Posts

Crust is Spreading its Wings

/4 Comments/in , , /by

Since we launched in March 2019, Crust CRM Suite has established itself as the de facto open-source alternative to Salesforce. Self-funded, profitable in our first year of trading and equipped with an order book delivering over a year’s worth of cash runway, Crust Technology is already on target to grow between 200% and 300% in its second year. Corteza, the community project founded when Crust contributed its entire code base to the Commons Conservancy in June 2019, has gone from strength to strength, garnering many thousands of users in its first year. Its goal to become “The Digital Work Platform for Humanity” is gaining momentum.

These are big statements and we count ourselves lucky, given the economic mayhem and misfortune that has afflicted so many to date in 2020. Keeping our commercial focus and development on track and on budget has been a tough but welcome challenge to date and our next steps will set the bar higher again. Read more

Can I make advanced charts in an open-source CRM?

/0 Comments/in /by

Having advanced charts in a CRM Suite is essential. As a manager, you need to be able to see the most up to date information in easy to understand dashboards. This seems very straightforward, but most open-source CRM providers fail here. However, Crust is different. Crust CRM allows you to create beautiful and advanced charts and enables you to add metric blocks to any page.

What do charts in an open-source CRM Suite look like?

In Crust we have created an advanced open-source chart builder, that allows you to build the most common charts businesses need. And we are exited to share some screenshots of soon to be released new chart types. Including the new chart types, Crust allows you to create:

  • line charts
  • bar charts
  • combined line and bar charts
  • pie charts
  • donut charts
  • funnel charts
  • gauge charts

Read more

DAASI International brings Crust to Univention Corporate Server

/0 Comments/in /by

Cork, 22 January 2020

We’re excited to announce that Crust, the open source Low Code, CRM and Service Automation platform is now available on the Univention Corporate Server (UCS) via the Univention App Center.

UCS, created by Univention, provides companies with a complete solution for the administration of IT infrastructures, applications, resources and users. With the addition of Crust in the Univention App Center, UCS users can easily add the entire Crust suite to their UCS instances. This includes:

Additionally, DAASI International, a German and European leader in Open Source Identity and Access Management has seamlessly integrated their didmos Single Sign-On offering with the advanced UCS Management system. DAASI International will be responsible for distributing the Crust platform on UCS and supporting all Crust customers.

“We are delighted to welcome the Crust platform to our App Center family” says Nico Gulden, Product Manager Apps at Univention. “We’re always on the look out for open source alternatives to major proprietary vendors that increase the options of choice for our users on their way to Digital Sovereignty.”

“As not just a partner of, but also an investor in Crust Technology, releasing the platform on Univention is a notable step for us” adds Peter Gietz, CEO of DAASI International. “It is becoming increasingly important that major applications treat the subject of identity as key to their success. Being available on UCS opens doors to markets that appreciate both customer and digital sovereignty by default.”

“Crust is very excited about this launch” says Niall McCarthy, CEO of Crust Technology. “Univention has been a leader in providing self-hosted technology in Germany and further afield for a number of years. A key strategic goal for Crust is to build and evolve to satisfy the growing and ever-more complex requirements of enterprise customers who demand feature sets which match traditional cloud providers while protecting their digital sovereignty.”

How to get Crust on Univention Corporate Server?

A free Crust trial can easily be installed via the Univention App Center inside UCS. If you don’t have UCS yet, you can visit https://www.univention.com/downloads/ to download it. A Crust subscription, starting at 24 euro per user per month (discounts are available), is needed after the free trial. For more information, please contact Crust at www.planetcrust.com/contact

About Crust

Crust Technology Ltd, headquartered in Ireland, is the driving force behind the open-source Unified Work platform Crust, providing a flexible, self-hosted platform for your organisation to work and communicate internally while engaging with its customers, suppliers, partners and other third parties externally. Its integrated approach to identity, messaging and business logic delivers a simple-to-use yet extensible means for managing users and the applications they require every day, whether in the cloud, behind the firewall or a hybrid of the two. For more information, visit www.planetcrust.com or follow @Crusttech on Twitter.

