Opacus NewsVersion 3 of the Outlook plugin has now been released, which is a complete rewrite and adds support for Outlook 2013.
The Opacus Outlook extension is available in Lite and Professional versions. See the Opacus homepage for details.
Brings much needed CalDAV support to SugarCRM for all your mobile devices and the popular Lightning calendar in Thunderbird.
See the Opacus homepage for details about the module and instructions on how to download/install.
For more information about these products please contact sales@opacus.co.uk or visit www.opacus.co.uk.
Access this page at any time by selecting Help > Opacus Help
Important Information for Mac users
The extension uses the popular Growl notification service, available here. The extension will function silently if the service is unavailable.
After installing the extension, you will need to enter your SugarCRM URL, username, password into the settings dialog box. Click on Tools, then Opacus SugarCRM Settings. In the URL box put your SugarCRM address, for instance: http://sugarserver.com/sugarcrm. Put your username and password in the respective boxes (the username is not case sensitive). Click on the Test Settings button to confirm your settings are correct.
Navigate to the Licence section and enter your activation key (if you don't have one you can purchase one from the Opacus website). Click on Activate and your licence will be generated and inserted into the licence key box. Alternatively you can sign up for a free trial by pressing the 'Free Trial' button and confirming your name and email address. A free trial licence will be emailed to you immediately. The text under the key input box will show your licence status. If your licence does not show as valid, please check that your SugarCRM url and username match exactly the ones used when the licence was activated. If you experience any difficulties please contact support@opacus.co.uk
Use LDAP Authentication: Choose this option if your SugarCRM server uses LDAP authentication. If no LDAP key is set in SugarCRM, leave the key blank for PLAIN authentication (insecure) or configure a key in SugarCRM and enter into the box that appears when this option is selected.
Auto archiving of inbound mail: Select this option to automatically archive all mail received in your inbox folders. The extension will check the From: and CC: addresses in new inbound mail, look them up in SugarCRM and if any Leads or Contacts are found the mail will be archived into SugarCRM and related to those objects. If any contacts are found the mail will also be related to that contact's account. If the option to parse the subject for case numbers is selected, and there is a case number in the Subject line of the new mail, the extension will additionally relate the email to that case. Tick the second checkbox to archive attachments when auto-archiving (this setting applies to all auto-archiving, inbound, outbound and bulk).
Opacus New Mail Notification: You can choose here if you would like a notification when new mail arrives in your Inbox. This uses the libnotify library on some Linux distributions which can be more appealing than the default notification.
Parse Subject Line for Case Numbers: A further setting allows you to choose whether the subject line of the email is parsed for case numbers. The Case module needs to be selected in the Search window for this function to work (unless auto-archiving).
Add bcc recipients to outbound auto archive: When auto archiving (or archiving sent mail) this setting will mean that all bcc recipients will be searched for inside SugarCRM and archived against if found.
Use locally stored email id: Since version 1.0.3 the archived email id is stored in Thunderbird after archiving. This avoids duplication in SugarCRM by only updating the email/relationships if re-archived. By default this setting is on, but unticking this setting will disable completely the use of this id (it will however continue to be stored in case the setting is turned back on). A per-email setting is available in the Search window "Force full re-archive" which allows the re-archive of a single email for instances where one would want to archive the original email in its entirety after previous editing, or if the email has been inadvertently deleted in SugarCRM.
Excluded addresses: Since version 1.0.4 you are able to exclude email addresses or entire domains from the auto archive feature. Just add an email address (bob@example.com) or domain (example.com), one on each line, into the box in the Advanced Settings tab.
The Opacus SugarCRM Thunderbird Professional Extension supports custom modules inside SugarCRM when archiving normally using the search window. Custom modules are not supported when auto-archiving. To add custom modules to the available modules in the search window, use the "Refresh Custom Modules" button to request a list of custom modules from your SugarCRM server, and select the checkbox on those modules you would like displayed. It is possible to add a display label to each module to suit your preference (the module label used inside SugarCRM is not available to the extension). Please note: emails will only be archived to custom modules that have a relationship to the Activities group of modules inside your SugarCRM.
The contact synchonisation creates a new Thunderbird address book called 'Opacus SugarCRM'. To add existing Thunderbird contacts to SugarCRM, copy or move them into this folder after the first sync and run a second sync. When synchronising Thunderbird with your SugarCRM contacts, you have two options that will help control the amount of contacts retrieved from your CRM:
Only Synchronise My Contacts: If this is selected, only contacts that are assigned to you inside SugarCRM will be retrieved.
