How We Integrated Asterisk With SugarCRM
We recently made some changes to our phone system and decided that we should integrate it with our SugarCRM system. We use Asterisk as our phone switch, which is an excellent open source phone system. The goal of the integration was to enable a user to click on any phone number in Sugar and have it automatically connect that phone number to the user’s phone extension.
We store the user’s phone extension in the Users module, so that user can edit “my account”. Similarly, an administrator can edit an employee record to specify what extension should ring when a user clicks a phone number. Our phone server and our Sugar system are not in the same physical building, but it was a simple process to have Sugar communicate directly with Asterisk’s API to initiate the call.
When the user clicks on a phone number, Sugar validates that it is a legitimate phone number and if so, it then makes an API call to Asterisk, sending both the user’s extension number and the connecting phone number. Asterisk first rings the user’s extension and if the user picks up, Asterisk then dials the phone number and connects the the newly placed call.
In addition, we programmed the system to place calls to the conference room phone by clicking the last digit in the phone number. All of our users have a secondary extension that goes to a soft-phone (which may be used if the user is working from home), so when the second-to-last digit of the phone number is clicked, the call transfers to the soft phone extension. A different digit in the phone number could easily be assigned to call a user’s cell phone.
Although we opted not to go any farther with our integration, we could have made it open the “Schedule Call” feature in the Activities sub-panel or create a note in the “History” sub-panel if that was desired.
Here are some screenshots showing the phone number is linked on the list view and the detail view:
7 Responses to SugarCRM and Asterisk Integration
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Which integration module did you use with your SugarCRM? VoiceRD, Liz, ..?
Yes, inquiring minds would like to know what plug-in was used for this.
We did not use any plugins for Sugar or any pre-built integration modules. We wrote our own integration, but it was fairly simple to do. Basically we edited the layouts to build the URL using customCode. The URL that gets built generates an AJAX call to a script sitting on the Asterisk server that uses the Asterisk API to place the call first to the extension and then to the third party if the user answers their extension. We can make this integration on your system as well, just give us a call at 512-481-9000 and we can discuss it more.
hi, we are on the OnDemand plan with Sugar. No asterisk install at this stage and we don’t really want any (no in-house server, shared hosting much preferred!). Do you think you can help? We’re based in Belgium, our Sugar instance is in the Sugar datacenter in the UK.
I was wondering same question as you Oliver, using OnDemand, can we integrate with Asterix?
Thanks
Hi Margaret. It should definitely work with OnDemand.
It’s great and help information information. I used it to my SugarCRM. Thanks for posting.
Can i get the screipt to run the above function
Hi Nilaxi,
We charge for our code and the time it takes our engineers to deploy it. If you are interested in this integration or are interested in buying the code, email sales@epicom.com. Thanks for your interest!!