Build a CRM in an afternoon

A CRM is a good first real app: a clear data model, a few connected entities, and a workflow people already recognise. This is a worked example — from one prompt to contacts, companies, a deal pipeline and activity history, the kind of thing a small sales team could start using the same afternoon.

Start with the shape

Describe the whole app in a sentence or two. Don't over-specify; give Vorx the core entities and the main idea, and let it plan the screens.

A CRM where users manage contacts and the companies they work for, and track deals. Each deal has a value, a stage and an owner, and belongs to a company. Deals move through a Kanban pipeline.

Vorx builds the contact and company lists, the forms to add and edit them, the link between a contact and their company, and a first pass at the deals board. Click through it before adding detail — the shape is easier to correct now than after four more features are sitting on top of it.

Add the pipeline

The pipeline is the heart of a CRM, so make it feel right. Ask for a drag-and-drop board with the stages your team actually uses:

Make the deals board drag-and-drop, with columns for Lead, Qualified, Proposal and Won/Lost, and show each deal's value on its card.

Dragging a card to a new column should update its stage. Test exactly that in the preview — it's the one interaction everyone will use twenty times a day.

Layer in history

A CRM is only useful if it remembers what happened:

• Notes you can add to a contact or deal
• An activity log for calls, emails and meetings
• A last-contacted date so nothing falls through the cracks

Add notes and an activity log to each contact and deal, showing the newest entries first.

Now a salesperson opens a contact and sees the whole relationship at a glance.

Seed it and test

An empty CRM is impossible to judge.

Seed about 40 contacts across a dozen companies, with 20 deals spread across all pipeline stages and a few notes each.

With the board populated you can see how cards wrap, whether the columns balance, and whether the pipeline total adds up. Fix what looks off one prompt at a time, and check the underlying rows under Settings → Cloud → Database if a number looks wrong.

Decide who sees what

Add authentication so each rep signs in, then be explicit about sharing:

Everyone in the company can see all deals, but only the owner can edit theirs.

That rule is enforced on the data, not just on the buttons — which matters for a CRM, where the commission conversation depends on nobody quietly editing somebody else's deal.

Because each deal is its own row in a real database, teammates working the same pipeline edit different records instead of fighting over one shared grid. Live updates as a colleague edits (VorxSync) are on our roadmap; today, refresh the list to see their latest change.

Polish and share

Round it out with the touches that make it feel finished:

• A dashboard showing total pipeline value and deals by stage
• Search and filters on the contact list
• A company detail page listing its contacts and deals

Then publish and share the URL with your team. If you ever outgrow the hosted version, connect a repository under Settings → GitHub and take the code with you.

In the docs: Your data model and Authentication.