SugarCRM authentication plugin for Joomla

I wrote a plugin for Joomla 1.5 and SugarCRM (4.5 or higher) that authenticates SugarCRM contacts in Joomla. If you install this plugin you can automatically grant your clients access to your public website, without actually giving them an account in the website software. The plugin is based on the new modular authentication system in Joomla 1.5. An administrator configures which fields in the SugarCRM contacts module are used as username and password. The plugin allows you to configure website access to individual customers with only minimal preparation on the SugarCRM side. You can define any contact field as username, so having your clients login with the email address is easy. The plugin works like this: if a clients tries to login to your Joomla website and he has no Joomla username yet the plugin checks the SugarCRM contacts module. The communication between Joomla and SugarCRM operates through Sugar's SOAP API. The plugin will search through all contacts for a matching username / password combination. If you've configured a contact to use the given username and password, Joomla will automatically generate a username with the details from the contact record. The emailaddress from the contacts record is used, as well as the full name of the contact. This effectively moves your Joomla user management to SugarCRM for any normal user. You can still use Joomla to raise the security level of the newly created contacts. If the username, password, or active status of the contact changes in SugarCRM, these changes are instantly mirrored in Joomla. I also built a component that allows your customers to change their own contact details in SugarCRM remotely from Joomla. They can alter the details of their own contact record (personal info) or a matching account record (business info). I'll post more information on this component as soon as it's done and ready for public release. Both the plugin and the component are downloadable from the SugarBridge project on the JoomlaForge.

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