IMHO If you would like to provide a MS Platform alternative to a popular LAMP application it is not enough to simply produce an application that is more stable or runs faster.  I think you also need to encourage a sense of community ownership and involvement. Also, the needs of the community should override any other agenda. 

It seems fairly clear that many potential users of SplendidCRM use mail servers other then MS Exchange.  While some portion of those people may adopt MS Exchange in order to use SplendidCRM, it is also possible that some would increase their use of LAMP to take advantage of the more open features found in those applications.  I count myself in the latter group.  It seems new reasons for uses a LAMP plateform crop up everyday.

Look, I have 6 or more clients that I want to move onto a centralized CRM that will really help them lower costs and drive more sales.  None of those clients use MS Exchange.  It does not help me sell them the benefits of a CRM if I have to tell them that they'll also have to change email servers.  eg. "I have this great new program for you but you'll have to change your current stable, understood and mission critical application in order to use it."    Is that a pitch you would respond to?

I need to start deploying these CRMs very soon.  If SplendidCRM opts for an Exchange specific email option I'll most likly use SugarCRM.   I am tired of the headaches of running PHP on IIS so I'll probably opt for Apache, and since I've gone that far I might as well run it on a cheap Linux box and the next thing you know I'll forget what Windows 2003 and SQL Enterprise manager look like. 

Dave

Yes, we should be able to resolve this inbound email issue.  What is the status of the email that you import?

Well I found the drop down editor which showed me the correct values for dom_email_types and dom_email_status.  I tried setting the _status to 'unread' and _type to 'inbound' but I still get the edit screen instead of the detail view screen (or whichever one has the reply/forward buttons :)

DOM_EMAIL_STATUS keys
archived
closed
draft
read
replied
sent
send_error
unread

DOM_EMAIL_TYPES keys
out
archived
draft
inbound
sent
partial

Thanks for your help on this, I just finished demo'ng SplendidCRM to one of my clients and once I have this email issue resolved I can proceed with the SQL source code purchase.

Cheers,