Hosted CRM system with an API? [closed] - web-services

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I apologize if this is slightly off-topic.
I'm hoping to find a software-as-a-service CRM system that can be easily integrated with our custom user management application. Fundamentally, we have user our own accounts and provide services to these registered users; frequently, we have email conversations with people that own these accounts - it would be great if our CRM interface would suddenly light up with the record of these conversations.
Here's my dream solution, let me know if this is possible:
- We have a "service" email alias; i'd want to add the "track#GreatCrmVendor.com" to that alias so that all emails are CC'd to our CRM vendor.
- In the admin UI for our app, I'd love to have access to the emails that the CRM vendor has captured for us - something like a REST-based web service call that aks "give me all email headers for customer with email X".
Do you know of such CRM vendor?
Clarification: I know how to build such a catch-all email account, parse the emails, record them in the database and all... I just don't want to invest the development time in it, I'm hoping we can just integrate with a good off-the-shelf solution.
Thanks!

Salesforce.com has an extensive SOAP API for what I understand.
http://www.salesforce.com/developer/

http://www.advancedsps.com/?gclid=CPnlpuXL95UCFQRfagodDR554w

Try this:link text
It plays well with email - AND has an API if you want to do integration...
The links to info on email integration is on the above page, as well as developer API's
<< DISCLAIMER: not employed by them, just a happy customer >>

There are several apps in the Salesforce AppExchange that claim to handle this:
http://sites.force.com/appexchange/apex/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016YR4EAM
http://sites.force.com/appexchange/apex/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016Y7nEAE
The salesforce.com API is also pretty straightforward to use.

Sugar CRM has an API, and they offer a hosted service.
See: http://www.sugarcrm.com/wiki/index.php?title=SOAP_Documentation

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Do I even need Django? [closed]

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I'm currently building a website where vendors from my city can authenticate and post their products, so users can search and buy them.
I started building the website with Django; in the meantime, I was taking a beautiful ReactJS 30+ hours online course and learning how much you can do with it: not only pure frontend, e.g. Routing, GET/POST requests, Forms and validation, Authentication. My initial idea was building the website with Django Rest (backend) AND React (frontend),.
But now I have a question:
Can I build my buy&sell website with React ONLY? (maybe using some pre-made backend networks like Firebase to save/fecth data to/from a database, to save time).
In your opinion would I need some backend functionalities which would be impossible/inconvenient to implement with React, Firebase or other services? Please consider that I'm talking about a quite standard buy and sell website with authenticated vendors and buyers.
Thank you very much for any advice.
While you don't need to use Django, you do need to use some backend framework to connect to your database or data store. So, to answer your main question directly, you probably need some other backend system to serve your data, manage authentication tokens, etc.
Django makes it pretty simple to wire up to a REST API (Django REST Framework is my preference, too), but you might be able to get everything you need done with NodeJS, and without Django.
Even still, you're looking at some type of backend, even with NodeJS and a simple NoSQL datastore.
I think you're on the path of least resistance by using Django, DRF, and React, and with a robust database like PostGreSQL.

Web service software architecture [closed]

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I have a database which I consider to be my application and a website acting as a user interface for that application. It is now time to add more user interfaces to my application (phone apps etc).
Keeping this in mind, I have come up with a web service architecture to feed data to all my user interfaces. I would like to sanity check this with the brains on stack overflow. Btw - this is all Azure hosted.
Database, as is.
Core web service - this handles all important methods and invokes the main processes on the DB. For example, registration. This will also automatically queue emails to be sent, etc.
Web Services for each UI (website, phone app) - these are specific methods for the UI data calls - e.g. GetDataForRegistrationPage - specific to the website and not needed for the app. The app would have different requirements.
So far I think this is reasonable though I'm interested in your opinions. I would like a bit of help with the next bit: how they communicate.
I would like the Core web service to be a WCF Service that can ONLY be accessed on named pipe endpoints - ensuring that only the client web services can communicate with them (I can guarantee they are on the same machine).
I would like the Client Web Services to bind to their applications by TCP or http. The website will be on a separate machine but on the same network and so is a good contender for TCP. The apps will of course be on clients and would be best as http I believe.
I am worried that I've introduced too many steps with this design. Using registration as an example, the user would register using the website page which goes to the web server which would invoke the registration method on the website web service, which would invoke the registration method on the core web service, which would invoke registration on the database.
Thank you for your thoughts!
(I posted the below as answer but got told off. If we really want to be anal about this then I guess no one should have posted anything as answer as there is no real answer - I was asking for opinions, but anyway...)
Just in case it is of any interest to others having similar design questions. I have decided to get rid of the core service idea and just use a class library shared between each client service.
Pros: Easier to develop, one less complication (setting up named pipes seems impossible to me) and one less process to get involved (even if it is on the same machine).
Cons: Each service now HAS to be on Azure, otherwise it cannot access the Azure storage facilities. I will be using the queue to schedule emails. With the first approach I could have potentially hosted one service on a completely separate platform.
Feel free to comment with any ideas or observations. Thank you for the input, Ramiramilu and Markus.
Your approach seems to provide a good separation of concerns. Depending on the size of your project, it might be a bit too much. If you are looking for a way to simplify your architecture, here are my thoughts:
Client WebServices
I'd propose to analyze how big the differences of the Client WebServices really are or whether it is possible to set up a common service for all clients. Even if you were able to move a lot of shared code to the Core WebService, you'd have to implementent very similar interfaces over and over again. Of course this implies that there won't be a specific WebService that is tailored to the needs of a specific client. If you build on WCF, you can also offer services with different bindings so that e.g. the WebSite accesses the service using a NetTcpBinding whereas another client communicates with the same service over a SOAP interface (WebHttpBinding or WSHttpBinding whichever fits your needs). This would be much more efficient because you'd not have to implement common building blocks like authentication and authorization for each Client WebService.
Also you might want to have a look at ASP.NET WebAPI and consider building a REST API that should be accessible from all devices - though it is as efficient as a TCP binding. You could also host your Web API in the WebSite project so that you can use it both from other client and for AJAX requests. As your WebSite is accessible from the internet anyway, this is also a good approach from an infrastructure point of view.
Core WebService
You could substitute a class library for the Core WebService. The Client WebService(s) can integrate this much easier without having to deal with additional complexity, e.g. for authenticating at the Core WebService.
As you want to host the Core WebService on the same machine anyway, I'd only build a service if there is a strong reason for it. I can't come up with one now.
Conclusion
If your requirements are only to add some clients with a limited set of capabilities, I'd suggest to add a Web API to your WebSite project and access it from the other clients. See this link for more information.

