Business Process Automation with Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 modules

Business Process Automation with Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 modules

Nowadays, larger to small-sized enterprises considers Business Process Automation (BPA). And why not? When you can have a method that can do your job while lessening your expenses in the long run, why wouldn’t you go for one? Business process automation uses a software platform instead of human interference to enhance your workflow and cost-efficiency. You can implement it in different stages of your company, such as Sales, Marketing, Project Management, or any other process that requires automation. Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 provides multiple modules and distributions that can help you automate your business process effortlessly. Let’s analyze some of them in this blog.

Why consider Drupal for Business Process Automation

Drupal is an open-source platform. It offers business owners an excellent opportunity to build custom integrations that can minimize workload and help with business automation. Yes, many other platforms have plugins and apps that can integrate with their website. But, Drupal is substantial in many ways. When a business needs something customized for their website to integrate, all these other platforms fail to perform. But, if your business requires custom integration, Drupal can build that because of the open-source framework. Drupal is one of the best flexible and scalable CMS across organizations; its core strength is the big community backing it up, inventing new modules and integrations as per market needs, and pushing innovation. Let us look at a few of the top Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 modules and distributions that can integrate with various business automation solutions available in the market.

SEO Marketo MA

Marketo is one of the most in-demand digital marketing tools that can maintain your consumer marketing, lead management, email marketing, and mobile marketing requirements. Marketo users claim that it is an excellent tool for SMBs and excels by its ease of use, simplicity, and maintenance. The Drupal 8 Marketo MA module allows you to add marketing tracking abilities to your Drupal website. During user registration, you can also capture lead data through web form integrations. You will need to have an active Marketo account and an installation of Drupal 8 and Drupal 9.

SEO Salesforce Suite

Salesforce claims to be the world’s number one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution; it allows you to organize and operate your customer data using cloud computing proficiently. Salesforce will enable enterprises to put customers at the center of everything you do and satisfies them, right from sales & marketing to customer service. You can synchronize Drupal entities such as users, nodes, etc., with the Drupal Salesforce Suite module. You can also export Drupal data into your Salesforce CRM and import Salesforce data into your Drupal website efficiently. Any updates can be done in real-time or asynchronously.

SEO Maestro for Business Process Automation

Have a workflow and looking for the right solution to automate it? Drupal’s Maestro module allows you to automate your workflow processes with a visual flowchart that you can connect, drag, and drop. It can be used in content workflow procedures to track and strategize content revisions. But it excels in more complex use cases and business processes. Maestro can extend to add custom logic and functions to suit every business structure. It integrates well with other critical Drupal features such as triggers, webforms, content types, rules, and more.

SEO RedHen CRM

Initially, Redhen CRM was built for the usual non-profit requirements. It is a very flexible and scalable CRM with functionality for handling your contacts, companies, and relationships between them. Redhen CRM is Drupal-based and open-source, which is very simple to mold into your company’s needs. It also enables modern functionalities such as engagement tracking, customizable donation forms, etc. It does not just behave like you have integrated your website with a business automation tool; you can incorporate Redhen CRM with other CRMs for extended functionalities such as Salesforce, Blackbaud, etc. This Drupal module does not support Drupal 9 yet, but it is compatible with Drupal 8 .

MailChimp for Business Process Automation

Nearly about 1 billion emails are sent through MailChimp every day. MailChimp is an email marketing service. You can send informational and marketing emails to your customers. You can create various email campaigns, utilize their email campaign designer, email templates, segment audiences, data analysis, generate reports with MailChimp. With the Drupal MailChimp module, your users can select any email list they need. And also, you can generate and send email campaigns right from your Drupal website. The Mailchimp Drupal module supports Drupal 7 and 8. But is not compatible with Drupal 9.

Drupal PM (Project Management) Module

We can define the Drupal PM module as a distribution instead of just a module as it contains a suite of modules that help produce multiple components it serves. The Drupal Project Management module provides components such as organizations, tickets, tasks, notes, teams, projects, expenses, and time tracking. These components enable easy integration with other Drupal modules as well. It serves as an excellent work planning and organizing tool for businesses.

Hubspot for Business Process Automation

Hubspot is simple to use automation software and an inbound marketing tool. It allows you to fetch visitors to your website, track, and convert leads to clients. It enables easy integration with other automation tools that include CRMs, analytics tools, email marketing tools, etc. You can use it as your social media publishing, email marketing, and ad-tracking tool too. The Drupal 8 Hubspot integration module integrates with Webform and Hubspot API. Thus it submits Webforms to Hubspot’s lead management system or email marketing campaigns. This module supports Drupal 8 but not Drupal 9 as of now.

Other Drupal Modules That Help With Business Process Automation

Please note that you should have a subscription for these products to use the modules mentioned below.

Amazon Module — Synchronizes your Drupal store with your Amazon store. If you are selling items, deleting items, and adding items, this module will automatically keep both stores updated and synchronized.

eBay Module — Synchronizes your Drupal store with your eBay account. If you are selling items, deleting items, and adding items, this module will automatically keep both stores updated and synchronized.

CRM Modules — Drupal integrates with various CRM software. If you are presently using any popular CRM, it is most likely a Drupal module that will integrate directly with that CRM.

Conclusion

Enterprises use automation tools to govern some of their business operations, consistently have the edge over the ones performing it manually. When you have applied the perfect business process automation methodology for your business operations, you will ultimately save your time and money. With Drupal’s smooth integration modules and open-source framework that can be customizable, you can have an efficiently organized and automated revenue-generating business model. At Sun Technologies, we take up Drupal website development and services. Using business workflow automation, we customize your process according to your needs and run seamless workflows. With our expert and experienced team of Drupal developers, we provide customized web solutions that fit your business requirements.

