Installation Personal Edition

ChannelCRM Personal Edition is a Free Of Charge version of the ChannelCRM CRM system.

This edition has all the basic CRM functionality and the limitations are:

As an example it is perfectly ok to use the system in your day to day professional life.

A large number of our current customers have started using the Personal Edition and later - when their business is growing and need arises - upgrade to the "real" edition with more users working on shared customer data.

This is why we have released the personal edition anyway.

For the same reason the Personal Edition is fully compatible with the larger versions. Your benefit from this is that a license key (and a payment) enables you to expand the solution - with all data intact - to multi user installation.

A minor drawback is the somewhat cumbersome installation. We are using a real professional data server (Microsoft SQL Server) as a backend and we could have chosen a more "install friendly" data server if not for the high priority given to  data integrity and security.

Installation

The installation consists of two steps:

1. Installation and setup of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition

2. Installation of the ChannelCRM applications (2 programs)

Step one will take you around one hour (unless you for some reason have SQL Server on your PC already). Step two will be done in less than 5 minutes.

Install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition

ChannelCRM have chosen Microsofts SQL Server 2008 to store and handle CRM data. We have done so because in our opinion your customer knowledge is the most important asset in your professional life. And SQL Server is one of most secure, scalable and feature-rich data servers in existence.  Also a large number of our customers and prospects are using SQL Server to handle financial and erp data, and this fact eases integration to CRM.

Microsoft offers SQL Server in a free of charge edition named Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. This is the one you may use as a backend for ChannelCRM Personal Edition.

SQL Server has to be installed and running on your PC before you proceed with installation of the CRM programs.

Read more on how to install SQL Server and note again that the installation of SQL Server has to be on your PC (not on a server) and that you have to install SQL Server on the same Windows User Account as the one you plan to use when starting the CRM system.

Install the ChannelCRM programs

You will install two applications from ChannelCRM: CRM Manager og CashNet.

CRM Manager is for system administration. You will seldom use it unless for this initial setup and for future upgrades. You may also use it to backup CRM data.

CashNet is the CRM system in itself.

The installation files (msi-packages) are downloadable from the ChannelCRM Customer Portal or via links in your welcome e-mail. To use the Customer Portal you have to register and thereby receive an access code. This access code has the additional benefit of allowing you access to the Help Desk as well as access to information on new releases etc.

Both installation files have to be executed on your PC.

Having done this 3 shortcuts are added to your Start | All programs | ChannelCRM menu:

At first you will start the latter program (Create Personal Edition). You will be guides through a small wizard creating the data store and your CRM user account. After this you can use the system.

First time use

When you start using ChannelCRM we recommend that you have a look on some of the training videos. They are accessible from within the system by a right-hand sliding panel (you will recognize it when you see it ;-) These videos are designed to get you up to speed fast..

Page url: http://www.channelcrmhelp.com/index.html?net_install_pe.htm