Create a Simple CRM System Using LCDP.ai Infinite Code

Welcome to the “📇 Building a CRM from Scratch” tutorial! 🎉 (Part 1)

Here, we’ll guide you step-by-step through using our low-code platform to easily create a simple CRM system. Whether you’re a programming novice or an experienced developer, you’ll find joy and a sense of achievement in this process.

CRM, short for Customer Relationship Management, is typically referred to as CRM system software. CRM is a customer-centric software system specifically designed for managing customer relationships. It ensures that every interaction with customers in sales, marketing, and service is smooth and efficient, thereby improving business performance.

Are you ready? Let’s get started and take the first step towards success! 🚀

How to Model Customer Objects on a Low-Code Platform

Business model design is the foundation of information system design, involving the definition of database tables, field settings, and relationships between tables. In short, this step determines the data structure and storage method of the system.

Customers are one of the core objects managed by CRM systems. We will first create a customer object with the following attributes:

Customer Model Definition in CRM System

Model Name

Model Description	Description
Customers	Customer information, including name, contact information, company name, position, etc.

Model Field List

Field Name	Type	Nullable	Default Value	Options	Remarks
name	STRING	No	None	None	Customer business key
contactInfo	STRING	No	None	None	Contact information
companyName	STRING	Yes	None	None	Company name
position	STRING	Yes	None	None	Position
group	STRING	Yes	None	None	Customer group
birthday	LOCAL_DATE	Yes	None	None	Customer birthday

The system will automatically create an auto-increment column named id of type Long as the primary key.

Creating Models in the Low-Code Platform

Creating Customer Model and Fields

The operation video is shown below

Setting Enumeration Values for the Group Field

The group field is used to identify customer group ings. We can set its enumeration values as follows:

Model Name	Enumeration Field	Option Value	Explanation
Customer Form (Customers)	Group (Customer Group)	VIP	Very important customers
		Regular Customer	General customers
		Potential Customer	Potential customers who may become actual customers
		Important Customer	Customers who are very important in business
		Blacklist	Customers no longer cooperating with

In the field definition, you can set optional values for the field. The specific operation is to edit the field and set its options property, as shown in the video below:

Next, we will create corresponding CRUD forms for the created customer model.

Creating Maintenance Forms for the Customer Model

Forms are an important component in the system. All data management is performed on corresponding forms. We will create the following maintenance forms for the customer model:

• List form, and associate it with an access menu
• Create form
• Edit form
• Query form

Creating the List Form

The specific operation video is as follows:

In the above video, we:

1. Created a list form named “List of Customers” for the customer model to display the customer list in the customer management menu.
2. When creating this list form, we also created an associated menu as the entry point for users to access Customer data.
3. And in the form, we assigned the corresponding view permission to the ROLE_USER role.

Creating Other Forms

The specific operation video is as follows:

In the above video, we:

1. Created forms named “Create Customer” and “Update Customer”.
2. Assigned the corresponding create and edit permissions to the ROLE_USER role.
3. Demonstrated creating and editing Customer data in the interface.

As you can see, after creating the Create Customer and Update Customer forms, we didn’t add any fields to the forms. The system’s default behavior is: if no form fields are defined in a form, it will display all fields of that object by default.

Next, we will model the sales opportunity object and demonstrate how to establish object associations during modeling. 

Sales Opportunity Object Modeling and Forms

In the previous steps, we have defined the customer object and its attributes, and defined its list, creation, and update forms. Now we will proceed with the modeling and form definition for sales opportunities.

Referring to CRM System Design, we will define the attributes of sales opportunities as follows:

Sales Opportunity Table (SalesOpportunities)

Model Definition

Interaction Record Table (InteractionRecord)

Field Name	Type	Nullable	Default	Options	Remarks	Related Object Type
name	STRING	No	None	None	Interaction record key	None
interactionType	STRING	No	None	None	Interaction type	None
interactionDate	LOCAL_DATE	No	None	None	Interaction date	None
notes	STRING	Yes	None	None	Notes	None

Task Table (Task)

Field Name	Type	Nullable	Default	Options	Remarks	Related Object Type
name	STRING	No	None	None	Task key	None
description	STRING	No	None	None	Description	None
dueDate	LOCAL_DATE	No	None	None	Due date	None
status	STRING	No	None	None	Task status	None

Sales Opportunity Table (SalesOpportunities)