As Drupal 7 meets its end-of-life, it is best to consider business process automation along with the Drupal upgrade if you are still on Drupal 7.

Tahir Imran

Tahir Imran

With over 18+ years of experience in Software design and development, Tahir's expertise lies in designing and developing high-quality products and solutions spanning multiple domains. He is versatile and always eager to tackle new problems by constantly researching and deploying emerging techniques, technologies, and applications.

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Upgrading to Drupal 9 is not as difficult as you think

Upgrading to Drupal 9 is not as difficult as you think

The upgrade to Drupal 9  makes it an easy and much feasible from Drupal 8. At the Drupal Europe conference in September 2018, Drupal originator Dries Buytaert gave a basic idea that sketched out the future for Drupal, especially the release of Drupal 9, and how it impacts the life expectancy of Drupal 8. Drupal 8’s greatest reliance is Symfony 3, which has an end-of-life date in November 2021. This implies that, after November 2021, security bugs in Symfony 3 won’t get fixed. In this way, we know the end-of-life of Drupal 8 won’t surpass November 2021. With this in mind, it is crucial that users upgrade to Drupal 9 by November 2021.

To -do list to prepare for Drupal 9

  • Ensure to update your site(s) with the most recent minor releases 
  • Check the availability of the modules you use
  • Use the Drupal Update Status project  to check both contributed projects and any custom modules you might be utilizing

Composer: Manages a sprawling list of dependencies in Drupal 8 onwards

The modules in Drupal 8 filter the code of the contributed and custom projects you have installed and investigate any deprecated code that must be replaced before the forthcoming major version. Installation of the composer is mandatory, due to the third-party PHP library dependencies.

In the event that your current Drupal 8 site doesn’t use Composer, this might be a good time to make the move. Composer is a tool to download that deals with the various dependencies a Drupal website has, ensuring that all the prerequisites are met.

The easy upgrade to Drupal 9

Since Drupal 9 is being built in Drupal 8, the technology in Drupal 9 has been experimented in Drupal 8 rigorously, making the upgrade much easier than in previous years. The release of Drupal 9 relies upon expelling deprecated functionality and upgrading Drupal’s dependencies, for example, Symfony. The contributed module authors can then begin updating the media modules to use the new media library before Drupal 9 is released. Ultimately, their Drupal 8 to 9 will remain appropriate as there won’t be an emotional change in how Drupal is made.

Drupal 9 will be the last version of Drupal 8, with its deprecations expelled from it. No other new backward compatibility breaking APIs are going to be introduced in the future, except for the dependency updates. For as much as the modules and themes stay up to-date with the most recent Drupal 8 APIs, the upgrade to Drupal 9 must be simple.

The Drupal 9 upgrade Features and the necessities 

Upgrading to drupal 9 features

Drupal 9 carries certain features such as integrated configuration management, control data, component display, out-of-box media management, and easy to use features. The Drupal 9 features also include multilingual capabilities, accessible for everyone, communicates on the platforms where your audiences are, and  offers caching features that allow  the pages to load significantly faster.

The deployment of Drupal 9 ready code in Drupal 8 sites is not only seamless but also allows for testing any issues in Drupal 8.  Based on the new code, proper feedback is provided so that the new code can be improved. Finally, the deprecated codes in Drupal 8 will be removed in Drupal 9.

Migrate to Drupal 9 with leading expertise to turn possibility into reality

With concerns about vulnerability and compatibility with new features, it is important to ensure that Drupal core, modules, and code are on the most recent D8 version to guarantee that no deprecated module or API is used. To summarize, the way to accomplish this smooth progress to Drupal 9 is by keeping your Drupal 8 site completely up-to-date. By doing this, you will be prepared for Drupal 9.

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Custom Time Bank system including safe social networking and setting up and executing time banking tasks

Case Study

Custom Time Bank system including safe social networking and setting up and executing time banking tasks

Whom we worked with

The client serves about 2 Million beneficiaries in the Bay area region

Client was in need of processing their community program applications and engage the users online using Time Bank transaction

Our Solution

  • Built an online registration system which has a combined online and offline process
  • Handling external applications/agencies systems for the registration process
  • Built a Social networking platform and listing platform to work as the Time Banking ecosystem

Challenges

  • Custom UI/UX to be user friendly for people from different age groups
  • Non availability of registration platform that can handle online and offline process
  • A platform that does not have integration between the Social networking and listing applications

Impact

  • Client was able to onboard up to 80 users to their platform each week after thorough vetting online/offline process
  • Time bank transactions were all moved online
  • Increase in community engagement

How we helped

  • Using a robust CMS platform to build this complex platform
  • Built a custom application to handle registration with a clean front end UI
  • Built an intuitive back-end interface to manage and run reports for the registration process
  • Integrated an existing Social media and listing extension to build a Time Bank system

Contact Your Solutions Consultant!

Ordering system for Custom Breakfast meal mix – high precision nutrition table and pricing

Case Study

Ordering system for Custom Breakfast meal mix - high precision nutrition table and pricing

Whom we worked with

A growing business focused on custom breakfast products

The business was handling all order placement offline

Needed a strong online portal to attract investors

Our Solution

  • Custom breakfast blender
  • Nutrition tracker to comply with FDA guidelines
  • Subscription orders

Challenges

  • Custom product builder is not available as a third party extension
  • Fixing the weight of the overall blend even with changes in the composition

Impact

  • Moved an existing offline operation to completely online
  • Increased the number of orders five folds
  • Client was able to add in new product lines for pet custom food using the same application

How we helped

  • Intuitive UI for building the product and realtime nutrition label
  • Implemented Magento to ecommerce
  • Built the custom product builder using an existing product builder
  • Online payment with payment processing for subscription
  • Separate subscription management

Contact Your Solutions Consultant!