For a project at work I need some software for my team to keep track of contacts with customers. It needs to be secure, searchable, and shareable among remote users who do not have access to the same network or a VPN.
I don’t have the tech or budget resources to build something or pay for something, so it has to be free or shareware or something we already have. In the past a simple Excel spreadsheet worked when it was just me so this doesn’t have to be super-fancy. Customer service software would be an answer, but again there is that pesky budget issue.
We are quickly scaling out of the half-assed solution we are using right now, so anyone who comes up with a workable solution for me gets a 2 lb. box of chocolate (or agreed-upon equivalent). I’m serious. I’ll pony up the goodies if I get this solved.
Sounds like a job for FileMaker. You just need customers and, for each customer, the contacts associated therewith, multi-user, password-protected? Less than 9 minutes’ design time. My standard rate is $90/hr so I’d do it for you for est. $10.
I knocked together a simple database app with very limited DBA skills.
On the other hand for ease and cheapness of web access, I built another (puny!) MySQL (Free) database with a PHP(Free) & HTML(Free) web front end.
The biggest challenge in my limited experience is sharing the access to users WITHOUT a client installed, this is less of an issue for internal apps, but if you ever want to roll the app out to external customers/suppliers etc then you should think about this before choosing a platform
If you’re saying you can’t afford to buy something pre-designed (ACT!, for example), you don’t have time to develop anything (Filemaker, MS Access), and it has to be free (regardless), I’m afraid you’re asking for the impossible.
Filemaker will work and is quite easy to set up, but it will take some doing to make it sharable and with remote access. They have add-on products (such as Filemaker Server for multiple users) and (I think) their base product comes with a web-publishing module, but it publishes (on my last check) pure html, which would not be helpful if you need to be able to edit contacts remotely.
It would also be relatively easy to set up (as someone mentioned before) a MySQL database with a PHP front-end (free as far as I know), but you’ll need some expertise in installing and setting up these products.
When you say you don’t have “resources”, are you able to learn and set it up yourself?
I don’t want to sound judgemental, but it seems for something as important as customer management, you could make it a priority to invest a few hundred dollars on it.
If you have MS Access, there might be some templates in there for customer management that would be real easy to set up, but sharing and remote access would probably prove more difficult.
Well, you don’t need FileMaker Server for multiple users unless you’re talking about a whole lot of concurrent users. It’s a multi-user environment right out of the box. But yeah, you either need to have a copy of FileMaker for every user or you need to publish to the web (or use Terminal Services, another possibility); and if you publish to the web, you can do finds and sorts and edits and printouts using an extremely limited number of possible screens (one for list view and one for form view) using “instant web publishing”, but it limits you to a finite number of IP connections per 24 hour period unless you shell out for a more expensive version called “Unlimited”.
Those are the rules and architecture under FileMaker 6. FileMaker 7 (just released, server versions not all available yet) is/will be a different animal as far as unlimited publishing to web (instead of Unlimited you buy Server, which is also not cheap).
Would a message board very similiar to this one work, with something like one thread for each customer? If so, let me know. I’ll set you up with one for 2 pounds of chocolate!
Since your users aren’t on the same network and don’t have VPN access, one of the first decisions you need to make is how you’re going to host this material. If you have (or can install) a webserver, then that’s a good method. As other posters have mentioned, putting something like a PHP/mySQL solution together would be quick and easy, as would an ASP-based solution if you’re limited to using Microsoft’s IIS server. However, you need to devote at least as much time to securing the setup as you do to developing the features. You’ll want user-based access controls and probably a secure certificate to protect your data. Whether you use a product like Act! or Goldmine or try to roll your own with a webserver and database, the hosting and security issues are at least half your battle unless you want to publish this info to the world.
This is non-trivial, people get paid a lot of money to do this right, and it’s rather foolhardy to go into it with zero resources. I have to agree with Heart On My Sleeve that for something as important as this is to your business, requiring that a solution cost no money is a bit extreme. Do you also require zero-cost accounting systems and zero-cost product delivery methods?