19 May Sugar 7.9 is now available!
Find out what’s new in the latest version of the system.
As the official SugarCRM Elite Partner, we are rushing with the news about the latest Sugar release. Sugar 7.9 brings a revolution to the brand new Quotes module, which was redesigned from the ground up. Thanks to a new user interface built in the Sugar Sidecar framework, new features such as improvements to grouping, drag and drop reordering and enhancements to multi-currency support, creating sales quotes is even simpler and more effective.
The brand new Quotes module
Sugar 7.9 offers a completely refreshed Quotes module. The changes were made to affect the out-of-date visual, improve the User Experience, as well as enrich the functional aspect. The creators wanted to provide an efficient but also esthetic and correspondent to the rest of the system solution. The Quotes module also now supports Sugar Logic, a core Sugar business process technology, making it easier to create business logic configurations that are upgradeable and extremely powerful in their ability to meet business needs of all complexities.
The visual transformation of the module you can observe while comparing the screens below.
BEFORE
AFTER
More precisely, following changes were introduced in the Sugar 7.9 within the Quotes module:
- Drag-and-drop line reordering: users can easily arrange comments and quoted line items on the quote worksheet via drag-and-drop.
- Mass actions: select multiple line items and comments to add them to a new group or remove them via mass delete.
- Product Catalog search: the product catalog can now be searched by category and type in addition to the name.
- Optional groups: when building a quote, line items and comments may now be added outside of a group.
- Quote PDFs: quote PDFs can now be saved from the related account or opportunity’s Quotes sub panel as well as from the quote’s record view.
- Smarter relate fields: inactive tax rates and inactive shipping providers are hidden from their respective fields on the quote record.
- Sugar Logic: calculated fields in the quotes module now use Sugar Logic so admins can have greater control over quote field formulas via Studio.
A new ListView within the Reports module
The changes were made also to the Reports module, which in Sugar 7.9 has received a totally new List View. The main enhancement is the benefit of applying list filters. Thanks to a new palette of options you can now narrow down the results and expand your perspective by adding tags and filling in the report description field.
Back-end in Sugar 7.9: Prepared Statements and PHP 7
SugarCRM is constantly seeking solutions that will make their application faster and more secure. To achieve that the 7.9 version brings significant improvements in back-end performance. Therefore, the query window for developers has been improved. Also, the entire platform is now powered by the powerful and fast PHP 7 programming language.
The improved back-end layer supports the so-called Prepared Statements. This is a new feature of the Sugar database that allows the same or similar queries to be executed with more efficiency and greater security. It has also been a common Sugar platform feature request for some time. A prepared statement is basically a SQL template that allows you to identify parameters that can be bound later. The database engine can parse, optimize, and cache this statement without executing it.
Finally, SugarCRM has decided to incorporate the PHP 7 programming language (more accurately PHP 7.1). It is significantly faster than PHP 5.6 (most recently supported version), it also decreases demand on web servers, making for a more cost effective hosting option. It is important to note that as of Sugar 7.9.0, PHP 5.6 is still the officially supported version with just the certification for PHP 7.
Other features included in Sugar 7.9 release
Optimization of Advanced Workflow – usability improvements empowering Sugar Admins with greater efficiency in designing processes and feature enhancements in new process triggers, additional text field operators, and variable user assignments. Advanced Workflow did not change drastically, but it is clear that it remains an important part of the system. Its creators consequently depend on the continual development of the area. Even minor fixes contributed to making Advanced Workflow more user-friendly are important.
Help Popup – a newly created Help Popup replacing the existing Help Dashboard, providing an elegant space saving, context sensitive, and easily accessible onboarding solution.
Structured Search – Global Search with greater precision and accuracy across the entire data set using Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) for the most relevant results.
Library updates – a series of updates emphasizing the importance of Sugar’s continuous activities to deliver the most current, secure, and high-performance application for our customers, partners and developer community.
More detailed information on Sugar 7.9 can be found on the official manufacturer’s website: Sugar Ultimate 7.9.0.0 Release Notes.
Sugar version 7.9 strengthens the belief that we are dealing with the best and most visionary CRM platform in the world.
In conclusion, it is important to remember that the Sugar remains an open source system, so, in addition to official upgrades, it can be expanded with the help of packages, integrators, and extensions offered by specialized implementation companies. As an experienced consulting unit and SugarCRM Elite Partner eVolpe has been offering customized Open Source software solutions for more than 7 years. Thanks to us, you can fulfill the 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.
