Integrating CRM with Google maps

Question

Just started testing Zoho Crm as a CRM solution for our company. Someone asked for a Google map on the page showing our upcoming engagements.

I know Zoho provides an API that allows accessing its data from the outside, but I actually need to integrate the map on the data-entry form.

If anyone could provide a pointer to any mashup with Zoho CRM (be it Google MAps, Bing Maps, or any similar web service), I would be extremely grateful.

Answer 1

I know this is an ancient question, but since there's no answers and this is pretty much all that came up on google when searching for Zoho CRM integration with Google Maps I'll take a stab at this anyway. I recently got a similiar request, but in this case they wanted to display the leads on a page outside of Zoho.

I created a Java servlet and JSP that runs on Google App Engine. The servlet will connect to Zoho CRM to retrieve all leads and geocode the addresses they are registered with. The client-side Javascript is then taking care of creating the markers on the map for all the addresses.

It's a bit too much code to paste here (although not that much), but you can check it out at http://code.google.com/p/zohomap/.

I put the demo up at http://zohomap.appspot.com/.

Answer 2

I know this is an old question, but it came up on Google Search. About three years ago, I start a similar Google Maps integration project for SugarCRM. The JJWDesign Google Maps project is up on GitHub.com. The idea came about during a marketing meeting and quickly grew out of control.

Download at: https://github.com/jjwdesign/JJWDesign-Google-Maps

Here are some of the pitfalls that I've experienced:

1. Exceeding Limits of Geocoding: The Google Maps API v3 has in place a limit of 2,500 Geocoding requests per day. It is also throttled to 10 per second. So, you'll most likely need to develop something to queue these requests. I used a CRON/Scheduled Task to handle the processing trigger.
2. PHP Memory Limits: The design of SugarCRM creates rather large objects for each one of it's records. Using 10,000 of these objects will usually exceed the memory allowed for PHP to execute. So, special consideration may be needed in examining the best way to pull data into the map.
3. Always develop/test with a large data set; 10,000+ records. This way you'll be able to more easily see inefficiencies in your code; especially JavaScript. The IE Browser has been know to cause issues with MarkerClustering.
4. Get ready for an explosion of interest in advanced search / filtering functionality. Also, expect to develop a large section of Admin configuration. Everyone wants something slightly different.

Cheers, Jeff