Honour 'Sync to Outlook' setting in SugarCRM If this is selected, only contacts that you have chosen to synchronise will be retrieved
Please note that if both of these are selected, they are both in force and only contacts that are assigned to you and that you have chosen to sync by setting the 'Sync to Outlook' flag will be added to Thunderbird. If either of these options are deselected, the synchronisation time is reset inside Thunderbird to force a resynchronisation. Additionally, if they have been deselected previously and are being selected, no contacts will actually be removed from Thunderbird and the address book will need to be deleted as a whole before resyncing (it will be recreated from SugarCRM on the next sync). Please perform a synchronisation prior to making any changes to these settings to ensure all changes are up to date in both applications. The final option determines whether you prefer Thunderbird or SugarCRM to be chosen as the winner for any conflicted records. If a record has been modified in both Thunderbird and SugarCRM since the last synchronisation, the record modified by the application chosen in this setting will overwrite the record created in the other.
Synchronisation of the Organisation (Account) field is performed when Thunderbird is creating records inside SugarCRM. The sync will look for accounts that match the company name using a case insensitive search with a final wildcard, so for instance if an account is called 'ACME Ltd.' inside SugarCRM, setting 'Acme' to be the Organisation in Thunderbird will create a relationship to this account.
Delete capabilities. Please note: deleting an entire address book will not remove all contacts within that address book from SugarCRM. However, moving all Leads into the Contacts address book, or vice versa, will have that effect. We recommend you leave the prompt at the setting to prompt when deleting 5 or more records. To reset the sync completely and refresh records from SugarCRM, right click on the Address Book and delete the book. Do not remove all records from within the book. Once the book has been removed, press the Sync button and the Address Book will be created afresh and populated with data from SugarCRM.
Three additional buttons are available for ease of use. These should all be added the first time Thunderbird is run after installation, but if not simply right-click on the respective toolbars, click Customise and drag the buttons to the toolbars. The first is for the main toolbar in Thunderbird, and the other two are for the compose window, to enable a manual search and archive on sending, and additionally a send and auto-archive which will automatically search the To: and Cc: addresses for a match and archive the mail to Leads, Contacts and their related accounts while sending.
To archive one or more emails in a folder, select them and either right-click one of the selected messages and choose 'Archive email(s) to SugarCRM', or click the Archive button mentioned above. The search window will appear with a search suggestion already in place. You can search for:
You can use a % character as a wildcard, for instance %@mydomain.com will search for all email addresses at the domain mydomain.com and Nat% will find Natasha, Natalia, Nathan and so on. Additionally you can search for multiple strings by adding a ; character between each (for instance John Smith; test@example.com; Acme Trading).
Either use the suggested search or input your own, then click Search. The results will be returned from the modules selected in the available Modules pane. Once you have found the record you would like to archive against, choose whether or not to archive the attachments using the checkbox at the bottom of the Search pane, and click Archive. A notification will inform you when the archive is complete.
It is possible to select a quantity of emails inside Thunderbird and have the extension query SugarCRM for matching Leads, Contacts and Accounts based on each email's From/To and Cc addresses, then automatically archive these emails into SugarCRM. Simply select the emails, right click on one and select 'Auto-archive emails to SugarCRM'. This feature has been tested on large quantities of emails, but we would recommend archiving a maximum of 300 emails at a time.
The extension generates a unique key from the server url and username used when activated, which we use to generate a license. This key on its own is effectively a meaningless series of letters and numbers and no information can be extracted, but it allows us to confirm the uniqueness of your environment. It is this unique key that links the extension to the licence.
So how do I get a licence?
You can obtain a trial licence using the button in the options window under the licence tab. Just click the Free Licence button and confirm your details, and the extension will contact our server to request that a 10 day free trial licence is sent out to you. To buy one or more licences visit the Opacus website and purchase an activation key (at present these are not available on the site, please email support@opacus.co.uk for a key). Activation keys can be bought for more than one licence, and the activation is done within the extension by placing your activation key in the provided textbox and clicking on Activate.
Many thanks to our volunteer translators:
For bug reports or to assist with localisation of this extension, please contact support@opacus.co.uk
Release Notes:
Known Issues: