Project

• The goal of the project openCRX
• The history of openCRX...
• ... and the current road map of openCRX
• The driving force behind openCRX
• openCRX is registered with SourceForge
• openCRX mailing lists and forums

The goal of the project openCRX:

It is our goal to establish openCRX as a reference server for

• relationship management and collaboration
• enterprise resource planning

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The history of openCRX

After careful analysis of the market for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software we came to the conclusion that the world needs a professional enterprise-class Open Source CRM solution for several reasons:

• Spending millions on a commercial CRM solution to get an "intelligent data warehouse" with a few business rules simply does not seem justified - with a professional Open Source CRM solution you can spend your money on company-specific features and integrating CRM with the rest of your business (systems and processes) instead of financing the marketing machinery of the typical CRM vendor. It is just a fact that the true value of any CRM solution can only be unlocked with proper customization and integration, regardless of what you read in glossy brochures.
• The cost-advantages of rented/hosted CRM applications over commercial solutions may materialize - or not (and yes, the marketing machines of many CRM providers are really outstanding...); far more important, however, is the fact that neither rented/hosted CRM solutions nor commercial CRM solutions can beat the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a well-designed Open Source CRM solution like openCRX.
• While it is very smart to let somebody else do the work for you (e.g. running your CRM application) it is definitely not so smart to trust your most valuable data (information about your customers) to just anybody. In particular, handing over all your valuable customer data to a company under foreign jurisdiction is a substanial business risk. So, when you looked at those hosted/rented CRM applications, did you ever ask yourself where exactly they would store your data and how much better you would feel about staying in control?
• We are strong believers in platform-independence. And honestly, is it not great to know that you can decide for openCRX without committing to a particular platform? openCRX is deployable on any J2EE-compliant application server and you can use a wide range of major database management systems (Open Source and commercial).

Hence, back in 2003 we started modeling the core of a reference CRM-application. The tool of choice for developing an open source CRM solution was openMDX, the leading open source MDA platform (MDA = Model Driven Architecture). In February 2004 we already released an initial version of the core models. The first public version of openCRX was released on 1-August-2004 and we admit that we have been totally overwhelmed by the interest in openCRX ever since.

Some of the openCRX milestones:

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... and the current road map of openCRX

openCRX was released into the public domain on 1-August-2004 and has been under active development ever since. With every new release a whole range of new features and enhancements are added (see also this comprehensive feature list for an overview):

The current roadmap looks as follows:

