That is where SugarAI can make a real difference.

Originally focused on CRM, SugarAI has evolved into a platform that helps businesses uncover risks, identify opportunities and guide teams towards the right next steps. Instead of acting as a simple database, the platform brings together customer information, communication history, operational data and sales activity into one connected view.

For manufacturing companies, this creates opportunities across the entire customer journey.

One of the biggest challenges in manufacturing is visibility. Sales teams often work separately from operations, customer service and production planning. Important updates can easily become buried in emails, spreadsheets or disconnected systems. SugarAI helps bring these conversations together so teams have a clearer understanding of what is happening with customers, orders and projects in real time.

This becomes especially valuable for manufacturers dealing with long sales cycles or highly customised products. Account managers can quickly see recent interactions, outstanding issues and buying signals without manually digging through systems. Customer service teams can access the same information, helping them respond faster and more accurately when problems arise.

Another area where SugarAI can support manufacturers is process improvement. Many manufacturing businesses already collect large amounts of operational data but struggle to turn it into meaningful insights. Modern manufacturing increasingly relies on connected systems, digital workflows and performance monitoring to improve efficiency and quality control. SugarAI helps businesses surface patterns and trends that may otherwise go unnoticed, allowing teams to spot delays, risks or opportunities earlier.

Customer retention is another major focus. In manufacturing, relationships matter. Delays, missed communication or poor follow up can quickly damage trust. SugarAI gives businesses a clearer view of customer engagement so teams can stay proactive rather than reactive. Whether it is identifying accounts at risk, highlighting opportunities for upselling or ensuring follow ups happen on time, the platform helps businesses stay organised and responsive.

For growing manufacturers, scalability is equally important. Processes that work for a smaller operation often become difficult to manage as teams grow and customer demands increase. SugarAI provides structure without adding unnecessary complexity, helping businesses standardise workflows while still remaining flexible enough to adapt to different manufacturing environments.

The result is a more connected business where sales, customer service and operational teams can work together more effectively. For manufacturers looking to improve efficiency, strengthen customer relationships and make better use of their business data, SugarAI offers a practical and modern approach that supports long term growth.

The post Manufacturing Moves Faster With SugarAI appeared first on Sugabyte.

Many software releases are judged by the number of new features they introduce.

But sometimes, the most important releases are the ones that improve stability, reliability, and the day-to-day experience for customers.

That is exactly why the SugarAI 26.1 update matters.

While 26.1 does not introduce a huge number of major functional changes, it delivers something arguably more valuable: consistency. This release includes an impressive 152 bug fixes across the platform.

In a software world where some vendors leave long-standing issues unresolved for years, regular maintenance releases like 26.1 show the importance of having a vendor that actively listens to customers, prioritises platform health, and continuously improves the user experience.

For businesses relying on CRM systems every day, stability is not optional. Small issues compound over time, impacting productivity, reporting accuracy, adoption, and customer trust.

SugarAI 26.1 demonstrates a strong commitment to resolving those friction points.

Why Bug Fix Releases Matter

Feature releases often attract the headlines, but bug-fix-focused releases are what keep enterprise platforms dependable.

Every unresolved issue creates operational friction:

• Users lose confidence in the system
• Teams create workarounds
• Reporting becomes less reliable
• Productivity slows down
• Administrators spend more time troubleshooting

When vendors consistently address backlog issues, customers benefit from a platform that becomes more stable and predictable over time.

That is one of the strongest messages behind the 26.1 release.

Our Top 5 Fixes in SugarAI 26.1

1. Editable Fields Now Behave Correctly (Fix 89984)

One frustrating issue for administrators was that fields previously marked as read-only sometimes remained locked even after being updated to editable.

This fix restores expected behavior and removes unnecessary confusion for both admins and end users.

2. Timeline Dashlet Loading Issues Resolved (Fix 89481)

The Timeline dashlet occasionally appeared blank in certain modules, limiting visibility into customer activity and record history.

With this fix, the Timeline dashlet now loads correctly, improving user confidence and record visibility.

3. Better Validation in Dropdown Editor (Fix 98602)

Administrators can now benefit from stronger validation checks when creating dropdown list item names.

This is a small but important improvement that helps prevent bad data and inconsistent configurations from entering the system.

4. Team Filter Copying Now Works Properly (Fix 94065)

Copying filters to all users on a team previously failed to assign those filters correctly.

This fix improves administrative efficiency and ensures teams receive shared configurations as intended.

