Customer Relationship Management System and Method

• US 20090070755A1
• Filed: 08/01/2008
• Published: 03/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/12/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sugarcrm Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Sugarcrm Incorporated
• Inventors: Dreisch, Andrew, Ostrow, Julian, Roberts, John, Gupta, Ajay, Oram, Clinton, Taylor, Jacob, Itani, Majed, Parsons, Joseph
• Granted Patent: US 8,489,543 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/168
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A software-based customer relationship management system and method.

Claims

1. An upgrade method for an open source software application, the method comprising:

receiving an upgrade package to upgrade an existing open source software application;

identifying, for each file in the upgrade package, if the file does not match a prior version of the file in order to indicate a file in the existing open source software application that has been customized;

automatically upgrading the files in the upgrade package that are not identified as being customized; and

selectively, based on one of user instructions and default logic, upgrading the files identified as being customized so that the customizations from the existing open source software application are not lost during the upgrade process.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the customized file further comprises computing a checksum for each file in the upgrade package and comparing the computed checksum against known checksum values for the file from a previously installed version of the software application.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein computing the checksum further comprises computing an MD5 checksum.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein computing the checksum further comprises computing an MD5 checksum that is independent of line feeds, source code control system tags, and/or changes to whitespace in the source code.