Data Model Customization In SugarCRM
This is the third in a series of articles introducing SugarCRM’s Module Builder to create custom modules representing custom objects (blog writers and blog posts), and we will now learn how to customize the data model representing our blog writer object.
In SugarCRM, logged in as Admin user, go to Admin>Module builder. On the left pane tree menu, click on the package you created (we called it Blog), containing the two modules - writers and posts. Click on writers to expand it, and click on ‘Fields’ icon. You will see a list of fields that are already part of the writers object. We will need to add some new fields (click on the ‘Add Field’ button), that better describe a writer object. You will notice that the writers module (screenshot below) has several fields under the ‘Person’ section, and none under the Writers section. That is because when we created the module, it ‘inherited’ fields from the Person type. Fields we will add now will be added under the Writers section.
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SugarCRM Modules Customization Options
Our last post explained how to create custom SugarCRM modules. Modules allow you to represent custom objects in SugarCRM. In past SugarCRM versions, you had to build modules by editing PHP files, but now Sugar’s Module Builder does all the dirty work for you. Once you created a new module, you will need to customize it further - define the data structure representing the objects and build the UI elements supporting this object.
To make this tutorial more clear, we will create our won custom modules in SugarCRM. As an example, we will create modules that are related to blogs - blog posts and writers. We will then customize our writers object. But first, lets go over some of the customization options SugarCRM provides.
Customizing SugarCRM With Module Builder
SugarCRM has come a long way from it’s early days as a basic CRM application. It is now gradually becoming more of a platform than an application. This becomes very clear when you need to customize SugarCRM. One of the most common customization scenarios is building new modules.
Using the term ‘Modules’ might deter novice SugarCRM developers, because Modules sounds like something very complicated (in ERP systems, for example, modules are usually difficult to develop). But all a module does is describe the properties and supporting UI elements required to support a certain type of data object. SugarCRM supports many objects (modules) out of the box - accounts, leads, projects,cases, calls etc. If you want to add support to a new type of object, you need to to create a new module to represent that object.
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