5. Report Dashlets Now Respect Current Record Filters (Fix 94233)

Report dashlets configured with the “Related to Current Record” option sometimes failed to filter correctly.

That created confusion for users relying on contextual reporting.

The fix ensures dashboards now display accurate, record-specific report data.

More Than Just Maintenance

The scale of this release is what stands out most.

Across User Interface, Administration, Reports, Email, Doc Merge, Quotes, and Opportunities, SugarAI 26.1 resolves issues affecting:

• Performance
• Reporting accuracy
• Workflow automation
• Search functionality
• Email reliability
• User permissions
• UI consistency
• System stability

Several fixes also address performance bottlenecks, timeout issues, and fatal system errors that could impact large enterprise environments.

That matters because reliability is often what separates mature enterprise software vendors from platforms that become difficult to maintain over time.

Final Thoughts

SugarAI 26.1 may not be the flashiest release, but it could be one of the most important.

By resolving 152 bugs across the platform, the release reinforces the value of continuous improvement and proactive software maintenance.

Customers do not just need new features — they need confidence that their platform is stable, supported, and evolving responsibly.

SugarAI 26.1 delivers exactly that.

The post Why the SugarAI 26.1 Update Is So Important appeared first on Sugabyte.

What Is the Duplicate Lead Detective?

The Duplicate Lead Detective is a dashlet in the Leads record view. It scans for potential duplicates across Leads, Contacts and Accounts using key fields like Account Name, Contact Name, Phone Numbers and Contact Email.

• Multi-Field Matching: Identifies duplicates based on multiple fields.
  
• Customisable Severity Levels: Admins can set how sensitive the system is to duplicate data.
  
• Access to the Potential Duplicate Records: Easily view the identified duplicates via a clickable link in the dashlet. 

Why Sales Teams Will Love It

Sales reps, you know the drill: working with multiple records for the same Lead is time-consuming and messy, if someone has been in touch before, your team will know right away. Here’s how the Duplicate Lead Detective helps:

• Avoid Embarrassing Outreach: Reps can accidentally chase “new” leads that are actually long-term customers. That makes your business look unprepared and disconnected.
  This add-on prevents that instantly.
  
• Work with One Record: All relevant info is in one place, so you’re not jumping between records.
  
• Log Activities Accurately: Calls, meetings, and emails are logged under the correct Lead.
  
• Full Lead History: Get a complete picture of all interactions with a Lead.
  

Why Every SugarCRM User Needs It

The Duplicate Lead Detective isn’t just for sales teams:

• Clean Data: It keeps your CRM free of duplicates and your data fresh.
  
• Easy to Use: Simple installation and configuration for admins.
  
• Boosts Efficiency: Improves workflow and reduces confusion across departments.
  

Want to see it in Action?

Sugabyte helps customers get more from SugarCRM, including smart add-ons like Duplicate Lead Detective.

Book a free consultation with Sugabyte to see how this add-on can improve your CRM experience.

The post Your CRM’s a Mess – Time to Fix It or Get Left Behind appeared first on Sugabyte.

Out-of-the-box, Sugar allows you to filter by Process Status and search by the Process Definition Name while this is useful if you are wanting to search for a process triggered for example, last week, you could still end up needing to scroll through pages of data.

We at Sugabyte have created an installable package that simply put; adds new filter options to the ‘Process Management’ List View page. This add on will allow you to filter your processes by Record Name|Date Created|Date Modified|Process Owner. This enhancement will drastically reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to locate a process and therefore allow you to check / review and update users with a quicker turn around. No more endless scrolling!

The filters will work in the same logic as any other List View filtering in Sugar, in that the filter can be a single line or a combination of multiple filters and can be saved for future use.

More information on this package can be found here.

The post How to filter and search in Sugars Process Management List View appeared first on Sugabyte.

Pre Workshop

Once the CRM Health Check was purchased, the first step was to have a call (over Zoom) with the key people in the business, in this case this was the CRM system administrator and the heads of Sales and Marketing. The call was to ascertain at a high level what the business does, what are the main uses of Sugar and what are the key pain points they have already identified.

“It’s important to send a bespoke survey because a generic one will be difficult in uncovering feedback that will assist us in disocovering what changes can make large impacts.”

Following the initial call, we curated a survey to all key users of Sugar. The customer opted for us to send this out, it was deduced that if the responses were sent to us directly being external from the business we’d hope to receive accurate and honest feedback, having this honest feedback is invaluable to ensuring that the key areas of discussion on the upcoming workshop day are not only relevant but that any areas identified for improvement are acknowledged by the users that are actually using Sugar for their day to day work. 

