vTiger Document Management Extension

The vTiger document management extension allows you to manage all your vtiger documents from a simple to use & fully integrated file manager plug-in.

One usually requested feature for vTiger CRM is to be able to manage easily vtiger related documents. If you ever tried to access directly your vtiger documents store in the server, you have probably faced with the fact that vtiger document’s module is not even close to a document management system.

The current system does not actually create folders – or at least not the ones a user creates with the create folder button. It just creates a reference in the database which points to the files we have uploaded in a storage folder (stored under the relevant year/month/week) so it’s not possible to add a folder for each costumer, project, etc. nor to upload a file into this folder.

In addition to this, there is currently no way to completely delete documents from the server (Although you click on delete and it is removed from the view, it still remains in the storage folder and has to be manually deleted).

vTiger Document Management Extension

To solve these issues and provide users with a simple to use document management system for vTiger, we have developed an extension module that works directly within the standard document module. This new extension, which is built using the open source jQuery library called elFinder, extends vtiger documents’ functionality to support a simple to use file manager.

By adding a new link in vtiger documents’ module, we can convert vtiger listview in a new file manager. Here is the result:

In this version of elFinder we have bundled the following action:

File Upload: Upload a file directly in the file manager into any folder, and it will create a new entry in vtiger documents’ module. To avoid modifying vtiger core files, we have respected vtiger’s naming format, and therefore each file will be renamed adding their id at the beginning of the file’s name. The upside of this, is that you can download the file both from the file manager and from vTiger’s detailed view.

Delete Files & Folder: You can delete any file or folder both from the vtiger listview or from the file manager. If you delete the file from the file manager, it will be removed and marked as deleted in vTiger. If you choose to delete it from vTiger, we have created a custom event to remove the file from the disk. Also, if you delete a folder, all the containing documents will be removed too.

Create new folders in disk: Thanks to the file manager now you can create a folder in your server storage folder and it will be added to vtiger database too. Say goodbye to the “year/month/week/” folder structure. Now you can have as many folders as you need, with the name you like.

Relate documents to entities: You can relate any of the uploaded documents with any other vtiger entities. This means that you can upload a document using File Manager, and later, if you need so, you can relate that document to any other entity within vtiger.

One folder per Account or Project: We have a created a custom workflow function that will create a folder with the account or project name. Since these are custom workflow functions you can choose whether to run it or not according to your particular needs directly from vtiger’s workflow editor

User Sharing & Profiles: This extension also works with vtiger standard sharing access options. So, if you have set documents to private, each user will only see their documents. Or you can restrict what each user sees, based on the user’s profile and role. This is a great way in which by working with groups, profiles and roles, you can create a complex document sharing system within vtiger CRM.

Thanks to this extension and the workflow functions, we have been able to add a simple document management functionality into vtiger 6.