Cutting off unnecessary complexity

So I've been meaning to get Monica-CRM (monicahq.com) up and running for a few months, because I like the idea of a personal CRM and have a way to nurture my relationships. However, I've run out of patience with it this weekend.

There has been numerous issues that made me question whether it was the right choice for my needs, such as:

I need to maintain the underlying database and the application itself

The instructions for migrating the database in their documentation is lacking

The documentation to run the stack through docker is lacking

No new release since February this year

The data exports fail (the SQL exports are generated and can be pulled, but not the JSON)

Exports doesn't contain pictures, nor are they easily "translatable" outside of Monica app.

And lastly, even if I host it - considering the sensitive information I'll be storing there, it will require more protection and monitoring of me than what I'm willing to give.

Since I still like the idea of using some kind of system to nurture my relationships, I will instead use Nocodb to create a schema for this purpose and use the gallery function to have a friendly way to present the information, or even use another kind of front end and pull the information from nocodbs APIs.

I might publish this solution in the future together with the sqlite schema if there is of interest, but for now I am happy to have cut ties with unecessary complexity in my life.

contrarian

I think that is neato.

2pie

Just out of curiosity, how can a CRM help you nurture your relationship ?

krash

By being able to keep track of people that I know, keep track of small but important details about them, and reminders for special anniversaries for them.

tetris

To add to 2pie's comment: what about a nextcloud instance, with a calendar for event and documents for notes about people? (possibly also overkill)

2pie

OK, maybe a CRM is a bit overkill for this no? Wouldn't a spreadsheet be sufficient for this?

krash

Honestly, Monica as a personal CRM is a neat idea - as long its hosted somewhere and being served to multiple users. But for a single-user usage, its overkill indeed.

A spreadsheet *could* work, but then you'd miss out the nice stull such as images, and it would be slow.

I think nocodb strikes a nice balance between them both, plus it also have releases as binaries - which makes it more maintainable for a single user usecase. I just need to build the data schema first 😅

tetris

CRM

A CRM is a customer relationship management tool, used to store and process sales. Monica is much loved free and open source one.

After some googling I found Dollibar. Is that an option?

krash

Thanks for that, however Dollibar is suited towards business needs, while Monica is suited towards personal relationships.

I'm going with the nocodb route in order to keep it simple, and to practice creating different database schemas for this specific need.