Example snipped of our survey, crafted specifically for our customer:

Upon receiving the questionnaire responses, we compiled the results into a readable data format and with the feedback given from the questionnaire and the original kick-off call we then compiled an agenda for the following Health Check workshop day. This ensures that we cover all relevant points specific to this customer.

The key pain points/areas to improve that we identified for the Agenda for our manufacturing customer were; inventory management, supply chain management, extended customer lifecycle and how to boost customer satisfaction. 

Day of Workshop

Based on the agenda we discussed at length all pain points and areas for improvement and what can be done to improve these, the options range from simple field creations/changes and layout updates to building custom modules, building automated flows to take care of the menial logical tasks/processes and setting reminders for users to ensure items aren’t forgotten to discussing integrating ERP systems. We also detailed plans on how to ensure that Sugar can be the main source of truth the use of custom dashboards per user group which allows each team to plan their days, see their current work, track processes and boost productivity, user adoption and ultimately customer satisfaction.

ERP Integration

We also proposed the exploration of Sales-i as one of the easiest ways to present “what have I sold you?”, “what haven’t I sold you?” and “what can I sell you?” with their ERP to Sugar integration solution. They were impressed with the detailed knowledge that their sales team can get, at-a-glance, when reviewing their accounts.

Post Workshop

All of the information gathered and improvements discussed were then provided to the customer via an Audit Report this will clearly illustrate all key points discussed along with the feedback and include a roadmap to start the journey of improving their CRM.

Is your SugarCRM project meeting expectations?
If you think you would benefit from discovering the untapped possibilities within your SugarCRM system with our tailored SugarCRM Health Check, please follow this link: https://www.sugaroutfitters.com/addons/crm-healthcheck-workshop

The post CRM Healthcheck Workshop – my experience with a recent customer appeared first on Sugabyte.

Interface Enhancements

List View Filters and Users Management – Additional filters have been implemented to improve usability, these new filters are “Contain” to be used to filter on Textfields and ‘Before Today” and “After Today” to be used to filter on Date fields.
Additionally as introduced in Sell 13.3 and now available in Enterprise 14.0 is a new and improved User Profile, this has been brought inline to be sidecar as with the majority of other modules to offer a familiar and seamless user experience.
Inline with bringing the User Profile update to the sidecar view, there is also improvement for Sugar Admins with a fully modernised User Management interface, this includes improved filtering, search capabilities and pagination.

Tile View Upgrade – Tile view is now available in all sidecar modules with dropdown values, the dropdown value is needed in order to categorise the “tiles”. The tile view provides a user friendly and visually appealing view for users to easily manage, work with, move on/complete items.

Reporting and Dashboards

Introducing in 14.0 there will be six role based pre built dashboards, utilising 166 pre built reports. These additions are there to improve user adoption by providing insightful easily accessible and relevant information.
Users will now be able to access / update runtime filters for report based dashlets directly from the dashboard, this feature will not only avoid frustrations with needing to navigate away from the dashboard to make these changes but will also be a huge time saver.

Usability Enhancements

The timeline dashlet, previously known as the interactions dashlet, has been made available for most Sugar modules including custom modules. The improvements allow Sugar admins to specify for each module which related modules should show in the dashlet to allow a fully comprehensive view.

There are improvements to the Comment Log field, this field has been added to the Quotes module and Preview layouts and to improve usability and visibility a scroll bar has been implemented to easily view older/newer comments.

Guided Selling Improvements

There has been the introduction of bidirectional Sugar actions, meaning that updates to Sugar records can trigger Smart Guide status changes.
To allow Smart Guides to be more intuitive and user friendly Sugar has introduced the ability to link EXISTING records to a Smart Guide rather than needing to create a NEW record to add to the guide and finally there is now the option to “Archive” a Smart Guide record.

Mail and Calendar Integration Enhancements

A varierty of improvements have been made to Sugars mail and calendar integration “Sugar Connect”, these would have all been pushed through as updates throughout the year and readily available for users prior to the Sugar 14.0 release, below are the highlights of the updates.

• Timeline availability  
• Shared mailbox support – Outlook  
• Option to not use Hint data when creating Contact/Lead   
• Support for additional Languages 
• Support for dropdown-based layouts 
• Team Meetings now available through the Meeting Scheduler in the sidebar 

The post Sugar Enterprise 14.0 – April 2024 release appeared first on Sugabyte.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management – still a little bit confused? Well, what if we said that we get rid of all of those boring, tedious spreadsheets and present all of the information in easy to read sections of your own application? Winner I say!

