This application is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that helps businesses efficiently manage and store customer data. Developed from my experience in software sales, this application solves a problem I encountered in my previous role.
It allows sales development representatives to quickly identify if a lead has already been assigned to a different team member by entering the company URL. The application includes essential CRM functionality to add new leads, edit existing leads, remove leads, and search/display lead information.
Link Address: https://github.com/Kasun1Don/terminal_app
The terminal application has been written in Python following the PEP 8 style guide and conventions.
The CRM application's 6 key features are described below in the order of the application's main menu:
This feature allows the user to check if a lead is already assigned to a sales representative by entering the company's URL.
The URL entered by the user is stored in a local variable. This is then validated to ensure it follows the correct format (http:// or https://), using a validation function from the validations.py module.
A while loop is used to prompt the user for a valid URL until a correct one is entered. An if condition checks if the URL exists in the database.
If the URL is found in the database, the assigned sales representative's name is displayed. If not, a message indicating the lead is available is displayed.
Error Handling: If the URL format is invalid, an error message is displayed and the loop continues to prompt the user until a valid URL is entered.
This feature allows the user to add a new lead to the database by providing details for the database fields.
The database is in a file named leads_appdatabase.csv.
It contains the following fields:
company_url: Must have valid URL format
company_name: Must be non-empty
name (optional): lead's name
email (optional): lead's email in valid format
role (optional): lead's role in company
assigned_to: Must be assigned to a sales representative's name
status (optional): either 'qualified' or 'unqualified' lead
Each piece of new lead information is stored in respective local variables. Then each input is validated using respective validation functions from validations.py module.
Multiple while loops ensure that each input is valid before proceeding to the next. if conditions check for specific validation errors (e.g., existing URL, invalid email format).
Upon successful validation, a new Lead object is created and added to the database. The database operation is then confirmed, displaying a success message if the insert is successful or an error message if any issues occur during the process.
Error Handling: Error messages are displayed for each invalid input, and the user is prompted to re-enter the data until it is valid.
This feature allows the user to remove an existing lead from the database by entering the company's URL.
The URL entered by the user is stored in a local variable and then the URL is validated to ensure it exists in the database.
An if condition checks if the URL exists. Then a confirmation prompt uses an if condition to confirm the deletion.
The lead is removed from the database if confirmed. Success or error messages are displayed based on the operation's result.
Error Handling: If the entered URL does not exist, an error message is displayed.
This feature allows the user to modify details of an existing lead by specifying the company's URL and the database field to update.
The URL and new field value are stored in local variables. Then both the URL and the new field value are validated. A while loop prompts for the URL until a valid one is provided.
Another while loop ensures the field the user wants to modify is one of the fields allowed to be edited (name, company_name, email, role, assigned_to, status).
if conditions check the validity of the user's new field value inputs.
The lead's details are updated in the database if all validations pass.The database operation is then confirmed, displaying a success message if the insert is successful or an error message if any issues occur during the process.
Error Handling: Invalid inputs are caught and appropriate error messages are displayed.
This feature displays all leads from the database in a tabulated format.
The lead data in the CSV database is loaded into a structured table format in memory using the pandas module. A try-except block is used to catch any errors during this reading process.
The leads are then displayed in table format using the tabulate function for better readability.
Error Handling: If an error occurs while reading the CSV, an error message is displayed.
This feature allows the user to view the field values of a specific lead by entering the company's URL.
The URL entered by the user is stored in a local variable. Then the URL format is validated.
A while loop prompts for a valid URL until one is provided. Then an if condition checks if the URL exists in the database.
When a lead is found, its details are displayed using the __str__ method of the Lead class, defined in the lead.py module.
Error Handling: Invalid URL formats and non-existent URLs result in error messages.
The implementation plan was tracked using a Trello Kanban board.
The implementation plan included cards for each Key Feature, with a due date and a checklist of tasks in order of priority.
Feature checklists organized by the order of application's main menu options:
The following screenshots were taken over the course of the application development period:
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To run the program, open the GitHub repository and click the green [ < > Code ] button. Select 'Download ZIP'
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Save the ZIP file to a directory which can be navigated to using the terminal. Unzip the file.
In the Terminal:
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Navigate to the directory where the file was unzipped. Change directory (cd) to the
terminal_app-mainfolder. -
Change permissions to make the script executable by entering:
chmod +x run_crm.sh- Run the script by entering the following command:
./run_crm.sh-
The script will install all required dependencies listed in the Dependencies section below.
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The terminal application will prompt for input.
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On macOS: for the best user experience, drag the corner of the terminal window to set width & height respectively to at least
100 x 40. -
To exit the application at any time use
Ctrl + C.
Note:
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This application primarily requires company URLs to interact with the lead database.
A list of Company URLs to test the application :
https://www.vercel.com https://www.miro.com https://www.salesforce.com https://www.zoom.us (the application uses this URL format) -
if an error message says "This program runs on Python3, but it looks like Python3 is not installed.", refer to System Requirements below:
The application requires Python version 3.10 or above to run.
Check your machine's Python version or if it has python installed by trying the following terminal commands:
python --version
python3 --versionIf both return an error message or the version requires updating, follow this Python installation guide to install or upgrade to the latest version of Python.
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Minimum 2GB of RAM
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Machine with a modern operating system like Windows, macOS or Linux
The Python application requires the following packages:
- colorama: for colored text in the terminal
- pandas: for reading and manipulating CSV files
- tabulate: for formatting tables in the terminal
- uuid: for generating unique identifiers
- datetime: for handling date and time
The package dependencies installed when running the program are as follows:
colorama==0.4.6
numpy==1.26.4
pandas==2.2.2
python-dateutil==2.9.0.post0
pytz==2024.1
six==1.16.0
tabulate==0.9.0
tzdata==2024.1
lead.py: This module defines the Lead class, which represents a lead attributes and a method for displaying the lead's details.
data_operations.py: This module contains functions for performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on the lead database, such as adding new leads and removing leads.
validations.py: This module provides validation functions to ensure that user inputs conform to expected formats and criteria.
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CSV - csv file reading and writing (2024) Python documentation. Available at: https://docs.python.org/3/library/csv.html (Accessed: 20 May 2024).
GeeksforGeeks (2024) Separation of concerns (SoC). Available at: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/separation-of-concerns-soc/ (Accessed: 20 May 2024).
Pandas Documentation (2024) pandas: powerful data analysis tools. Available at: https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/ (Accessed: 20 May 2024).
PEP 8 – style guide for python code (2023) Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs). Available at: https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/ (Accessed: 20 May 2024).
Stack Overflow (2024) How to create a GUID/UUID in Python. Available at: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/534839/how-to-create-a-guid-uuid-in-python (Accessed: 21 May 2024).
Tabulate (2024) PyPI. Available at: https://pypi.org/project/tabulate/ (Accessed: 20 May 2024).
UUID - UUID objects according to RFC 4122 (2024) Python documentation. Available at: https://docs.python.org/3/library/uuid.html (Accessed: 19 May 2024).