CentraView Review, Part II

(Part I offered an introduction to CentraView, and a review of its homepage, which I found to be well designed and functional.)

The Contacts Module

The contacts module is divided into three sub-modules: entities, individuals, and groups.  The entries in each sub-module can be organized in user-created lists, and sorted by various identifying information such as name, phone number, country, etc.  Entries or groups of entries can also be listed by using an advanced search feature.  Clicking on one of the individuals or entities creates a pop-up window containing a wealth of information and options.  In addition to the usual contact information and user-created custom fields, CentraView keeps track of all activities and history related to the contact. 

Figure 1: CentraView's Entity Detail Screenshot.

The amount of detail that this module tracks, its integration with CentraView’s other modules, and its ease of use makes the contacts module CentraView’s strongest feature.  The easy accessibility to a wide range of info from the entity or individual contact screens deserves praise in particular.  The bottom part of the pop-up window which appears when a user clicks on an entity or individual is reserved for “related information,” which is accessible through a drop-down menu and which among other things contains information on opportunities, files, invoices, orders, payments, pending and completed activities, and emails related to that contact.  Each one of those items can opened, deleted, or created directly from the pop-up screen.  In addition, there are many useful shortcut buttons that make the use of the system easy for the user.  For example, the user can schedule activities, duplicate a contact, open the contact’s website or send them an email right from the pop-up window.  If he is the record owner or administrator, he can also click on the “preferences” button to set who can view, modify, and delete the contact.

Almost all the weak points in this module are related to bugs and errors, and all are fairly minor and should be easily changed or fixed through the open source code.  For example, when creating a new contact there are several fields (eg.: “industry,” or “lead source” fields) that can be written in, but in my opinion for the sake of creating queries and reports they should only be selectable from a drop-down menu that can only be modified by the administrator.  Also, there appear to be one or two “dead” buttons that do nothing when they are pressed.  Finally, the user-defined custom fields are not listed in the search options. 

Back to the positives, in addition to the ease of use and access to a large selection of information already discussed above, I like CentraView’s over-all approach to organizing this module.  Having “entities” and “individuals” in the same module with similar interfaces seems logical and intuitive, as they are invariably intertwined with each other.  Overall, I was very impressed with this module and I recommend it to anyone who needs a good contact tracking system. 

In part III I will be discussing CentraView's calendar and activities modules.