About DAASI International:

DAASI International is an expert in federated Identity and Access Management based on open source. Since its founding in 2000, the IT service provider from Tübingen, Germany deals with identity management, access control and directory service technologies for universities, public authorities and companies. In addition, DAASI International is actively involved in the field of Digital Humanities and participates in national and international research projects, including the digital research infrastructure DARIAH-DE. DAASI International’s range of services covers consulting, support, hosting, and software development.

About Univention:

Univention GmbH is a leading European manufacturer of open source products for the operation and management of IT infrastructure, headquartered in Bremen. Univention Corporate Server (UCS) can be used as a classic server solution in the cloud or in hybrid scenarios. UCS is an economical alternative to Microsoft server solutions and includes comprehensive Active Directory capabilities and an App Center that integrates and operates more than 90 enterprise solutions into existing IT environments.

Crust 2019.12 brings new applications and features

/2 Comments/in , , , /by

11 December 2019
Cork, Ireland

Crust Technology is excited to announce a new release of Crust, the open-source Salesforce alternative. This is a major release of Crust which includes new applications, such as Crust Service Solution, and a long list of new features and improvements.

What’s new in Crust 2019.12?

Crust Service Solution home page

 

  • New Crust CRM features:
    • Optimized CRM pages layouts
    • Improved quotes layouts
    • Updated automation scripts, so that they work with the new Crust Corredor

Optimized CRM layout

 

  • New Crust Compose (low-code platform) features:
    • Record import and exporting
    • Improved module builder, with a 2 step process helping to create pages for a new module
    • Improved layout in the page builder
    • Improved calendars that now supports multiple event feed sources, colour coding, and filtering
    • Improved reporting with new charts and chart options
    • New options for automation scripts, including:
      • New settings (including “run in the browser or Corredor”, “run asynchronously”, “run with a timeout” etc)
      • New script tester
      • Easy selection of triggers
      • Scheduler
    • PDF previews
    • Namespace selector (allowing you to quickly go from one Compose application – a namespace – to another)

Improved module builder with checks if list and record pages have been created

 

 

New options in automation scripts

 

 

Namespace selector on the left, allowing you to move quickly from one namespace to another

 

  • New Crust Enterprise Messaging features:
    • New Messaging settings:
      • Enable or disable emojis
      • Enable or disable notifications
      • Notifications template
      • Enable or disable attachments
      • Enable or disable attachments upload from the gallery and/or camera
      • Set max file size for uploads
      • Set file type whitelist
    • PDF previews
    • Improved messaging and rich text input areas with tiptap

New messaging options

 

 

PDF preview and the improved input area

 

  • Other new features:
    • Redesigned admin area with:
      • Improved layout and menu
      • Change permission settings with a click
      • Searchable and filterable lists
      • Dashboard with the current status
    • Improved login page layout
    • MinIO integration for High-Performance Object Storage. This enables Crust to use standard storage backends (list Amazon S3), data-encryption etc.
    • YAML export of CRM and Service Solution namespaces
    • New documentation site: https://docs.crust.tech

New admin area with dashboard

Bug-fixes

Over 100 issues have been solved since the last release, including enhancements and bug-fixes. The detailed list is available in the repository on Github.

Corteza Project

In June 2019, Crust Technology contributed all of its software intellectual property to the Commons Conservancy, an independent open-source foundation. In doing so, we created Corteza, “The Digital Work Platform for Humanity”. Corteza has been featured on sites like opensource.com, and the Corteza Community recently hit another milestone by growing to over 2000 individuals and companies from all over the world.

New features are added to Corteza continuously, and it often gets updated a few times a week. Crust is an enterprise product based on Corteza source code. It is stable and thoroughly tested, and major releases come out every three months.

Getting Crust

Crust is the open-source Salesforce alternative for businesses and organisations. To learn how to get Crust, or how to migrate from your current solution, please contact Crust via the contact form or via sales@crust.tech.