openCRX Release Target Release Date Feature	v2.0 25-Feb 2008	v2.1 10-Jul 2008	v2.2.1 16-Oct 2008	v2.3 17-Dec 2008	v2.4 10-March 2009	v2.5 02-Nov 2009	v2.6 1-May 2010	v2.7 7-Sep 2010	v2.8 28-DEC 2010	v2.8.5 7-MAY 2011	v2.9 9-JAN 2012	v2.10 24-AUG 2012	v2.11 18-APR 2013	tbd tbd
CalDAV Server
ICS/iCalendar Server
FreeBusy Server
LDAP Server
IMAP Server
Wiki
Index-based Search (PDF, DOC, XLS, ODS, ...)
Usability: User Settings Wizard
Usability: Address Book
Support for Safari Browser
SDK (Software Development Kit)
Installers
AJAX in-place Editing
Deep Relationships / Social Networks
Admin Tool: Segment Setup Wizard
Spreadsheet-based Report Generation
Mail Merge Wizard
Groupware VCF Servlet
Support for HSQLDB
New Layout / Enhanced GUI
Support for Mobile Devices (incl. Apple's iPhone)
Support Google Chrome
Document Scanner Servlet
Enhanced iCal Servlet
MS Outlook ICS Adapter
Enhanced Performance
WYMeditor with support for Opera and Safari
Inline Flash Media
New Locale sk_SK (Slovak)
New Locale ro_RO (Romanian)
REST Servlet - openCRX as a REST service
UI Enhancement - Composite Object DataBinding
UI Enhancement - UI Perspectives
Wizard Monthly Work Report
Wizard Mail Merge
Support for JBoss 5
Thunderbird Add-on to sync openCRX Contacts
Advanced Forms and Wizards
Mandatory Attributes
Advanced Scheduling/Polling and Voting
vCard Exporter
iCal Exporter
RSS Feeds
Migration from JPOX to Apache OpenJPA
Migration from openMDX LWC to Apache OpenEJB
Migration from RSM 6 to RSM 7.5
Enhanced Mobile Support
Support for IE8
Enhanced GUI with new Icons
Enhanced Work / Expense Record
Wizard to create Work Records
Wizard to create Expense Records
Wizard to create Work / Expense Reports
Excel Account Importer
openCRX Application Plugin in openMDX 2 Architecture
Upgrade to Apache OpenEJB 3.1.1
Upgrade to InfoVis Toolkit 1.1.2
Upgrade to WYMeditor 0.5RC1
Upgrade to SIMILE Timeline 2.3.0
iPhone Support for iCal Servlet
iCal Servlet can generate Birthday Calendar
CalDAV Support
Wiky - a WYSIWYG Editor for Wiki-style text entry
Performance Tuning - new openMDX Entity Manager
PDA GUI (iPhone, Android, ...)
Search Forms
Dashboard / Dashlets
ActiveSync Server (OTA Sync openCRX ⇔ PDAs)
LDAP Server (native)
CalDAV Support for Mozilla Calendar (TB3/Lightning1)
Thunderbird 3 Address Book Connector
openCRX Shop Adapter
Support for Eclipse Modeling Framework EMF
Support for Java 6
Support for HSQLDB 2.0
Support for OpenEJB 3.1.2
Extended Service for easy openCRX/Tomcat Mgmt
ActiveSync Client (Backend Sync openCRX ⇔ MS Exchange)
WebDAV support
CardDAV support
E-Mail Import with Auto Assign
Support for Party Status of ActivityParties
Extension Sales Volume Budgets
Connector for Twitter
IMAP Adapter supports IMAP IDLE
Workspaces GUI Extension
Activity Replication
Shop Front End (Presta Shopt)
Customer Care Wizard
GUI ELement-Level Security
Enhanced Business Processes
Wizard Business Process Manager
Wizard Bulk Create Activity
Wizard Bulk Activity Follow up
Model Extension: Contract Creators
Model Extension: Contract Groups
Model Extension: New Contract Types
Reporting and Output Management
Grid Actions (XML Export, Excel Export)
Move Address
Address Authority
Search Criteria for Group Membership
Wizard DB Copy
Wizard DB Schema Validate/Upgrade
Apache TomEE
RunAs Permissions
Support for OpenJDK
CardDAV support
XMPP (Jabber) Notifier
Field Localization
File Browser
JSP Tag Library
Timers
Support for Outlook MSG-Format
Many new/enhanced wizards
GUI: Rework of Operation Dialigs and Inline Wizards
GUI: Support for IE8, IE9, IE10
Workflow Structuring and Monitoring
Bulk Activity and Follow-Up Creation
BPI Adapter (Business Process Integration Adapter)
openCRX remote with minimal set of JARs
Refactoring (Wizards, Business-Logic, Backend)
openCRX Server Installer (IzPack5, TomEE 1.6)
various features under consideration
Integration with Zimbra														X
Blog Server (e.g. Apache Roller)														X
Live Chat / Instant Messaging														X
FAQ Extension														X
Additional UI Languages														X
Customer Service / Knowledge Base - FAQ														X
Customer Service / Self-Service														X
Customer Service / FAQ Extension														X
Marketing Campaigns (Web)														X
Advanced Analysis and Reporting														X
Dependency Diagrams (Organizations, etc)														X
CTI Integration (e.g. Asterisk)														X
Guide: "Technical Overview openCRX" *call for donation														X
Guide:"openCRX Modeling Guide" *call for donation														X
Guide: "openCRX User Guide" *call for donation														X

^*donation this feature is accelerated by a donation to the openCRX project - thank you!
^{*call for donations} we are looking for additional sponsors to fund this feature

If you want to propose new features please post your request to the forum Feature Requests.

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The driving force behind openCRX

Werner Froidevaux and Chris Mueller have been the main drivers behind the development of openCRX; in total there are 4 people working on the project (each spending about 20% of their time on this project). Most of the resources have been donated by CRIXP Corp. and OMEX AG.

Localization is done by a dedicated team of translators who contribute their valuable business and language know how to the project - a list of available locales is available here.

The task of building a CRM suite with such limited resources is doable thanks to MDA (MDA = Model Driven Architecture), which makes our team roughly 10 times more efficient than typical development teams. Our development platform - openMDX - is also playing a major role. We spend virtually no time programming as all the main patterns (persistency, security, etc.) are readily available. Our focus is on analyzing business processes and modeling.

It is the hope of the openCRX team that lots of bright people join the effort to make openCRX the tool of choice for limitless relationship management. If you can contribute or want to co-operate . Any kind of support is appreciated.

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The openCRX project is registered with SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencrx/

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openCRX mailing lists and forums:

All the mailing lists and forums related to openCRX are listed here.

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