Field Name	Type	Nullable	Default	Options	Remarks	Related Object Type
name	STRING	No	None	None	Sales opportunity key	None
customer	DOMAIN_OBJECT	No	None	None	Related customer	Customers
stage	STRING	No	None	None	Opportunity stage	None
expectedAmount	BIG_DECIMAL	No	None	None	Expected amount	None
expectedCloseDate	LOCAL_DATE	No	None	None	Expected closing date	None
interactionRecords	DOMAIN_OBJECT_LIST	Yes	None	None	Customer interaction records	InteractionRecord
tasks	DOMAIN_OBJECT_LIST	Yes	None	None	Customer interaction records	Task

Here’s the creation process and related explanations:

1. The customer field will be associated with the customer object we defined earlier. When creating this field, you need to select the type as DOMAIN_OBJECT and set its reference object type to Customers.
2. We have set options for the interactionType field of InteractionRecord, the status field of Task, and the stage field of SalesOpportunities. You can directly input options in the Options column, pressing enter to input each option.
3. SalesOpportunities references the interaction record table and task table, used to record a specific interaction with the customer or a to-do task. This type of object relationship is configured using DOMAIN_OBJECT_LIST.

Form Definition

After completing the model definition, we will continue to define its list, creation, and update forms. The steps are as follows:

Optimizing Customer Related Object Display

From the video, we can see that the Customer field in the sales opportunity list displays its ID rather than its name, which is not user-friendly. Now we will use the extInfo feature of DomainClass to set the Customer object to display its name attribute in other object forms that reference it.

The specific steps are as follows:

In the extension information field of the DomainClass definition for the Customer model, set:

Copied!{
  "labelField": "name"
}
{
  "labelField": "name"
}

This specifies that the name attribute of the Customer object will be displayed in forms of other objects that reference it.

Using Sub-tables for Related Data Maintenance

The following data has a one-to-many relationship with SalesOpportunities, and the platform supports displaying related objects in sub-table form by default.

• Interaction Records Table (InteractionRecords)
• Tasks Table (Tasks)

However, when you click the create button on the SalesOpportunities list page and open the creation form, you’ll find that you can’t create related InteractionRecord and Task objects. The specific interface is shown in the image below:

This is because we haven’t granted the user permission to create and edit InteractionRecord and Task objects.

Let’s fix this permission issue. The solution is to create Create and Update forms for the InteractionRecord and Task models, and set their Enable Roles to the list of roles that should have permission.

The specific operation is shown in the video below, which also demonstrates data maintenance of the SalesOpportunity object after granting user permissions:

Object Deletion Permissions

Granting Users Object Deletion Permissions

To give users the ability to delete Customers and SalesOpportunities objects, we need to grant them permission to delete the corresponding APIs.

This operation is performed in:

The specific steps are shown below:

Executing Batch Delete Actions

The system has built-in batch delete action definitions that can be bound to objects and implement batch delete operations. The specific steps are as follows:

During the operation, creating a DynamicActionDomainClass object essentially binds a dynamic action to a specific model. Dynamic actions are one of the core concepts of the LCDP.ai low-code platform. For more information about dynamic actions, please refer to the dynamic action documentation in the appendix.

Additionally, the system supports using DynamicLogic to dynamically calculate at runtime whether an object can be deleted. For details, please refer to the dynamic permission control section in the appendix.

The prerequisite for the batch delete Action to work properly is that the current logged-in user has been granted object deletion permissions as per the operations in the previous section.

In the next step, we will customize the display and input controls for certain fields. 

Form Field Display Optimization

In the previous modeling and form creation process, all form fields used default rendering controls. For example, character types used character input boxes, and numeric types used numeric input boxes.

In this section, we will customize the display controls for some fields. Below is a list of fields that need to be modified:

Model	Field	Form	Display Control
Customer	contactInfo	Create, Update/View	Long Text
SalesOpportunities	Expected Amount	Create, Update/View	Currency

The display control for form fields is customized using the displayType property in DynamicFormField. For specific operation steps, please refer to the video below:

In the previous chapters, we only created the corresponding forms without adding form field definitions. In this case, the system will display all fields in the model by default. If you want to customize the display and input controls for fields, you need to create form fields.

Please refer to the list below for the default supported displayType list:

Display Type
Id
String
Integer
Decimal
Currency
Percentage
Datetime
Date
Object
Array
Array with details
Array Inline
Multiple select
Object multiple select
Tags
Tag list
Code
Static field
Http method
Roles
Password
Updated ids
Series
Line chart
Tree select
Cron expression
Stacktrace
JSON
Markdown
Object ids
Text(long string)
Single file
Single image
Document
Grouped grand child
Url
Icon
Zoned Datetime
Sub table
Entity Attributes
Value select
Function Editor
Comments

Further discussion

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