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API to GoldMine CRM/SAF System?

Posted by Cliff on from the building-around-other-internals dept.

saulgood asks: "My company has made an investment in GoldMine, a customer management and sales automation software package. It seems to have some really cool features and sound business ideas underpining it, but the interface is lacking and, of course, only runs on Windows. I would like to find/build a simple interface to pine/elm for the tech department folks who don't need all the features, just mail and maybe the calendar. Has anyone tried such a thing? I believe it has a vCal interface, and the DB can either be SQL Server or Borland so connecting to the DB should be easy enough."

3 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck... by pease1 · · Score: 2, Informative
    We used GM at a past company I worked at. The execs and sales guys loved it, all the techies hated it.

    We had a consultant who was pretty knowledgable about the internals of GM and he had moved us to the version that supported SQLserver, so we looked into building a simple front end. The consultant had a really hard time getting information about the structure of the DB and it was clear there were some really weird things happening between the client and the DB... the more we looked the more we realized there were dependies between fields that weren't in the DB, but managed by the client.

    We gave up and just used email. A really great example of why closed systems suck.

    Good luck!

  2. GoldMine Everywhere by qurob · · Score: 2, Informative

    You need a web server, and you can run GoldMine Everywhere.

    http://www.frontrange.com/goldmine/fo2000_gmes.a sp

    You can then use PalmPilots, or a web browser to access your customer data ANYWHERE.

  3. API by afriedel · · Score: 2, Informative

    I used to be a consultant in Goldmine. Goldmine has some serious drawbacks when you start trying to customize it. Dont get me wrong, it's an excellent piece of software for what it is intended to do, but a lot of things have been added to the software and they have tried to keep backwards compatibility between versions.

    Some problems you may encounter is generating a "RECID". Goldmine has a proprietary way to generate unique identifiers for db records. Last time I knew the only way to do it was through their COM API or they have some SQL Server Stored Procedures that can do it as well.

    Also, the DB structure is not exactly straightforward. Fields mean different things depending on what type of record it is. Address1 could mean "PC Type". The only way to know is to look at the documentation.

    GM has some documentation on this stuff. Check their FTP site.

    --
    Aaron Friedel