagine using the web based e-mail client built into most CRM style systems as your normal work flow.

I believe that you are referring to Target Integration's CiviSync products.  (Outlook, Server, and Mobile.)  They look like they are going towards a pretty good product for Outlook integration, but at the moment they've got a few big bugs that need to be fixed for it to be mainstream.  It also doesn't address the Apple world, including the iOS products.

[Eileen]

No, I think our customers haven't adopted the idea of getting a large portion of their daily communications into Civi :-(.

Yes, I think it probably was Target.

[gharris]

Might I submit that this disconnect in integration could be the primary reason that such a large portion are not putting their daily communications into Civi?  If this integration were a core functionality, then very little user/admin configuration would be needed.  I understand the massive undertaking this will be on the development side, however, I believe that the payoffs would be exponential.

[demeritcowboy]

It's come up a couple times for at least two orgs I know, but other than importing csv/vcard files couldn't think of anything other than some custom process which we're trying to avoid.

We did a proof-of-concept ldap server using nodejs, but all it really proved was that it wasn't going to work in practice. The biggest problems we had were:
1) ldap groups/distribution lists aren't supported by the ldap client in outlook (and I think not in most other ones we looked at either), and,
2) if you have two people with the same name then in order to distinguish them in a way that works in all clients you pretty much have to put something extra into the name field, which then appears in any emails you send to them, and looks weird/inappropriate to the recipient.

[Donald Lobo]

I understand the massive undertaking this will be on the development side, however, I believe that the payoffs would be exponential.

Would you / your organization be interested in helping lead the massive undertaking. Helps all open source projects if folks start "scratching their own itch".

lobo

[xavier]

Hi,

I did follow up on the proof of concept we did with dave. I'm going to put that on a beta test to the client that sponsored some of the dev end of the month. We have added an extra api that does a faster search than the generic api get.

Would be interested to try with other users too. Would be even better if they got some budget to fix the bug they identify

As for the group, what we have done on other projects is to integrate with mailman and team@yourdomain.org contains a list that is fetched from the team group. The sync seems to work (d7) but we'd need to add better reporting on failure (eg. to be sure it still works instead of silently stop syncing)

[gharris]

if folks start "scratching their own itch".

I've got no qualms with that mentality.  However, at this point in time, while I would love to, adding a project lead role on my plate would probably be disastrous on both sides of the coin.  Fortunately for all of us, it looks like "xavier" is already scratching.  That being said, I could potentially be a part of an effort.  Anyone have any estimates on what is needed for continued development?  "xavier", you mentioned some budget considerations.  Having apparently done more work on this than others who have responded, what's your "bounty" estimate?

[xavier]

Hi,

I'd need 500 to 1000 to get it in a good shape enough and share. To be clear, it's not a bounty and I will share it anyway, but would speed up the eta.

I'm fine tuning the queries on the server to return relevant results without exploding the server, quite happy with the result.

Right now, it uses a single civicrm user for each requests, ie. everyone will see the same contacts.


X+

P.S. I think we are intimate enough, you don't need to put quotes around my name

[gharris]

Xavier, that sounds like great progress.  I'll admit, cash resources are not something that I have large amounts of.  Though, I do feel that your request is by no means outlandish.  I'll see if this is something that I can scratch together at least a partial contribution for.

Having dug around a little and seeing your massive involvement in CiviCRM, I have to assume that there is a reason you aren't using the Drupal/CiviCRM shared user functionality to create each contact as a user and store that info in the LDAP backend?  Then utilizing the Organic Groups to provide the ACLs?

Thanks

P.S.  Sorry about the quotes.  I've seen your name used as a handle many times and was trying to be polite.

[xavier]

Having dug around a little and seeing your massive involvement in CiviCRM, I have to assume that there is a reason you aren't using the Drupal/CiviCRM shared user functionality to create each contact as a user and store that info in the LDAP backend?  Then utilizing the Organic Groups to provide the ACLs?

The main reason is that the server is written in node.js, so different language and technology than drupal/civi. It's only communicating with civi through the rest api.

I didn't find an rest api to validate login/pwd that would potentially work for D6,D7, J! and WP

[petednz]

hey xavier - did this progress?