LornaJane has a good write-up on using custom fields with SugarCRM.
But I have a client that needs complex fields. For instance, email_address has the following fields:
+--------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +--------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | id | char(36) | NO | PRI | NULL | | | email_address | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | NULL | | | email_address_caps | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | NULL | | | invalid_email | tinyint(1) | YES | | 0 | | | opt_out | tinyint(1) | YES | | 0 | | | date_created | datetime | YES | | NULL | | | date_modified | datetime | YES | | NULL | | | deleted | tinyint(1) | YES | | 0 | | +--------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
How can you, for instance, add an opt_out field to a telephone number?
While email_addresses is it’s own table, other information such as phones and addresses are just fields in the contact (or account or lead, etc.) table. This is a major flaw in SugarCRM.
It looks like to create an address or phone number that is a “complex object” (like an email address), or to modify the components of an email address, I’ll need to create a custom module.
Does that mean I have to throw away the functionality of the existing contacts module?
Fijiaaron 