sugarCRM

 

Microsoft Open Technologies (China) today published the OData Producer for SugarCRM to GitHub, an open source plugin tool that aims to help organizations gain more value from their corporate assets by promoting the more efficient exchange of information between diverse data systems.

Enterprises often need to use a variety of data process and analysis software packages to exploit the information and carry out complicated computing tasks. Yet, the differences among business application software (from databases to data formatting) often impede efficient data exchange. One way that the industry has come together to help address related interoperability challenges has been through the creation of standards like the Open Data Protocol (OData).

The OData protocol is the open data interface standard currently accepted by Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). This specification supports universal data formats and simplifies the methods of data query, sharing, and reuse among applications for enterprises and cloud on mobile devices, so that people can more easily obtain information from various data sources, such as relational database, file system, content management system, and traditional websites.

Through Microsoft’s long-standing commitments to openness, interoperability and industrywide collaboration, we actively support the utilization and promotion of OData to provide data providers, users and developers easy access to different types of data. To date, Microsoft Open Tech (China) has contributed OData plugins to government open data portal solution CKAN and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), greatly reinforcing this commitment to openness and increasing the flow of government and enterprise data.

The OData Producer for SugarCRM plugin strives to increase the flow of information at a reduced cost by increasing interoperability between SugarCRM, a globally influential open source CRM system, and Microsoft Office. With this open source tool, enterprise users can now analyze SugarCRM data sources with Office 365, Power BI, Tableau or other OData application clients.

Build a Bridge between Data producers and Consumers with SugarCRM and Microsoft Off

SugarCRM is an open source customer relation management (CRM) system used by organizations around the world. Its code was written in PHP, a popular scripting language used by web developers. SugarCRM also broadly compatible with a diverse range of operating systems. In addition, the software is highly extensible, and it is possible to add new functions and modules on demand. All of these factors presented a strong opportunity for Microsoft to take this project forward, and to enable enterprise users working with SugarCRM to derive added benefit from being able to efficiently generate and analyze data in Office365, Power BI and Tableau.

The OData Producer for SugarCRM plugin acts as a bridge between data producers and consumers. OData Producer converts data in the SugarCRM database into a standard OData format. Meanwhile, any OData third-party clients including Office 365, Power BI and Tableau can reanalyze and reprocess exported data to derive greater value from their SugarCRM system.

This open source tool allows organizations to build a data bridge on demand. The plugin interface is easy to use, as it was  specifically customized to support both SugarCRM administrators and common users. An administrator can readily configure various data assets using this tool, while common users have the ability to export pertinent data to an OData third-party client, such as Office365 quickly and easily. The plugin and its tutorial can be accessed and downloaded from Github .

We welcome your feedback and suggestions for further improvements and related project work. Please contact us at msopentechcn@microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

 

Emily Chen

Technical Evangelist

Microsoft Open Technologies (China)

opentech-wechat