Talking Drupal #548 - How to build your own CRM

In episode 548 we welcome back JD Leonard to discuss what CRMs are, what problems they solve, and which organizations benefit from them. JD explains why Drupal CRM defines CRM as "Contact Relationship Management," outlines core expectations like contact and relationship tracking and integrations, and describes Drupal CRM's Drupal-native architecture using dedicated, fieldable entity types for contacts, relationships, and contact methods. The panel compares Drupal CRM to older Drupal CRM efforts and user-based approaches, covers security considerations for PII and plans for field encryption, and highlights ecosystem projects such as CRM Email, CRM Membership (including Drupal Commerce integration), and event registration needs. For show notes visit: Topics Module of the Week: Module of the Week: Social Media Links Block and Fields Use Cases and Discussion How to Suggest Modules What Is a CRM CRM Hats and Naming Core CRM Features and Users Why Drupal CRM Exists Drupal CRM Architecture Deep Dive Demos and Legacy Alternatives Project Origins and Community Out of the Box Features Security and PII Considerations Field Encryption Limits Core First Drupal Native Search Deprecation Drupal 12 Choosing Contrib Integrations Ecosystem Modules Upstream Getting Started Evaluating CRM Options Common CRM Pitfalls Community Sustainability Vision Funding Volunteers Sponsors Roadmap Toward 1.0 Ecosystem Membership Events Resources Try the latest - Field encrypt - Primary entity reference - Member Platform initiative - Financial sponsor of Steve Ayers' time working on Drupal CRM - CRM ecosystem modules - Drupal Slack channel: - Guests JD Leonard - modernbizconsulting.com jdleonard Hosts Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Module of the Week with Martin Anderson-Clutz Social Media Links Block and Field The modules provides a configurable block that display links (icons) to your profiles on various popular networking sites. With this module, a website can be quickly extended with a "

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Talking Drupal #548 - How to build your own CRM is an episode from Talking Drupal.

This episode is 01:06:59 long.

This episode was published on Apr 13, 2026.

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