Welcome to Fat Free CRM!

Fat Free CRM is next generation open source CRM platform. Active development has started in November 2008; new features, enhancements, and updates appear on daily basis.

Here are the steps to get Fat Free CRM up and running on your system.

System Requirements

• Ruby v1.8.6, v1.8.7, or v1.9.1
• Ruby on Rails v2.3.4 (works with 2.3.2 and 2.3.3)
• MySQL v4.1.1 or later (v5+ is recommended) or SQLite v3.4 or later
• ImageMagick (optional, only if you would like to use avatars)
• Browsers: FireFox and Safari (IE is not supported yet)

Downloads

• Git source code repository: git://github.com/michaeldv/fat_free_crm.git
• .zip or .tgz archives: github.com/michaeldv/fat_free_crm/downloads

Resources

• Home page: www.fatfreecrm.com
• Project page: github.com/michaeldv/fat_free_crm/tree/master
• Features and bugs: fatfreecrm.lighthouseapp.com
• Twitter commit updates: twitter.com/fatfreecrm
• Discussion group for users: groups.google.com/group/fat-free-crm-users
• Discussion group for developers: groups.google.com/group/fat-free-crm-dev
• IRC channel: #fatfreecrm on irc.freenode.net

Setting Up The Database

Fat Free CRM supports MySQL and SQLite databases. The source code comes with two sample database configuration files: config/database.mysql.yml for MySQL and config/database.sqlite.yml for SQLite. Based on your choice of the database create the actual database configuration file, for example:

   $ cp config/database.mysql.yml config/database.yml

Edit config/database.yml and specify database names and authentication details. Once you have database configuration file ready run rake to create the database:

   $ rake db:create

Setting Up The Application

The next step is to load default Fat Free CRM settings, such as menu structures, default colors, etc. and create the Admin user. This is done by running the following rake task:

   $ rake crm:setup

Loading Demo Data

You can test drive Fat Free CRM by loading sample records that are generated on the fly mimic the actual use. IMPORTANT: loading demo will delete all the existing data.

   $ rake crm:demo:load

Among other things the demo generator creates 8 sample user records with the following usernames: aaron, ben, cindy, dan, emily, frank, george, and heather. You can login with any of these names using the name as password.

You can reset the database and reload demo data at any time by using:

   $ rake crm:demo:reload

Running The App

Now you should be able to launch the Rails server and point your web browser to localhost:3000

   $ ./script/server

For Developers

Fat Free CRM can be customized by implementing callback hooks and extended by creating Rails Engines plugins. Check out these sample repositories demonstrating the concepts:

   http://github.com/michaeldv/crm_sample_plugin/tree/master
   http://github.com/michaeldv/crm_sample_tabs/tree/master
   http://github.com/michaeldv/crm_web_to_lead/tree/master

License

Copyright © 2008-2009 by Michael Dvorkin. All rights reserved.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

See LICENSE file for more details.