30 Mar Introduction to Sugar 7.8
One of the basic characteristics of SugarCRM is its continuous and sustainable progress. The company is known for “Making Customer Relationships Extraordinary” and providing the best CRM platform out there. Therefore, to make sure that the product is up to date with all of the latest trends and technology another version has been released. In this post, you can find out everything you need to know about newest features and improvements of Sugar 7.8!
Sugar 7.8 from the perspective of the user and administrator
Changes in the Sugar have been made on three different levels:
- a wider range of editable fields;
- changes to provide the world most flexible CRM platform;
- improvement of User Experience.
#1: wider range of editable fields
If one salesperson would like to share their Opportunity with someone else he/she can now do so without making his/hers actions public to all the users of the system. The permission to share information may be granted by the Administrator who has received in the settings panel an additional feature called Team-Based Permissions. He/she can even indicate specific modules that should be affected by this permission (Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts and other).
After modifications, in the field of users authorized to edit the information, apart from the salesperson assigned to the case also designated user teams will be visible.
From the salesperson perspective, the Opportunity window is now supplemented with the ability to give additional editing access to specific people or teams.
#2: changes to provide the world most flexible CRM platform
To assure the flexibility of their system SugarCRM has proposed many improvements with the use of Advanced Workflows module (Process Author). The changes introduced with Sugar 7.8 involve adjusting and extending business processes that should occur to ensure a successful sale.
The rules for applying complex dynamic calculations have been expanded – for example, assigning Leads based on geographical coordinates. Also, activities previously held in the background by Logic Hooks and Sugar Logic are now visualized. Sugar 7.8 has also been supplemented with the option to block certain fields which should not be edited by users at specific stages of sales.
Do you know that…?
Business processes in a company should be determined by adopting the customer’s optics, tracking not only their own internal procedures but also individual stages of the customer-side of the purchasing process. This kind of approach can be backed up by an additional Sugar plugin called Customer Journey.
#3: improvement of User Experience
To improve the User Experience, or build a positive work experience within the system, the following enhancements have been introduced:
- User Focus – highlighting the active field;
- Keyboard Paths – activation of additional keyboard navigation paths;
- Content Labelling – labeling the content and usability of the increased number of fields.
Back-end in Sugar 7.8
Together with the release of another version of Sugar, in addition to functional changes, many modifications have been made also regarding the stability of the back-end. Furthermore, the creators of the system updated the library of programming code. Besides all that, Sugar 7.8 has the ability to integrate through API with other systems and/or extensions.
Sugar 7.8 supports upgrades from 7.7.X and is available for all On-Demand and On-Premise implementations. It is also optimized for new installations and upgrades for clients running MySQL, DB2, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server databases.
Summary
Upgraded Sugar system further supports the building of a pro-customer, internally organized company. Unlike other commercial applications, it offers the flexibility of the proposed solutions. Thanks to the open code it is possible to customize the Sugar platform to meet individual needs of a specific organization.
As described in Example # 2, with the help of the Advanced Workflows (Process Author) tool, you can create complex, business-justified rules for the circulation of information in your company. Sugar 7.8 allows blocking certain functions (to ensure a single, efficient sales approach) while leaving the opportunity to design exceptions to a generally accepted policy (eg through supervisory approval procedures). The new version ensures a wider understanding of operations on Teams. It allows you to share a specific scope of your system with specific groups of users, for example, to get their professional support.
It is important to remember that the Sugar remains an open source system, so, in addition to using official upgrades, it can be expanded with the help of packages, integrators, and extensions offered by specialized implementation companies. As an experienced consulting unit, eVolpe has been offering customized Open Source software solutions for more than 7 years. Thanks to us, you can even better fulfill your Customer Relationship Management mission in your unique environment! Considering the implementation of the CRM system, it is useful to turn to professionals who will advise not only which version and edition to buy, but also what features to extend and what kind of IT infrastructure to use.
For more information about Sugar’s comprehensive implementation, please contact eVolpe Advisors.
