Presentation of the MVP of the Evolutivo MCP integration — a way to interact with the Evolutivo.fw application through natural language using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This project explores how chat-based interfaces can expose complex CRM functionality in a user-friendly, conversational way.
Beyond the MCP hype.
These past months I have been hearing the MCP term being thrown around carelessly everywhere. Besides asking myself what that was about and seeing some curious images
It wasn't until one of my coworkers shared the Official PHP SDK for MCP post with me that I decided to have a look.
I was convinced, this was the way we could easily expose the functionality of Evolutivo application inside a chat environment. Evolutivo’s API, backed by a powerful workflow system, provides the ideal foundation for conversational integration. If we could expose that API in a human-friendly way through MCP we could take Evolutivo to another level.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a new standard that defines how applications can communicate with LLMs, making APIs, tools, and data available directly inside chat environments like Claude or ChatGPT.
I realized it’s more than hype — it’s a real bridge between structured APIs and conversational interfaces.
The project goals
As I set out the learning path, I set my sights on this list of minimum tasks:
- CRUD operations on any entity, including Inventory modules
- Generation and retrieval of documents, GenDoc generated templates and PDFs (Invoice)
- Send emails. Specifically send an email with the invoice
- Queries. Select information from the application
- Share Documents and GenDoc templates as resources
The Evolutivo MCP server acts as a bridge between chat clients and the CRM API, exposing CRUD, document generation, and communication capabilities through standardized MCP resources.
As I developed the MVP I added this list of future enhancements if we decide to move forward.
- MCP Login
- Evolutivo connection settings (Elicitation)
- Work with user preferences of currency, date and language
- Error control
- Optimize connection resource (share throughout the whole MCP server not connect each time)
- Define search mechanism or prompts for reference field values
- Question support. Charts
- Text to SQL enhancements
The project code
I first tried to create the MCP server using the PHP SDK with the goal in mind of running it inside the application code, so we wouldn't need to connect to the API, but after a few hours, I found the SDK to be too immature, getting in my way and not making it easy for me. So I tried the Python path with FastMCP. It was what I expected, easy, just do what you need. So I continued with Python.
- The Ultimate MCP Crash Course - Build From Scratch
- Learn MCP Servers with Python This one is very good.
You can find the code here Evolutivo.FW MCP server
What it looks like
Sincerely, amazing!
Some prompts I tried
Once the integration was ready, I started experimenting with natural language commands. These are some real examples that worked out of the box.
Write an email to the Contact first name "Joanna" and last name "Leinenbach".
The email body must explain that we are out of product with ID "14x2617" until next month,
asking them if they want to wait or not
Write an email to ask for a virtual online meeting with the account whose name is "Atrium Marketing Inc"
I want to have the meeting on Wednesday or Thursday next week
Show me the email before sending it for me to validate
Show me the possible values for the field name Industry in Accounts
What entity does record 7x2816 belong to
Get the PDF of invoice 7x2816
Send the PDF of the invoice 7x2816 to the related account and contact
show me the filter fields values of the firt two evolutivo products you can retrieve
You can see some of those in action in the video presentation and give it a try yourself!
Conclusion
Being able to chat directly with the full power of Evolutivo is, in my view, a game-changer. The MVP already demonstrates how flexible and natural this interaction can be.
Many users will have more than enough with the MVP we already have. If we push it a little more and refine some pending issues, we can have an incredibly flexible interface for our application while maintaining a robust and consistent interface for power users — Evolutivo could become one of the first CRMs truly adapted to the conversational era. I really believe this is powerful and the correct way forward. Which is a lot considering the current state of mind I am in for software development in the EU.
Hopefully, someone will pick this up and convert it into all the potential I see. I would be sad to see it rot in GitHub like so many other incredible things we have done with coreBOS/Evolutivo. It deserves to grow beyond an experiment.
