OroCRM is a free and open source Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) application built on OroPlatform. OroPlatform is fully customizable open source business application platform software. OroPlatform provides you with all the features that are required to create a customized application. OroCRM is built using PHP Symfony framework and stores its data into the MySQL/MariaDB database server. It is an enterprise-ready CRM application providing tons of features. It also integrates with many 3rd party applications such as Magento Store, MailChimp, Zendesk etc. It is multilingual and has a fully responsive user interface, which provides you with the capability to manage it using mobile devices also.

Prerequisites

• A AKLWEB HOST CentOS 7 server instance.
• A sudo user.

In this tutorial, we will use crm.example.com as the domain name pointed to the server. Replace all occurrences of crm.example.com with your actual domain name.

Install Nginx and PHP 7

OroCRM can be installed on any production web server supporting PHP. OroCRM supports all versions of PHP greater than 7.0. In this tutorial, we will use Nginx with PHP-FPM and PHP 7.1.

Install Nginx.

sudo yum -y install nginx

Start Nginx and enable it to automatically start at boot.

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

PHP 7 is not available in the default YUM repository, but we can use the Remi repository to obtain and install the latest builds of PHP 7. First, add and enable the Remi repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php71

Install the latest version of PHP 7 along with the PHP modules required by OroCRM.

sudo yum -y install php php-fpm php-ctype php-curl php-fileinfo php-gd php-intl php-json php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mysql php-pcre php-simplexml php-tokenizer php-xml php-zip php-tidy php-soap php-opcache php-posix

Edit the default PHP configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/php.ini

Find the following lines. Uncomment and make changes as shown.

date.timezone = Asia/Kolkata
;Replace "Asia/Kolkata" with your appropriate timezone
    
memory_limit = 512M
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Edit the PHP-FPM configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

By default, PHP-FPM is configured to run with Apache and to listen to the port 9000. We will need to change the user and group, as well as the Unix socket file on which it will run. Find the following lines and make necessary changes as shown.

user = nginx
group = nginx

;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
;Comment out or remove the above line and add the following line.
listen = /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock

listen.owner = nobody
listen.group = nobody

Start PHP-FPM and enable it to start at boot.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm

Provide ownership of PHP-FPM socket file to Nginx user.

sudo chown nginx:nginx /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock

Install MariaDB

MariaDB is an open source fork of MySQL. Install MariaDB.

sudo yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server

Start MariaDB and enable it to automatically start at boot.

sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

The default installation of MariaDB comes with a few test databases and anonymous users. Before configuring the database, you will need to secure the MariaDB server first. You can secure it by running the mysql_secure_installation script.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked for the current MariaDB root password. By default, there is no root password in a fresh MariaDB installation. Press the Enter key to proceed. Set a strong password for the root user of your MariaDB server and answer Y to all the other questions asked. The questions asked are self-explanatory.

Create the Database for OroCRM

Log in to the MySQL shell as the root user by running.

mysql -u root -p

Provide the password for the MariaDB root user to log in.

Run the following queries to create a database and a database user for OroCRM installation.

CREATE DATABASE oro_data;
CREATE USER 'oro_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON oro_data.* TO 'oro_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

You can replace the database name oro_data and username oro_user according to your choice. Be sure to change StrongPassword to a very strong password.

Install Node.js and Composer

OroCRM also requires Node.js JavaScript runtime. Node.js will be used by OroCRM to compile the JavaScript, which is used to build the user interface of the application. The default repository of CentOS contains an outdated version of Node.js, thus you will need to add the Nodesource repository to your system to obtain the latest version.

sudo curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash -

Install Node.js and Git.

sudo yum -y install nodejs git

Git will be used to clone the OroCRM repository from the internet. You will also need to install Composer. Composer is a dependency manager tool for PHP applications. Because OroCRM is written in Symfony framework, you will need Composer to install the dependencies and application.

Install Composer.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

Move Composer to the /usr/bin directory so that it can be executed from anywhere in the system.

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/bin/composer

Provide execution permission to the Composer.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/composer

Install OroCRM

There are many ways to download OroCRM on your server. The most appropriate way to get the most updated version is to clone the repository through Git.

Clone the OroCRM repository.

cd /usr/share/nginx/
sudo git clone -b 2.3 https://github.com/oroinc/crm-application.git orocrm

Copy the example parameters file to the default parameters file used by OroCRM.

cd orocrm
sudo cp app/config/parameters.yml.dist  app/config/parameters.yml

Before you can proceed further, you will need to update the parameters.yml file to provide database and email information.

sudo nano app/config/parameters.yml

Find the following lines.

database_driver:   pdo_mysql
database_host:     127.0.0.1
database_port:     ~
database_name:     oro_crm
database_user:     root
database_password: ~

Update the above configuration according to the database you have created to store OroCRM data. In our case, it should look like this.

database_driver:   pdo_mysql
database_host:     127.0.0.1
database_port:     3306
database_name:     oro_data
database_user:     oro_user
database_password: StrongPassword

If you have an SMTP server ready and you wish to use email sending features immediately, you can update the mailer settings as shown.

mailer_transport:  smtp
mailer_host:       mail.example.com
mailer_port:       456
mailer_encryption: ssl
mailer_user:       mails@example.com
mailer_password:   EMailPassword

If you do not have a mail server ready, you can skip it for now by leaving the existing values. You can always change email configuration through the dashboard.

