Using a Reverse Proxy with SugarChimp

Mailchimp will often ping Sugar with activities such as subscribes, bounces, and unsubscribes to keep your data in sync. For this to work, Mailchimp needs to communicate with your SugarCRM instance. 

If your SugarCRM instance is not publicly accessible (e.g., it's only available inside your internal network), Mailchimp cannot deliver these updates. It may also prevent SugarChimp's initial OAuth authentication from completing. One solution is to use a reverse proxy to allow secure, external communication with Sugar.

Note: Updating the config in step 3 is required even if your Sugar instance is publicly accessible through the reverse proxy. The configuration ensures that redirects are formatted correctly and authentication issues (like URL encoding errors) are avoided.

To resolve this while also keeping your data as locked down as possible, we have created a convenient proxy script for your use.  (Later SugarCRM users can use Sugar's built-in proxy settings under System Settings within the Admin page.) 

1. Use the code below and make it accessible from outside your network.
**NOTE: Be sure to change the $sugar_url variable in this script.**

2. Add this script as a new webhook for each list that syncs to your CRM. (Detailed instructions on how to do that are here.) Be sure to include the request parameters in the webhook url so that the script will forward the data over to SugarCRM. Your webhook should look something like this:

https://your-website.com/path/to/script.php?module=SugarChimp&entryPoint=SugarChimpWebhook

3. Update the 'reverse_proxy' config in Sugar's database:

Even if your instance is publicly available via reverse proxy, this step is required to avoid redirect URL issues.
If the reverse_proxy config already exists, run:

UPDATE config SET value='https://your-CRM-endpoint' WHERE name='reverse_proxy' AND category='sugarchimp';

If the 'reverse_proxy' config does not exist, you can add the name, category, and value with the following:

INSERT INTO config (`category`,`name`,`value`) values ('sugarchimp','reverse_proxy','https://your-CRM-endpoint');