TYPO3 + Magento + SugarCRM + Alfresco

An Enterprise Integrated Platform

30/10/2013 – T3CON13DE Stuttgard

Who am I?

Mauro Lorenzutti

CTO at www.webformat.com

TYPO3 developer & consultant since 2004

Main developer of “DB Integration” (extkey: wfqbe)

Let’s start with a question…

What does Enterprise Software

mean for you?

A software that covers all my

business needs!

Mmmmhhh…

Is this enterprise?

Image from http://www.tecnocino.it/2006/08/articolo/wenger-knife/2433/

Ok, you can do almost everything with that.

But is it the best tool to…

Cut eggplants?

Image from http://www.pianetamamma.it/network/ricette-nonna/maccheroni-alle-melanzane-e-scamorza.html

Wouldn’t you prefer this knife?

Image from http://www.mercurycut.it/it/product/219/coltello_da_cucina_cm20.html

Assemble furniture?

Image from http://www.ikea.it

Wouldn’t you prefer this screwdriver?

Image from http://www.melchioni.it/catalogo-megastore/articolo/495110428/

Can you save a nuclear plant with that Swiss Knife?

Image from http://libertariancrier.com/insider-reveals-san-diego-nuclear-plant-is-to-dangerous/

Of course!

Image from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqtJXzzvC8o

Ok… Bad example…

Go back to the original question!

What does Enterprise Software

mean for you?

From Wikipedia:

Enterprise software describes a collection of computer programs with common business applications, tools for modeling how the entire organization works, and development tools for building applications unique to the organization. The software is intended to solve an enterprise-wide problem, rather than a departmental problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_software

Some words are really interesting!

Enterprise software describes a collection of computer programs with common business applications, […]

The software is intended to solve an enterprise-wide problem, rather than a departmental problem.

So…

Is TYPO3 powerful enough to solve an enterprise-wide problem, rather than a

departmental one?

Let’s try to identify some common needs of big companies

Just to be simple, a company usually needs:

• A nice website to promote its business

• An e-commerce to sell goods

• A way to collect and analyze customers data

• An intranet to internally share news and knowledge

• A tool to store and manage documents

• A tool to create a marketing campaign

• And much more…

Is TYPO3 the right solution?

• A nice website to promote its business

• An intranet to internally share news and knowledge

Who said “NO” ???

Is TYPO3 the right solution?

• A nice website to promote its business

• An intranet to internally share news and knowledge

Obviously it is !!!

Ok, companies need

• An e-commerce to sell goods

Is TYPO3 the right solution?

Why not? TYPO3 has a lot of ecommerce plugins:

TT_products Commerce Extendedshop Multishop Wt_cart Trade Ecommerce System And many others…

But are those plugins ready to satisfy big e-commerce needs?

• Multi-language, multi-currency, multi-store

• Simple, configurable, boundle, virtual and downloadable products

• Custom attributes • Stock management

• A lot of payment gateways and shipping integrations

• Easy to integrate with ERPs

• And much more…

I don’t think so…

There are a lot of platforms whose specific scope is e-commerce:

OS Commerce, PrestaShop, Magento, Zen Cart, Shopify, …

•Open source ecommerce platform •Based on Zend Framework •Leader platform in the market

www.magentocommerce.com

•Downloaded more then 3M times •Translated in 60 languages •More than 1M registered users

System

• Layered navigation

• Wishlist

• Products comparison

• Orders history

• Advanced search

• …

Marketing

• Multi-site, multi-language, multi-currency

• Products, orders, shippings and invoices management

• Stock management

• A lot of payment gateways and shipping services integrated

• Over 4000 plugins available

• …

Customers

• SEO ready

• Upselling and Cross-selling

• Gift certificates

• Promotions engine

• Abandoned cart management

• A lot of reports

• …

Ok, companies need a powerful ecommerce platform like

• A way to collect and analyze customers data

• A tool to create a marketing campaign

Is TYPO3 the right solution?

Maybe yes, but…

There are a lot of platforms whose specific scope is CRM:

SugarCRM, Sales Force, Nimble, vTiger, Zoho CRM, …

Open source CRM platform Based on PHP / Mysql Integrated with many softwares www.sugarcrm.com

Marketing

• Sharing customer information

• Opportunity oriented

• Commercial agents efficient improvements

• Offers monitoring

• …

Customer care

• Multi-channel campaigns management

• ROI measurement

• Real-time reports

• …

Sales

• Information centralized

• Email integration

• Knowledge base

• Issue tracking

• Asterisk integration

•…

Ok, companies need a powerful CRM platform like

• An intranet to internally share news and knowledge

• A tool to store and manage documents

Is TYPO3 the right solution?

Why not? TYPO3 has two great assets management plugins:

TYPO3 4.x DAM

TYPO3 6.x FAL Media

But are those plugins ready to satisfy complex documents managements?

• ACL • Versioning

• Full-text search • Custom metadata

• Metadata extractors • Checkin / Checkout

• And much more…

• Secure downloads • Integrated workflow engine

• Automatic documents conversion

• Easy integration with other tools

Some features are covered, but what about the others?

