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I recently had the opportunity to author a book for PackT Publishing, vtiger CRM - A Beginner's Guide. It is my first experience as a published author and, while I did not realize how difficult it is to write a book, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the personal growth I got out of it. PackT Publishing approached me because of my work on aimtheoryCRM, a vtiger-based cloud CRM solution.

The book is aimed toward small businesses that are looking for an open source CRM solution. It actually is a bit more than a beginner's guide--it shows you how to create a custom module in vtiger and modify style code (CSS) in order to give the CRM a look and feel that fits your business's brand. 

Here is an overview of the content:

Chapter 1: You'll be introduced to vtiger CRM and learn a bit about its origin and history. The major technologies that make up vtiger CRM are outlined and the core feature set is explained.

Chapter 2: You'll learn how to install vtiger CRM on a Windows or Linux system whether in the cloud or on a traditional server or computer.

Chapter 3: In this chapter, you'll put vtiger CRM right to work. You'll import leads and/or customer accounts and create user accounts for your team. You'll also configure email notifications and backup.

Chapter 4: Here you'll take a tour of vtiger user interface and learn how to effective manage lists of CRM data. You'll also see how easy it is to track important customer data by cross-linking, storing documents and managing customer related emails.

Chapter 5: This chapter will show you how to use vtiger CRM for your specific business model. You'll learn how to install custom modules, create custom fields and change the layout of the screen to suit your unique business model.

Chapter 6: Your business processes are implemented into vtiger CRM in this chapter. It will cover mapping custom fields and using workflows to support your sales and business processes.

Chapter 7: You'll see the power of vtiger extensions, how to use them and will be introduced to some of the most useful vtiger extensions in the vtiger community.

Chapter 8: In this chapter, you'll learn how to customize the look and feel of the vtiger interface by creating your own custom vtiger theme.

Chapter 9: Your external systems, such as your website, will be integrated with vtiger in this chapter using vtiger's API and vtiger's Web Lead Form.

Chapter 10: You'll learn how to create your own custom module with the help of vtiger's vtlib module generation tool. You'll see how to also integrate your custom module with the other critical CRM data in vtiger.