Set a random string in secret by replacing ThisTokenIsNotSoSecretChangeIt. A random string is required to encode the session data. An example string will look like this.

secret: uxvpXHhDxCFc9yU1hV1fMwjSoyVUzGh4WBMBBBa3XEgrRUF5OuB2h8iNl9JRDqcd

You can generate a random string using the pwgen utility. Install pwgen utility by running sudo yum -y install pwgen. To generate a random string, run pwgen -s 64 1.

Save the file and exit from the editor. Install the required PHP dependencies through composer.

sudo composer install --prefer-dist --no-dev

Using --no-dev will ensure that the Composer only installs the dependencies required to run the web server in production mode. The script will take a few minutes to download and install the required PHP dependencies.

Install the application.

sudo php app/console oro:install --env=prod

This will build the web cache and write the database. The --env=prod parameter is provided to install the application in production mode. The installation will only proceed if all the required dependencies are installed and configured.

During the installation, you will be asked few questions for setting up the administrator account. The questions are as follows.

Administration setup.
Application URL (http://localhost): http://crm.example.com
Organization name (OroCRM): My Organization
Username (admin):
Email: mail@example.com
First name: John
Last name: Doe
Password:
Load sample data (y/n): y

Provide the information. Load the sample data to evaluate the product before using it for production.

Warm up the API documentation cache:

sudo php app/console oro:api:doc:cache:clear

Configuring Nginx, Firewall and Permissions

Create an Nginx server block file to serve the application to the users.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/orocrm.conf

Populate the file.

server {
    server_name crm.example.com;
    root  /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/web;

    location / {
        # try to serve file directly, fallback to app.php
        try_files $uri /app.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/(app|app_dev|config|install)\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
    }

    # Enable Gzip compression
    gzip on;
    gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    gzip_comp_level 5;
    gzip_disable "msie6";
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    gzip_http_version 1.0;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types text/plain application/javascript application/x-javascript text/javascript text/xml text/css image/svg+xml;
    gzip_vary on;    

    # Enable browser caching
    # One week for javascript and css
     location ~* \.(?:css|js) {
       expires 1w;
       access_log off;
       add_header Cache-Control public;
     }

     # Three weeks for media: images, fonts, icons, video, audio etc.
     location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|tiff|woff|eot|ttf|svg|svgz|mp4|ogg|ogv|webm|swf|flv)$ {
       expires 3w;
       access_log off;
       add_header Cache-Control public;
     }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/orocrm_error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/orocrm_access.log;
}

Make sure that you change the crm.example.com with your actual domain name. The above configuration also includes the configuration required for GZip compression and browser caching. Gzip compression compresses the data before sending it to the browser. Enabling browser caching stores the static resources to the web cache of the client computer. The next time the user accesses the site, most of the static content is loaded from the user’s own web cache. These two methods increase the speed of the application dramatically.

Check the Nginx configuration file for any errors.

sudo nginx -t

The output should look like the following.

[user@aklwebhost ~]$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Provide the ownership of the OrOCRM files to the Nginx user.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /usr/share/nginx/orocrm

Restart Nginx to apply the new configuration.

sudo systemctl restart nginx

If you are running a firewall on your server, you will need to configure the firewall to set an exception for HTTP service. Allow Nginx to connect from outside the network.

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

You can now access the application at http://crm.example.com. Log in using the administrator username and password you have set during installation.

Setup Scheduled Tasks and Background Jobs

To automatically run the scheduled tasks you can add a Cron job entry. Open crontab.

sudo crontab -e

Add the following line to the file.

*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/php /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/app/console oro:cron --env=prod > /dev/null

This will run the cron job every minute so that the scheduled tasks such as email queues are processed earliest.

You will also need to setup Supervisor to run the Message Queue service. It is required that at least one process is running at all times for a consumer to process the messages. A consumer can normally interrupt the message process through many ways. To ensure that the service is running continuously, we will use the Supervisor service. We will configure Supervisor to run four processes in parallel. If any of the four processes is stopped for any reason, the Supervisor will try to start it again.

Install Supervisor.

sudo yum -y install supervisor

Edit the Supervisor configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/supervisord.conf

Add the following lines at the end of the file.

[program:oro_message_consumer]
command=/usr/bin/php /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/app/console --env=prod --no-debug oro:message-queue:consume
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
numprocs=4
autostart=true
autorestart=true
startsecs=0
user=nginx
redirect_stderr=true

Start and enable Supervisor to automatically start at boot time.

sudo systemctl start supervisord
sudo systemctl enable supervisord

You can view the status of the processes by running the following.

sudo supervisorctl status

You should see that the processes are running.

[user@aklwebhost ~]$ sudo supervisorctl status
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_00   RUNNING   pid 13596, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_01   RUNNING   pid 13595, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_02   RUNNING   pid 13594, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_03   RUNNING   pid 13593, uptime 0:02:13

OroCRM is now installed on your server. You can now use the application to manage the routine tasks of your organization. To learn more about OroCRM, you can visit its official website.