Online Demo

There is an online demo of Crust available at https://www.planetcrust.com/demo.

About Crust

Crust Technology Ltd, headquartered in Ireland, is the driving force behind the open-source Unified Work platform Crust, providing a flexible, self-hosted platform for your organisation to work and communicate internally while engaging with its customers, suppliers, partners and other third parties externally. Its integrated approach to identity, messaging and business logic delivers a simple-to-use yet extensible means for managing users and the applications they require every day, whether in the cloud, behind the firewall or a hybrid of the two. For more information, visit www.planetcrust.com or follow @Crusttech on Twitter.

Cross-Application and Federated Automation with Corteza Corredor

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

5 August 2019
Cork, Ireland

Planet Crust has announced the impending release of Corteza Corredor, its new backend technology for cross-application and federated workflow automation.

“The original philosophical intent behind Planet Crust was for the platform to be a seamless three way marriage between identity, communication and business logic” says Niall McCarthy, CEO of Planet Crust. “While Corteza’s flexible and scalable micro-service architecture helps make it the ideal private cloud technological alternative to Salesforce’s centralised public cloud, Corredor delivers on our philosophical intent”.

What is Corteza Corredor?

Corteza Corredor is a trigger-based automation plugin designed specifically for the Corteza open-source low-code platform. Corredor adds more safety, resilience, consistency and flexibility to the existing front-end javascript automation engine that ships with Planet Crust’s CRM Suite and Corteza Low-Code platform by default. Extending your key CRM and Case Management solution workflows across your entire Corteza deployment and beyond is about to become a reality.

Automations Across Planet Crust’s CRM Suite and Corteza Low-Code Applications

Corteza Corredor will enable customers to build automations and CRM workflows across any Corteza low code-based component or namespace, reducing duplication of effort and maximising synergies between your Corteza’s applications.

Federated Automation Across Instances of the Corteza Platform

Via Corteza API’s it will be possible to generate automation actions across different instances of the Corteza low-code platform, opening up a world of opportunity for efficient third party collaboration. With Corteza Corredor, your organisation can share native Corteza data anonymously and securely, decouple critical records-based systems gradually and smoothly, or simply deploy multiple free-standing systems with tight data inter-relationships.

Version Control with Git Integration (Coming Soon!)

To help protect your organisation and deliver clear version control over your automations, HTTP support for Git-based repositories will be included with Corredor. The truly flexible enterprise needs to be able to examine, re-use, evolve and even roll back its business logic easily and safely. Combined with Corteza Low Code’s unlimited namespace feature, Corredor delivers the complete business logic automation solution.

In line with Planet Crust’s open source policy, all software code for Corteza Corredor will be contributed to the Corteza project at https://www.cortezaproject.org where it will be freely available to users on a permanent basis.

Corteza Corredor will be released in early September 2019.

Crust Technology Announces “Crust Service Solution”

/0 Comments/in , , /by

16 July 2019
Cork, Ireland

Crust Technology, the driving force behind the most advanced open source CRM in the world and the No. 1 private cloud alternative to Salesforce, has announced the upcoming release of Crust Service Solution.

Crust’s Service Solution will deliver the following feature set:

  • Agent console with 360 degree view of any customer
  • Advanced Case Management with integrated omni-channel communications
  • Attachments Management
  • Products Module
  • Service Level Agreement (SLA) Tracking and Monitoring
  • Knowledge Base
  • Integrated Response Templates
  • Dashboards
  • Escalation Automation
  • Scripts Module
  • Self-service Portal
  • Integration with the Corteza Application Ecosystem
  • Skills module for intelligently and automatically assigning tasks to the most appropriate staff member
  • Complete integration with Crust’s CRM
  • Mobile ready

Read more

“Corteza” – the Low Code, Open Source platform

/0 Comments/in , , /by

On March 12, 2019 Crust Technology released Corteza, a 100% low code, open-source platform for Humanity. It is self-hosted and deployed via standard Docker packages.

 

Read more