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Gravity Forms Add-On for CapsuleCRM

I really like CapsuleCRM. It really epitomises what is great about the web.

• A simple system, with a true “Killer App” to coin a dot-com-boom phrase – Manage your customers – that is all.
• The API means anyone can by other systems or services that talking to it or even program their systems to talk to it. All they need is their key from their own account.
• Its hosted, updated and maintained by people who wrote it – just common sense.
• Security.. the integration with Google Apps means we don’t need to worry about another set of logins for every single employee. It just links up – nice.

I could go on because I love it (okay there’s the L-word), but I won’t go on about CapsuleCRM.

Gravity Forms for WordPress is also something I love. It is just a brilliant form-system that just keeps improving and getting better all the time!

Web Forms back in 2001

I remember back in 2003 a client asked me to write a form system in PHP for their custom Dreamweaver website. It was great and did exactly what they wanted with some really smooth validation checking client and server side and it had email capabilities but it cost them well over GBP1000 and barely scratched the surface of what Gravity Forms can do for US$39 in 2012. The client couldn’t wait of course. That investment provided my customer with thousands of customers in 2003 alone so it was well worth the money but the leverage gained from something like Gravity Forms is just magical… hence the love.

Okay Ben, enough love. What’s the point of this post?

Well I was a fairly early adopter of Gravity Forms and bought a developer license way back. The eco-system has grown and add-ons started appearing for other excellent platforms like PayPal and MailChimp.

I’ve always been on the look out for a way to connect Gravity Forms and CapsuleCRM but none ever appeared. Outside of any WordPress work I recently coded a package for FuelPHP from based on David Coallier’s CapsuleCRM API code to link our internal system with our CapsuleCRM account and suddenly I had a major component for connecting to the CapsuleCRM API all in PHP.

I used the MailChimp Add-On as the foundation for my coding. First replacing the MCAPI with the CapsuleCRM stuff modified a bit. I commented out the unnecessary “data” component in the Mail Chimp plugin and then created a jquery driven GUI inside the “advanced tab” (see pic).

Screenshot

Usage / Configuration

1. Upload the ZIP file and activate the plugin
2. Click Forms > Settings, then navigate to the “CapsuleCRM” settings
3. Enter your CapsuleCRM account name (the bit before .capsulecrm.com in the URL you use)
4. Enter your API key, need help to find it? click here

Download

Anyway, here it is… Gravity Forms CapsuleCRM – Version 0.9 (Alpha)

Tell me what you think in the comments below.

Link to this article
<a href="http://www.mattersolutions.com.au/blog/2012/04/gravity-forms-add-on-for-capsulecrm">CapsuleCRM AddOn for Gravity Forms by Matter Solutions</a>

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