Tool for testing RESTful Web services [closed]

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I am trying to evaluate the right tool to test RESTful Web services and eventually automate the same for our project.
Wondering, what are the specifications I need to look for such test, when i compare various tools on internet.
Definitely, one of the requirements would be an Open source tool.
I have looked on few tools, such as SOAPUI,RestClient,TestMaker, RestAssured. Wanted to know the pros and cons of them. Also, any ideas or pointers on how to go about it would be of great help.
if you want to test from browsers,
use
POSTMAN -> Chrome
Rest Client -> Firefox
If you need an online tool or require automated API testing,
use
Runscope
If you're looking for aa HTTP client (GUI) to test requests, I'd mention:
Paw, a native HTTP client on Mac that supports most of the popular authentication schemes, has full encryption and obfuscation of your server credentials and dynamic values a special feature that lets you sent back a field from a previous request (e.g. an auth token) or compute the hash of another part of the request. Also generates cURL or client code. (disclaimer: I'm the founder of Paw)
Postman, a Chrome app and a web wrapper for Mac that lets you send requests to servers. Generates cURL and client code. Cross-platform (web app). Has a cloud service for sharing of collections.
Insomnia, a Chrome app but with a really nice interface (a design I like). It feels like the author cares about UI and design. The feature set isn't as complete as Paw or Postman though.
HDC Client, Chrome app, quite old but Restlet acquired them and it seems like it's more active on the development. As test features like Postman.
Advanced REST Client, a Chrome app, similar to previous ones. Seems still quite popular but isn't very updated.
RESTed, a native Mac app, a very small feature set, just lets you test one request at a time. I mention this because I like the native feel (alike Paw) and I think it's a good alternative for those who just want something simple.
Also, you may consider this command line tool:
HTTPie: For a command line too, I personally love it. It's beautifully made, and easy to learn. Clearly not as handy as a GUI, but really worth a try.
I'd also recommend you to read through this list of tools I've made a few months ago: Tools that will help you develop a RESTful API
If you need complex parametrized soap and rest webservices testing and test automation, you definetly should try soapui. It is open source (https://github.com/SmartBear/soapui), free in base edition tool with great documentation. In addition to webservices tests it provide scripting, load testing tool, ide support, web services mocking, running tests from GUI or console and much more.

Xcelsius: Retrieve data from Web service [closed]

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My company is considering buying Xcelsius to allow users the production of dashboards
I think the tool is quite powerful as far as the dashboard creation is concerned, many widgets, based on Excel which the users know well...
I was wondering how good the product was to retrieve data from a web service (WCF for instance) and if the generated SWF was able to update it once it has been published on a web server
Any feedback appreciated.
Thanks
I know it has been quite some time since you asked this question but here is my answer. The company that I work for uses Xcelsius to create dashboards from a web-service that serves up XML. There are properties in an Xcelsius project that allow the swf to re-query the web-service when parameters have been changed.
The only problem that we have had with the product is it is difficult (possibly impossible, we haven't figured it out) to use a web-service that has authentication. Xcelsius only hit's a URL for the web-service and as such cannot change the authentication headers if the web-service requires a username/password.
In the Web Service connection there is a tab for "Advanced". On this tab you can enter anything you want sent in the SOAP header... such as username & password. Xcelsius doesn't understand the idea of logging in, but putting the static text here will include it in the header and allow you to access data that requires authentication.

Is there a third-party service for receiving email and accessing via an API? [closed]

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I'd like to build a feature into our web app that involves receiving and processing the contents of an email.
But instead of going through the hassle of getting email setup on our server, it'd be really nice if there were a third-party service where I could forward emails and they could then process them and make the contents of the email available via an API.
Flow would go like this:
Customer sends email to new#example.com
new#example.com forwards to unique_id#some-email-processor.com
some-email-processor.com accepts the email and then stores it.
I then make an API every X amount of time to retrieve the new emails
Are there any services like that out there?
You can sign yourself or your company up for a mail account with GMail (that's Google) or any other mail provider that gives you SMTP access. Then your application can use that service as its mailbox to the world. It doesn't get much simpler.
The application you are proposing does pretty much what any email client that leaves the content on the server does. Offhand, all you need is a server that allows access by your client using such standard protocols as SMTP.
I'd suggest mailgun from rackspace -> http://www.mailgun.com/