For those of you using Thunderbird with SuiteCRM, a SuiteCRM Email Archiver add-on for Thunderbird is now available.
It is intended to make filing email into SuiteCRM a little less cumbersome. Rather than first selecting a module and searching for a record, the add-on takes the email address already available in the message and searches Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Targets at the same time.
If a matching record is found, the email can be archived directly against it. Contacts and Accounts can also be expanded to file the email against related Opportunities, Quotes, Cases or Projects.
If the sender does not yet exist in SuiteCRM, the add-on can create a Lead or Contact using information extracted locally from the email signature, headers or an attached vCard. Fields that have been inferred rather than clearly identified are marked for confirmation before anything is saved.
A few other useful bits:
Attachments can be archived as Notes.
Complete email threads can be archived using the message References chain rather than simply matching the subject.
Previously archived messages are detected using their message ID to avoid creating duplicates.
Sent messages automatically use the recipient rather than your own address for the CRM lookup.
Frequently used archive destinations are remembered.
Cases, Opportunities, Meetings and follow-up Tasks can be created directly from an email and linked to the selected CRM record.
Archived messages are tagged in Thunderbird so it is easy to see what has already been filed.
Keyboard shortcuts and right-click archiving are available for quicker filing.
Authentication uses OAuth2 against the SuiteCRM V8 REST API. The SuiteCRM password is not stored by the extension; after authentication only the rotating refresh token is retained.
Signature and contact extraction is performed locally in Thunderbird. The extension does not use any external service to analyse email content, and runtime communication is limited to the configured SuiteCRM instance.
It supports SuiteCRM 7 and 8 and Thunderbird 140 ESR onwards.
https://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com/Api/access_token
HTTP 500, expected
The test deliberately sends an invalid client id, and only a working V8 token endpoint rejects it with a JSON OAuth error. This reply is the proof that SuiteCRM's API is here, its OAuth2 code is loaded and its database is reachable. It is not a fault.
{"error":"unknown_error","error_description":"OAuth2Clients module with id __probe__ is not found","message":"OAuth2Clients module with id __probe__ is not found"}
Yes, it’s some of my previous debug information that I’ve kept, just in case someone runs into issues. Hopefully, it will make it easier to figure out why something isn’t working. There’s also a debug log generator at the bottom of the preferences section, which captures more detailed information.
Well, I needed a plugin that did a bit more than the existing ones I’d tested, so I hope this can be useful to others as well. The signature scraper is currently one of the weaker parts of the add-on and something I plan to improve, although it works fairly well in most cases already. I’m also very open to suggestions for improvements or other features that could make it more useful.
Thunderbird is an open-source email client, rather than a mail server. It’s similar to Microsoft Outlook in that respect and runs locally on your computer, connecting to your existing mail server or service using protocols such as IMAP and SMTP.
So the add-on runs inside Thunderbird and doesn’t require any particular mail server. It should work whether your email is hosted on-premises, self-hosted, or provided by a cloud service.