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Since this is a child theme of Genesis, you must also have Genesis installed for it to run. If you don’t have Genesis, use CRM Press or build your own theme by porting the code.
Summary
About 6 months ago at WordCamp Phoenix I shared TwentyTen CRM, my first attempt at developing a Customer Relationship Management system. Andrew Norcross and Jared Atchison then contributed a ton of improvements to it, and it’s been mostly unchanged since then.
Just in time for WordCamp SF (and Genesis Connect) I’m sharing my lastest version, Genesis CRM. There’s a few reasons for me making the switch:
- TwentyTen is no longer shipped with WordPress.
- Genesis is my preferred development platform. I build all my client’s sites using it.
- Most importantly, TwentyTen CRM was built specifically for managing prospective clients. Once I landed the project, it was no longer used. Genesis CRM has a screen for prospective projects, active projects, and completed projects, and is a tool I use constantly throughout the day to stay organized.
If you don’t use Genesis, no worries! You can use CRM Press, which Thomas Griffin built as a standalone CRM theme (ported from TwentyTen CRM just like Genesis CRM). Or you can just look at the code I’m using it and build it into whatever you’re comfortable working with.
Finally, I’d like to note that what makes this such a valuable tool is how easily (and often) I can modify it. I’m not building a CRM for everyone – this is specifically built for my needs. I highly recommend you take the concepts outlined in this theme and apply them in your own way. Get on Github, fork this project and build your own CRM.
Features
- Custom taxonomies and metaboxes for collecting your data.
- Prospects page template that is 3 widgetized columns. I’ve built a lot of widgets to analyze prospects, so choose the ones you want. Examples: Activity Graph, Source of Inquiry, Source of Projects, Outstanding Quotes… and more.
- Active Projects page template. This lists all active projects in order of project status. It includes a status summary and budget. There’s also a “Needs Work” radio button when editing a project, and if marked the project will have a yellow background. This let’s you quickly see which projects need work. In the sidebar I list scheduled projects so you can be ready for those when they come up.
- Completed Projects page template. This lists completed projects, the budget, time spent, and effective hourly rate. Use this to see what types of projects you over- or under-quote on to improve your estimates. Note: there is no timer built-in. I use Toggl and every Sunday I transcribe that week’s time data to the fields on each project.
- Any time you click the name of a project it takes you directly to the Edit Post screen. Since I’m constantly editing projects’ status, this saves the extra step of clicking “Edit” and gives you a single interface for viewing this information rather than a single post screen and the edit screen.
- If you’re using Gravity Forms, edit the Form page template with the appropriate form ID and you’ll be able to embed a contact form on your public site that automatically populates your CRM (tutorial here).
- The design is responsive, so on a smaller screen (ex: mobile phone) it shifts to a single column layout.
Recommended Plugins
- Gravity Forms and Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types, for your contact form
- Registered Users Only, to limit site’s access to only you. I’ve also added a filter that excludes the contact form from this restriction (functions.php, around line 375).
- Relevanssi, not only will you improve the search results, by going to Settings > Relevanssi you can specify all the post meta fields you’d like included in the index. This is absolutely a must since your CRM is built on post meta.
Sample WordPress CRMs
Have you built a CRM in WordPress? Share your code! Below are some public CRM themes. Leave a link to yours in the comments and I’ll add it to this list. Look through the code of these themes to get ideas for your own CRM.
- Genesis CRM by Bill Erickson
- CRM Press by Thomas Griffin
- TwentyTen CRM by Bill Erickson, Andrew Norcross and Jared Atchison
Rich Rodecker says
This looks pretty nice, except I must be doing something wrong in that I can’t seem to get any of the custom meta boxes going? I know the be_create_metaboxes() function is being called, but when I go to edit a Contact, I don’t see the Client Information, Project Information, etc. metaboxes. I’m not using Gravity Forms, would that have anything to do with it?
Rich Rodecker says
Ok, I actually got it, but had to do add_filter( ‘cmb_meta_boxes’, ‘be_create_metaboxes’ ); and make sure that the $meta_box array was returned from be_create_metaboxes().
Bill Erickson says
Great catch! I just updated the metabox code in the CRM and forgot that it wasn’t already using the filter to add metaboxes (added in last version of metabox code, I must have been 2 versions off). Will update the theme today.
Haroun Kola says
Hi
Thanks for this theme. I’ve got a client, who runs an employment agency and looking for a CMS solution, I know nothing about this kind of software at all, I am familiar with WordPress and remembered this post when looking for a solution.
