Submitted by Dan Casper on Fri, 08/21/2015 - 15:36
We recently tackled a change in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software here at Brooks. Being a software shop, having some sort of programmatic access to our records was a must. We investigated several options and ultimately settled on SugarCRM. Versions 6 and 7 both support a SOAP via REST API that exposes considerable functionality to any programming language that can handle HTTP requests. There was even a wrapper library for python, one of our go-to languages. Bingo!
When we first starting using this library we identified several ... inefficiencies ... that were producing a considerable amount of initial load time, overhead, and redundancy. We've since addressed those issues and, as a result of our contributions, had the library's maintenance turned over to our team. Our improvements include delayed instantiation, additional query options, multi-relate support, and single-request multi-field retrieval. What follows is a brief introduction to using the library to interact with SugarCRM from Python, providing a rich interface for customization or automation.
Submitted by Dan Casper on Thu, 03/12/2015 - 12:48
When we sat down to revise RPM for Version 6, two of our main considerations were flexibility and customization. We've long recognized that our customers' use scenarios can vary wildly. If all you need is to save copies of print streams, RPM does that with very little configuration. But what if you need custom handling, conditional processing, event-driven notification, or a combination there-of? Our new User Interface does quite a bit, but there's always an edge case.
Submitted by Dan Casper on Tue, 10/05/2010 - 13:29
This post shows how RPM Remote Print Manager® "filter" action can not only customize a print job but can also completely change the job handling itself.
The Scenario: An automated mainframe system sends thousands of print jobs daily.
The Problem: 95% of these automated print jobs are useless. They are not actionable, and do not require any kind of human interaction. Unfortunately, they still consume and waste resources.
The Solution: Prevent hard copy output of print jobs matching specific criteria.
Submitted by Dan Casper on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 07:11
For most people, printing is a two step process:
- Click the Print button.
- Retrieve the print out.
Unfortunately, it's not always that simple. When you get into the world of networked printers, mainframe formats, and print language conversion there is a lot more than meets the eye. Today's question was whether or not RPM Remote Print Manager could emulate a networked PCL printer. Specifically, can RPM cache fonts and macros that are sent as separate print jobs and convert them to PDF.
