Prepare Sugar for Riva

Applies to

• Sugar 7+, including 8+.
• Sugar 4.5 through 6.x.
   

Riva On-Premise supports data integration with Sugar 4.5 and higher versions (Community Edition, Professional, and Enterprise) and Sugar On-Demand. This article describes how to prepare a Sugar server and the Riva server, to support a Riva impersonation CRM connection to Sugar.

To prepare Sugar for Riva:

1. Prepare the host Windows system.
2. Prepare the Sugar server.
3. Prepare the Riva connection account in Sugar.
4. Prepare the target user accounts in Sugar.
5. Gather information required for creating the Sugar connection.

Step 1: Prepare the Host Windows System

Riva server can be installed on any Windows system that meets the system requirements.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Installing Riva on the Windows server that hosts the Sugar server is not recommended.

Confirm that you can log in to the Sugar application through a web browser by using an administrator-level account.

Step 2: Prepare the Sugar Server

The following Sugar server versions have been tested for Riva On-Premise:

• Sugar 8.1. (Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional.)
• Sugar 8.0. (Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional.)
• Sugar 7.5. (Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional.)
• Sugar 7. (Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional.)
   
• Sugar On-Demand 6.7 & 7.x.
   
• Sugar 6.5.0+. (Ultimate, Corporate, Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition.)
• Sugar 6.4.0+. (Ultimate, Corporate, Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition.)
• Sugar 6.3.0+. (Ultimate, Corporate, Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition.)
• Sugar 4.5.0 to 6.2.x. (Ultimate, Corporate, Enterprise, Professional, and Community Edition.)
   

Up to six preparations and performance tuning improvements may be required for on-premises and independent Sugar service providers:

• 2.1: Sugar Community Edition "User Impersonation"
• 2.2: Sugar server performance tuning
• 2.3: Recommendations for performance tuning and resource planning for CRM hosted on LAMP/WAMP
• 2.4: Sugar 6.3.2+, 6.4.0, 6.4.1 require manual patch
• 2.5: Sugar 6.0 PHP compatibility issue
• 2.6: Sugar 6.1+ appointment handling changes

2.1: Sugar Community Edition "Use Impersonation"

Riva requires "Use Impersonation" access through an administrator level-account to access the target user CRM accounts. All versions of Sugar Professional and Enterprise versions natively support “Use Impersonation”. Sugar Community Edition does not install this support by default; see How to configure "Use Impersonation" support for Sugar Community Edition.

• Applies to on-premises Sugar Community Edition servers
• Applies to commercial Sugar hosting providers (request the service provider to configure the server)
• Does not apply to Sugar On-Demand

2.2: Sugar server performance tuning

When the Riva server attempts to sync multiple target users concurrently, it can create many Apache instances on the Sugar host server that use most of the available memory. For six tips that can greatly reduce the impact of memory usage, see Sugar performance tuning.

2.3: Performance tuning and resource planning for CRM hosted on LAMP/WAMP

Another best practice on host Apache servers is to adjust the maximum number of worker processes to match the amount of memory available on the server. For more information, see Recommendations for performance tuning and resource planning for CRM hosted on LAMP/WAMP.

2.4: Sugar 6.3.2+, 6.4.0, and 6.4.1 require manual patch

Sugar Development added a fix to the web services for Sugar 6.3.2 (and higher) and 6.4.0 (and higher) servers to protect against SQL injection attacks. That Sugar fix prevented the Riva CRM connection from permitting data sync. Sugar Development included a fix in the 6.4.2 release that works with Riva. To apply a patch to enable 6.3.2+, 6.4.0, and 6.4.1 Sugar servers to work with Riva, see Sugar 6.3.2+: Resolve "Access Denied" errors.

2.5: Sugar 6.0 PHP compatibility issue with PHP 5.3

Not all versions of Sugar Web Services APIs support PHP 5.3. For versions of Sugar prior to 6.0.1, the options are to apply a bug fix or to downgrade PHP to 5.2.x on the Sugar server. For more information, see Sugar: PHP compatibility issue with PHP 5.3.

• Applies to Sugar versions prior to 6.0.1 hosted on a server running PHP 5.3.
• Fixed in Sugar versions 6.0.1 and higher.

2.6: Sugar 6.1+ appointment handling changes

Sugar version 6.1 introduced a change to the logic for handling appointments:

• New appointments not synced to user creating the appointment. For Riva On-Premise environments that synchronize to Sugar 6.1, when users create multi-attendee appointments in their CRM accounts, Sugar removes from the appointments the creating users as attendees. Riva synchronizes the new appointments to the email mailboxes of all attendees except the users creating the appointments. The users can find the appointments and manually add themselves as attendees to the appointments, and Riva will synchronize the appointments to the users on the next sync cycle. For a fix to modify the default logic, see Sugar 6.1: New appointments not synchronized to user creating appointment.

• Private appointments created in email are removed by Riva. For Riva On-Premise for Exchange environments that synchronize to Sugar 6.1, when users create private appointments in their email clients and assign the Sugar category to the appointments (either manually or automatically), Riva synchronizes the new private appointments to Sugar, which removes the users as attendees. On the next Riva sync cycle, Riva removes the creating users from the attendee list, which in effect deletes the private appointments from Exchange. For a fix to modify the default logic, see Sugar 6.1 deletes private appointments synchronized from email.

Step 3: Prepare the Riva Connection Account in Sugar

The Riva connection to the target CRM must be configured to use the credentials of an administrator-level account. For Sugar, choose one of the following options:

• Use an existing account assigned to the Administrator role, or
• Create an account in Sugar for Riva, for example rivasync, and assign it to the Administrator role.

The administrator account provides the privileges required to impersonate each target user and make the necessary changes to records in the CRM for each target user.

Step 4: Prepare the Target User Accounts in Sugar

Two configurations must be confirmed to enable the target users:

• 4.1. Configure the correct primary email address value, and
• 4.2. Enable sufficient access permissions.

4.1: Configure the correct primary email address value

The Riva server attempts to match the primary SMTP email address of the target users in their email account to the primary email address value of the corresponding target user in Sugar. Ensure that for each user, the email address values in the email system and Sugar are identical.

4.2: Enable sufficient access permissions

The Riva connection to Sugar uses the Enterprise Impersonation Model: When Riva creates new items in the CRM, it assigns ownership to the "target user". Since Riva is now acting on behalf of the target user, all audit fields in the CRM record the target user as the user that created and modified the item. Riva uses the permissions of the CRM target user to create and modify items and data in the CRM.

If the access permissions defined for the target user are not sufficient, the Riva server displays Access denied errors for each data change it tries to synchronize. Ensure that for each target user, permissions are assigned to create, modify, delete, import, and export datatypes that Riva will attempt to sync for that user. For more information, see Sugar Access Denied errors explained.

Step 5: Gather Information Required for Creating the Sugar Connection

Gather the following information:

• the http:// or https:// website link to log in to the target CRM;
• the Sugar user name and password for the Riva connection account;
• if applicable, the proxy settings; and
• for Sugar 7+, the platform.

That information will be required when you create the Riva connection to the Sugar system:

• Create a Sugar 7+ connection.
• Create a connection to Sugar 6.x or earlier.