Is there a simple tutorial I can have access to help me get to grips with this kind of software. I’m meeting him in the week to discuss working on his site, and it would be great to go in with some idea how this theme works 🙂
Thanks
Haroun
Bill Erickson says
The easiest way to explore it is to actually install it. Do a blank installation of WordPress, upload Genesis and Genesis CRM, then activate it. If you’re comfortable with databases you can use the database dump to get a complete demo site setup; alternatively, you can use the WordPress export file to import just the content (Tools > Import).
There aren’t any tutorials online, but once you install it you should be able to figure it out pretty easily. Go to Contacts > Add New to see all the fields you can add. Go to Appearance > Widgets to see all the contact related widgets you can add to the homepage. Go to Pages > Add New, and in the right column you can see the available page templates (Active Projects, Complete Projects, Download, Contact).
Rich Spalding says
Hi Bill,
This is a great tool! But, you currently have it setup so that…
Any time you click the name of a project it takes you directly to the Edit Post screen. Since I’m constantly editing projects’ status, this saves the extra step of clicking “Edit” and gives you a single interface for viewing this information rather than a single post screen and the edit screen.
Is there a place in the code that I can easily change it back to Any time you click the name of a project it takes you directly to a single post screen, then we can click the [edit] if we need to edit? I have a need to mostly just view the project notes versus editing/adding to the project.
Let me know…Thanks, Rich
Bill Erickson says
You’ll need to go through all the theme files, changing
get_edit_post_link()
toget_permalink()
.David Wang says
Hi Bill, thanks for releasing this. I’ve been searching for a lightweight CRM and am going to give yours a go. However the links to the sample data is broken. Where can I download the SQL dump please? Thanks
Bill Erickson says
Sorry about that, just updated the links
David Wang says
Thanks Bill!
Ross Teasley says
hi bill, very excited to try this out. the sample data .sql file, however, seems to be 404ing (for me at least). is it also available anywhere else?
thanks for making this public!
Dharma Giri says
Awesome stuff…
Dorian Speed says
Hi, Bill! Thanks so much for providing this – I can already tell it’s going to be a huge help in keeping myself organized. It may have been my error, but when I installed the latest version of the theme it didn’t include the various metaboxes – so my “Add Contact” screen, for example, didn’t have the fields associated with it. (Screenshot: http://ScrnSht.com/ltyjuc). Brandon Kraft passed along the older version of the theme and that one seems to work just fine, with all of the metaboxes available. So, again – it may be my error, but I wanted to just pass that along to you. Thanks again!
Bill Erickson says
Hmm, that’s really strange. Inside functions.php you should see this: https://gist.github.com/2895881
That links to /lib/functions/create-metaboxes.php which creates the metaboxes: https://github.com/billerickson/Genesis-CRM/blob/master/lib/functions/create-metaboxes.php
Dorian Speed says
I have *no idea* why this isn’t working, because I do see those files inside the specified folders. I’ve tried deleting and then reinstalling the theme a couple of times, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference – but the old version still works (whether the new version has been uploaded or not). I even tried uploading the older version of create-metaboxes.php, but – no dice. I mean, the older version works great for me; I’m just letting you know that for at least one person out there in CluelessLand, an issue exists.
Bill Erickson says
Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll do some testing. I didn’t actually test this new version when I pushed it out – I just pulled it directly from my active installation. I gave a presentation at WordCamp Orange County last week on my CRM and wanted to make sure everyone could access the version I was using.
Dorian Speed says
I was looking at the slides from your presentation, actually, to figure out where I could put things on the homepage. It’s very helpful to see screenshots of how you’re actually implementing the CRM theme. Thanks again!
Micki says
Ditto! There aren’t any metaboxes on my admin screens either. I’ve been looking at this for hours and couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. So glad that I’m not the only one.
Has there been any update to the theme? I’m anxious to get it up and running so I can get organized! Great work, thanks!
Scott Hack says
Can someone point me to the slides from the Orange County talk?
Bill Erickson says
Here you go: http://presentations.billerickson.net/building-a-crm-on-wordpress/
romu says
Hi Bill,
Your CRM seems the ideal solution my company is looking for, thanks for sharing!
We run WP as our company CMS, and so, many of our customers own an account on our WP instance.
So, I would like to know if there is a way in your CRM to make directly a contact from an WP account?
Thanks.
Bill Erickson says
Are you asking if you can associate a contact form submission with the user who submitted it if they are a WordPress user of your site? If so, yes, that’s a feature of Gravity Forms. When setting up your form, it will ask you who the post author should be. There’s an option to use the current user if logged in.
romu says
Thanks for this quick answer Bill. It seems to do the tricks. And yes, the idea is not to duplicate information but to use the ones already stored into the WP DB as much as possible.