There are a lot of platforms whose specific scope is document management:

Documentum, MS Sharepoint, Knowledge Tree, Alfresco, …

Open source Document management platform Based on Java technology Integrated with MS Office, Google Drive, iWork, … www.alfresco.com

Collaboration

• MS Office integration

• Checkin / Checkout

• Metadata extractors

• Fulltext search

• …

System

• Versioning

• ACL

• Integrated Workflow engine

• Secure downloads

• Document associations

• …

Users

• CMIS support

• CIFS support

• Documents and folders rule engine

• Easy integration

•…

Ok, companies need a powerful document management platform like

So, is TYPO3 powerful enough to solve an enterprise-wide problem, rather than a

departmental one?

Yes…

But…

There are other platforms that are a better choice to satisfy specific needs

Content Management Framework

E-commerce Platform

Customer Relationship Management

Document Management Platform

And now?

2. Integrate the other platforms

1. Improve TYPO3

We have two possibilities:

Let’s Improve TYPO3!

Can we compete with Magento for ecommerce?

with Alfresco for DM? with Sugar for CRM?

Are you sure?

Have you ever heard about

re-inventing the wheel?

Image from http://revolveapp.com

What about integrating them?

Would it be a right approach?

Enterprise software describes a collection of computer programs with common business applications, […]

“Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).”

(Eric S. Raymond)

Ok, tell me about your integration!

Let’s analyze integrations in pairs!

• Goal: • To integrate advanced e-commerce features in a TYPO3 website

• Functionalities integrated: • Single-Sign-On

• Products in TYPO3 pages

• TYPO3 contents in Magento pages

• Products management in TYPO3 backend

• Same layout, user doesn’t feel the transition between the two systems

Magento products, categories and blocks inclusion as TYPO3 content elements

Magento products management in a TYPO3 backend module:

A small advertisement

Tomorrow I’m going to speak about the TYPO3 and Magento integration to manage the Panini stickers ecommerce!

• Goal: • To use Alfresco as asset management for TYPO3

• Functionalities integrated: • Documents navigation, upload, edit and search in TYPO3 frontend

• Not ready yet:

• Alfresco as FAL repository

• Goal: • To use Alfresco as asset management for Magento

• Functionalities integrated: • Orders confirmation, invoices and shipping documents are stored in Alfresco

• Documents associated to products are stored in Alfresco

• Customer documents secure download from Alfresco

• Goal: • Collect user data from a TYPO3 website into SugarCRM

• Functionalities integrated: • TYPO3 Users synchronized with SugarCRM contacts

• Leads creation in SugaCRM for TYPO3 powermail contacts

• Surveys data collection from TYPO3 (pbsurvey) into SugarCRM

• Goal: • To use Alfresco as asset management for SugarCRM

• Functionalities integrated: • Contacts, leads and companies documents stored in Alfresco

• Notes stored as Alfresco documents

• Templates stored in Alfresco and used to documents with contacts data automatically filled in

• Goal: • Collect user data from a Magento e-commerce into SugarCRM

• Functionalities integrated: • Magento customers synchronized with SugarCRM contacts

• Orders, invoices, shippings imported in SugarCRM and associated to contacts

• Recently viewed products, products in cart and in wishlist and abbandoned carts imported in SugarCRM and associated to contacts

• Data collected can be used to filter contacts while creating a marketing campaign

So, what is the big picture?

Alfresco is used as a shared document repository for the other platforms

SugarCRM collects users data from both TYPO3 and Magento

and provides tools to use that data

E.g. you can create a marketing campaign suggesting a new smartphone to all users who have an older version in the wishlist

and have answered that they are going to change their smartphone in a few months in a poll

Easy and effective content management thanks to TYPO3

and advanced e-commerce features thanks to Magento

Mmmhh, how did you achieve this?

Two integration principes:

1. Direct API calls

2. Messages exchange through a BUS

Direct API calls

PRO: Useful when realtime data sharing is needed

CON: Creates a strong dependence between the integrated software

Examples: • Document uploads into Alfresco (based on CMIS) • Magento products shown in TYPO3 pages (based

on Magento APIs) • TYPO3 contents shown in Magento pages (based

on TYPO3 typeNum concept) • …

Messages exchange

PRO: Useful when information has to be broadcasted to more than one software, more scalable

CON: Delay in information exchange

Example: • Customer data from TYPO3 and Magento to

SugarCRM

How we achieved this integration:

A BUS manages information broadcasting thanks to a message queue

An Identity Management takes care about SSO and users profiles

A single panel to manage backend users for all the softwares

An interface for realtime monitoring the BUS and the Identity Management

Hey, is a television that in the lower right?

TYPO3 and Magento as multichannel content providers

JSON / XML

HTML

SOAP

SOAP

Conclusions

The right tool for each need

Concept can be extended to third-party softwares for other needs

E.g. we usually integrate ERPs or substitute SugarCRM with other CRMs

It was not easy…

A lot of work remains to be done!

A small complain with TYPO3

It doesn’t expose any Web Service or REST API

Q & A

mauro.lorenzutti@webformat.com

http://it.linkedin.com/in/maurolorenzutti

https://twitter.com/MauroLorenzutti

http://www.slideshare.net/mauro.lorenzutti