openCRX


The Professional Enterprise Class Open Source CRM Solution

Project


The goal of the project openCRX

It is our goal to establish openCRX as a reference service for relationship management and collaboration.

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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:

Date Milestone
01-Aug-2004 initial launch of openCRX v1.0.0
09-Aug-2004 made the Top100 on Sourceforge for the first time ("most active" ranking)
04-Sep-2004 openCRX v1.1.1 (support for additional DBs and language localization)
06-Sep-2004 reached 1,000 downloads
20-Sep-2004 reached 3,000 downloads
25-Sep-2004 made the Top20 on Sourceforge for the first time ("most active" ranking)
29-Sep-2004 made the Top10 on Sourceforge for the first time ("most active" ranking)
21-Oct-2004 reached 5,000 downloads
8-Nov-2004 openCRX v1.2.0 (multi-entity, security, workflows, es_MX, zh_CN, etc.)
1-Dec-2004 First openCRX-based ASP offering launched
09-Dec-2004 reached 10,000 downloads
15-Dec-2004 openCRX v1.3.0 (BEA Weblogic, IBM WebSphere, etc.)
14-Jan-2005 openCRX v1.4.0 (Security, MySQL, DHTML Calendar Control, HTML 4.01)
28-Feb-2005 openCRX v1.5.0 (MS Word Integration, E-mail Notification, Audit Trail, ...)
1-Jun-2005 openCRX v1.6.1 (Activity Mgmt, Issue Tracking, UI enhancements, cs_CZ, nl_NL, pt_BR)
1-Aug-2005 more than 85,000 downloads in year 1
17-Aug-2005 openCRX v1.7.1 (Depot Mgmt, Booking Engine, RAS, UI enhancements, etc.)
25-Sep-2005 reached 100,000 downloads
11-Oct-2005 openCRX v1.8.1 (Product/Contract Extension, Single Sign-On, Perfomance Tuning...)
31-Jan-2006 reached 125,000 downloads
02-Apr-2006 openCRX v1.9.1 (Activity Processes, Pricing Models, E-Mail Adapter, Perfomance Tuning...)
10-Sep-2006 reached 150,000 downloads
23-Feb-2007 openCRX v1.10.0 (DB2 support, Enhanced GUI, AJAX-support, ...)
01-Aug-2007 reached 180,000 downloads
26-Aug-2007 openCRX v1.11.0 (JDO/JPOX compatible DB schemas, data bindingds, grid drill down, es_CO, ja_JP, ...)
25-Feb-2008 openCRX v2.0 (Groupware Functionality (ICS/iCal, LDAP , IMAP, Wiki, index-based search, ...)
29-Feb-2008 reached 200,000 downloads
06-Mar-2008 MS Outlook ICS Adapter for openCRX v2.0
10-Jul-2008 openCRX v2.1 (Reporting, Mail Merge, Social Networks, Groupware, in-place editing, ...)
21-Sep-2008 openCRX v2.2 (Enhanced GUI, support for iPhone and Google Chrome, enhanced performance, ...)
11-Oct-2008 reached 225,000 downloads
16-Oct-2008 openCRX v2.2.1 (enhanced stability and performance, new locale ro_RO)
17-Dec-2008 openCRX v2.3.0 (REST service, various UI features, Mail Merge Wizard, Work Report Wizard, JBOss 5 support)
10-Mar-2009 openCRX v2.4.0 / openCRX v2.4.1
AJAX Forms and Wizards, Mandatory Attributes, Scheduling/Polling Wizards,
vCard/iCal Exporter, OpenJPA, OpenEJB, Thunderbird 3 Add-on, IE8
15-Jun-2009 openCRX v2.5.0
Enhanced GUI / new Icons, Enhanced Work/Expense Records with wizards to easily create them,
Wizard to create work/expense reports, Excel account importer, new openCRX plugin, OpenEJB 3.1.1
22-Jun-2009 reached 250,000 downloads
01-Aug-2009 openCRX v2.5.1
1-August-2009 marks 5 full years of openCRX!

Enhanced GUI / new Icons, Enhanced Work/Expense Records with wizards to easily create them,
Wizard to create work/expense reports, Excel account importer, new openCRX plugin, OpenEJB 3.1.1,
InfoVis Tookit v1.1.2, WYMeditor v0.5RC1, SIMILE Timeline v2.3.0, iPhone iCal support, Birthday calendar
14-Sep-2009 openCRX v2.5.2
CalDAV Server, Wiky, enhanced performance und simplified architecture
with new openMDX Entity Manager (i.e. no more EJBs)
02-Nov-2009 openCRX v2.5.3
openCRX PDA GUI, Search Forms, Dashboard / Dashlets
25-Apr-2010 reached 280,000 downloads
01-May-2010 openCRX v2.6.0
AirSync Server (ActiveSync compatible) - OTA synchronization openCRX ⇔ Mobile Phones / PDAs
LDAP Server, CalDAV Support for Mozilla Calendar 1.0, Thunderbird 3 Address Book Connector,
Shop Adapter (for service oriented access to openCRX), Support for Eclipse Modeling Framework EMF,
Support for Java 6, Support for HSQLDB 2.0, Upgrade to OpenEJB 3.1.2, Extended Service
07-Sep-2010 openCRX v2.7.0
AirSync Client (ActiveSync compatible) - backend synchronization openCRX ⇔ MS Exchange
28-Dec-2010 openCRX v2.8.0
WebDAV, CardDAV, Twitter, IMAP IDLE, Party Status, etc.
07-May-2011 openCRX v2.8.5
Workspace GUI Extension, Activity Replication, Shop Front End, Apache TomEE, etc.
8-Jan-2012 openCRX v2.9.0
Customer Care Wizard, Enhanced Business Processes (SCXML), Business Process Importer/Exporter
DB Copy and DB Schema Validate Wizards, Contract Groups/Creators, Address Authority, Apache TomEE,
RunAs Permissions, GUI Element-Level Security, Grid Actions, Support for OpenJDK, etc.
24-Aug-2012 openCRX v2.10.0
CardDAV support, XMPP (Jabber), Field Localization (advanced multi-language features), File Browser,
JSP Tag Library, Timers, Support for Outlook MSG-Format (incl. X.500 Addresses), many new Wizards
18-Apr-2013 openCRX v2.11.0
GUI: Rework of Operation Dialigs and Inline Wizards, 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)
9-Nov-2013 openCRX v2.12.0
Web Calendar "CalDavZAP", Unified Edit/New Object, Document Filters, Cascading Code Fields,
Customer Queries in Grids, BPI Adapter with New/Additional Methods, LDAP Synchronizer,
Enhanced Campaign Wizard, Migrated from UML2Tools to Papyrus/GraphViz
1-Aug-2014 openCRX v2.13.0
New responsive HTML5/Ajax-GUI that works with all devices, User-specific ordering of grid columns,
Enhanced search form, Janino scripts as workflows, MailWorkflow supports external sendmail command,
Document Exporter workflow, Store Media on file system, Auto-update of addresses, Activity Relationships,
Next/Prev Inspector
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*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 much 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.

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The openCRX project is registered with GitHub

https://github.com/opencrx/


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https://www.crixp.com/ https://www.openmdx.org/