Customer relationship management portal system and method

• US 20080222630A1
• Filed: 02/25/2008
• Published: 09/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/23/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sugarcrm Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Sugarcrm Incorporated
• Inventors: Roberts, John, Oram, Clinton, Taylor, Jacob, Itani, Majed, Pan, Wayne
• Granted Patent: US 8,839,232 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/176
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46

Abstract

A software-based customer relationship management system and method.

Claims

1. A business software application system, comprising:

a client;

a primary installation further comprising a database containing a plurality of pieces of information, one or more modules that access the database to pull pieces of information from the database based on a request from the client and display a user interface to the user containing the requested information, one or more controllers that control access by the client to the one or more modules and the database; and

a portal generated based on the primary installation wherein a user interface of the portal is updated based on a user interface of the primary installation.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the primary installation further comprises a customer relationship management installation.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising a network that is capable of coupling the primary installation and the portal using a web services application programming interface.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the web services application programming interface further comprises a simple object access protocol, a representational state transfer protocol or a custom protocol.

5. The system of claim 1 further comprising a server computer that hosts the primary installation and a server computer in a different location that hosts the portal.

6. The system of claim 1 further comprising a server computer that hosts the primary installation and the portal.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the primary installation and portal share the database.

8. The system of claim 3, wherein the primary installation further comprises a studio tool that allows a user to modify the user interface of the portal

9. The system of claim 3, wherein the primary installation allows the user to modify the database to modify the user interface of the portal.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the studio tool changes a layout, a piece of content, a look and feel or a code change to the primary installation and the changes are updated over the network to the portal.

11. The system of claim 1 further comprising a firewall wherein the primary installation is inside of the firewall and wherein the portal is outside the firewall.

12. The system of claim 1 further comprising a user interface rendering engine wherein the user interface of the primary installation and portal are generated by a metadata input into the user interface rendering engine.

13. The system of claim 12 further comprising a template handler and wherein the user interface of the primary installation and portal are generated by a metadata input and a template.

14. A business software application system, comprising:

a client;

an installation further comprising a database containing a plurality of pieces of information, one or more modules that access the database to pull pieces of information from the database based on a request from the client and display a user interface to the user containing the requested information, one or more controllers that control access by the client to the one or more modules and the database; and

a user interface rendering engine wherein the user interface of the primary installation and portal are generated by a set of metadata input into the user interface rendering engine.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the installation further comprises a customer relationship management installation.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the user interface rendering engine generates a gap in the user interface that corresponds to a blank item in the set of metadata.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the user interface rendering engine expands a field in the user interface to include a location when an empty item is located in the set of metadata.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the set of metadata further comprising an option to change the rendering of the user interface to be rendered by the set of metadata.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the option further comprises a field based rendering option.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the field based rendering option further comprises an option to change the formatting of a particular field or change the view of the particular field.

21. A business software application system, comprising:

a client;

an installation further comprising a database containing a plurality of pieces of information, one or more modules that access the database to pull pieces of information from the database based on a request from the client and display a user interface to the user containing the requested information, one or more controllers that control access by the client to the one or more modules and the database;

a template handler that combines a set of metadata and a template to generate a generic template;

a template engine that generates a final template of the installation from the generic template; and

a user interface rendering engine wherein the user interface of the installation is generated based on the final template and a set of data associated with the installation stored in the database.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the installation further comprises a customer relationship management installation.

23. The system of claim 21 further comprising a server computer that hosts the installation and a cache that stores the final template.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the cache further comprises a server computer memory or a server disk.

25. The system of claim 21 further comprising a computer that hosts the client and wherein the client has a cache that stores the final template.

26. The system of claim 23, wherein the cache further comprises a memory of the client computer or a disk of the client computer.