Installing Vtiger Opensource CRM Server

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is important and even indispensable in efficiently managing customer information and enabling timely and responsive customer service. This entry details the process of obtaining and installing Vtiger CRM 5.0.3. This CRM application started off similar to the OpenSource version of SugarCRM, but it has grown to establish itself as a CRM in its own right. My choice to install this and not SugarCRM is based on the fact that since SugarCRM is not 100% opensource, some important features are not available freely. In particular, the ability to use a plugin to connect to the CRM to and from Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook is available at no cost in VtigerCRM and not in SugarCRM.

Where to find VtigerCRM

VtigerCRM is available in various flavours each matching an operating system and web deployment platform. It is available for Windows, Linux, and WAMP/LAMP. Since I will be installing it on a LAMP web server, I downloaded the LAMP version, uncompressed the file and uploaded the files to a location on the Web Server.

Web Setup

Having uploaded the files to the web server, open Mozilla Firefox or your favourite web browser and go to the path of the location where you uploaded the setup files to. You will be presented with the welcome screen of the configuration wizard. To avoid problems, it is important to heed the notice that:

vtiger CRM 5.0.3 is tested on mySQL 4.1.X, mySQL 5.0.19, PHP 5.0.19 and Apache 2.0.40.
vtiger CRM 5.0.3 will not work on mysql 4.0.x versions and PHP 5.2.x versions
vtiger CRM can run on a system which has xampp/lampp/wampp already installed in it provided it meets the above mentioned requirements

If you choose to register your contact information (I strongly recommend that you do so to help the Vtiger team improve the product), you can submit the registration without being taken away from the installation process. So you do not have a reason not to register. Click on the Start button to begin installation

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VtigerCRM will then scan your server settings to verify that it meets the minimum requirements to properly run the CRM application. Also it will check to make sure that some folders are writable.

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After the application verifies that your server meets the minimum requirements, the third step is to define the varions configuration parameters such as Database type, hostname, Site configuration, Admin configuration and Currency Configuration. A number of these parameters will be pre-populated based on the information already available to Vtiger from the compatibility scan. If and once you provide valid login information, you will be presented with a confirmation screen showing the settings.

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Once you confirm the settings file will be created, the config file will be created, the system installation will inform you of this as well as the fact that it will take about four (4) minutes to complete setup.

Fig. 5

The installation process will quickly jump though the Database generation and then display the 'Finish' screen (shown below) without any further messages (this is insufficient and Vtiger should consider having a more informative screen to inform users to wait or that the installation is complete). Since the alert indicated that the process would take about 4 minutes, I decided to wait for 10 minutes before navigating away from this page.

Fig. 6a

PS: Maybe the installation is complete so fast and the indicated 4 minute delay would have newly installed web application with demo data been the case if I had elected to have the installer fill the database with Demo Data.