[kwlug-disc] General Thunderbird development ?

[Insurance Squared Inc.]

It seems I need to develop a CRM type database for my niche as 
everything I'm finding just doesn't work well enough.  The CRM is 
basically a client administration database, server hosted and accessed 
through a browser.  Our leads are inserted into the system then it 
manages them through to sales and afterwards.  It'll be developed in 
php/mysql.

It's all standard database stuff, with one exception.  I'd like to 
integrate thunderbird into the system.  But I'm not sure if that can 
easily be done, and if so, what functionality is possible.  Part of the 
confusion is that thunderbird is local, and the CRM is hosted on an 
inhouse server.

But ideally, I'd like to be able to somehow use thunderbird for emails, 
while still tagging emails to the client records of the CRM.  For 
example if I pull up client A, it'd be nice to view all the emails that 
went back and forth with that client, even if I'm not at the machine 
that sent and received the emails. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on such an integration?  I know it's a bit 
of a vague problem, but I'm not 100% certain exactly how much 
integration is actually feasible.

g.