Ivan’s Technical Blog

I want to keep a consistent data between my VTiger CRM & Outlook & Pocket PC. It turns out to be a very difficult task to do. I’ve tried a few methods to solve the problem below

Vtiger CRM returns  “Invalid return value from vTiger CRM”

At the beginning, I thought it was due to invalid name data as discussed in vtigercrm’s forum. The rule is

• There can be only one word for “last name”, no space, no ‘, no -

However, after taking the painful steps to correct all my 900 contacts, I still get the same problem. Thus, I have to do it one by one. Trust me, you will never want to do that again. And guess what, I realised after sync about 450 contacts successfully, i got the same error message again.

Therefore, I suspected that there might be some limits set somewhere. Eventually, I discover this is because my shared server gives me 64M php memory limit! That’s how much 450 contacts used to sync!

Thus, I have to separate the contacts into two categories: business & personal. and sync them by two vtiger accounts. as a result, now I have two folders of contacts. and now it creates another problem.

Pocket PC can only sync with the default contact folder

This problem can be solved by Outlook 2002 Add-in: Pocket Contact Synchronizer 1.2 Here is an introduction of how to use PCS. However, here comes the next problem. That is

PCS is a one-way synchronization feature only.

That is if you update the Contact information on your Pocket PC and synchronize then you will need to move the Contact back to its sub folder manually. (I haven’t found a solution for this yet)

• Outlook PCS does not modify any of the items that you place in the default contacts folder.
• Outlook PCS also does not modify any of the actual items in the folders you specify to be synchronized.
• Outlook PCS inserts the original folder name in the Categories field of the new items so you can sort or group by the items in Outlook. This lets you filter the items in Pocket Outlook once they are synchronized to your Pocket PC or Windows CE device.
• You don?t need to run ActiveSync after running Outlook PCS — you can see if Outlook PCS worked correctly by checking your default contacts folder for new items synchronized from your specified folder(s). Each synchronized contact should also have the name of the original folder as a category for that item as well.

And it seems the birthday is not sync from the sub folder to the default folder

There is duplicated birthday reminder created by outlook 2003

(not solved yet)

If you have installed vtiger with demo data and want to delete all data you can use the following SQL.

update vtiger_crmentity set deleted = 1

This SQL will set deleted flag of all existing module records in vtiger. You can revert back any record by setting deleted = 0.

If you want to sync only certain contact with vtiger

- Create new folder (for example: vtiger) under Contacts module in Outlook.
In vtiger outlook toolbar you can see preferences.
- In vtiger Preference you can see (Choose Contact Folder for Synhronization),
update the default Folder as the new folder (Eg ; Personal Folders\Contacts\vtiger)
Synhronize contacts. Now contacts from vtiger will be added into Outlook under newly created(vtiger) Folder.