So, why should SugarCRM be a part of your business?

ENHANCES YOUR CUSTOMER RELATIONS

 We enable businesses to create extraordinary customer relationships with the most innovative and affordable CRM solution on the market. With SugarCRM keeping a good overview of your customers is at the end of your fingertips, we strive to ensure that our different editions suit the needs of you and your customers. Using data analysis on existing customers’ history to enrich your relationships with them, in turn driving up sales.

OPTIMIZES MARKETING STRATEGIES

 Who else is guilty of typing up email address after email address just to send one mail shot? You’re not alone! Many companies still manually add customers to mailing lists when doing email marketing, this is where we can help. SugarCRM has a fully integrated marketing system, which enables you to directly pull customers information at the click of a finger to be used in marketing campaigns. Optimizing your marketing strategies creates time for your marketing department to use their skills to the full.

REGISTER LEADS AND CONTACTS

 Have you ever been in a position where a sales representative has left your company, but hasn’t left any of their lead or contacts and your stuck trying to pick up where they left off? With us, every bit of contact made with a potential or existing customer is logged in the platform making sure that you can just pick up where someone has left off. The detailed system of CRM makes it easy to see where you or a co-worker is with a customer and helps keep those relationships stable.

ROOM FOR GROWTH

 Currently using a spreadsheet to note down all of your interactions with customers? It may work on a small scale, but when you reach 50-100 customers, recording everything on a spreadsheet becomes tedious. This is where we come in. No matter how small or large your company is we make it easy for you to get everything you need. No matter how much you want to grow your business, we will always be on hand to help.

 A SERVICE NOT A PRODUCT

We do all of the hard work, so you don’t have to. With SugarCRM, you are getting a service not a product! We are here from the design and consultation stage to the final product support stage, we are here to ensure that your integration from any other CRM company to SugarCRM runs seamlessly from the start. We offer long-term support and training with SugarCRM because we know that being thrown in the deep end with new software can be extremely daunting.

If you are interested in hearing more about how SugarCRM could impact your business, then get in touch with us. Our sales team are on hand to answer any questions you may have.

The post 5 Reasons Why SugarCRM Should Be Part Of Your Business appeared first on Sugabyte.

The Summer ’19 release changes the game by introducing Sugar’s robust suite of customer experience solutions empowering your marketing, sales and services teams to collaborate across the entire customer lifecycle for more meaningful, memorable experiences. Learn more about the first intelligent, no-touch customer experience (CX) platform and how to exceed expectations and create customers for life.

This release represents the next step in the SugarCRM quarterly feature model, providing accelerated delivery of new innovations for Sugar Cloud Customers, as well as greater predictability for Sugar updates for on-site customers.

Summer ’19 will significantly benefit customers running in the cloud environment with the following feature updates:

All Users

• A new field on user records, License Type, allows administrators to grant each user access to one or more products including SugarCRM’s new offerings, Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve.
• For Cases, Tasks and Opportunities a new view has been added, Tile View, that displays records as tiles in an interactive, drag-and-drop interface (available in Sell, Serve, Enterprise and Ultimate editions)
• The Emails list view can now be filtered using the From, To, Cc, Bcc and Direction fields.
• Custom filters applied to List View dashlets are now shared with all members of the associated team(s) that have access to the shared dashboard.
• The Comment Log field has been enhanced with the following functionality:
  • URLs in the Comment Log entries are now clickable and will open the link in a new tab
  • Users can now insert a link to a Sugar record in the form of a clickable pill in the Comment Log entries.
  • Users can now be tagged in Comment Log entries, which causes the tagged user to receive a notification in Sugar.
• The new Date Resolved field on the Cases module captures the date and time each case is resolved.
• SugarBPM has been enhanced with the following functionality:
  • The Emails module is now available as a target module when creating process definitions in SugarBPM.
  • A “From” user can now be configured in SugarBPM’s Send Message events so that emails sent from processes have a more personalised sender

(SugarBPM is available in Sell, Serve, Enterprise and Ultimate editions)

• The new SugarCloud Insights page allows administrators to easily monitor their instance’s database and file system storage usage, license usage, as well as gain access to PHP error logs and access logs.
• The Activity Stream Purger Scheduler has been added and can be enabled to prune activity stream records that are older than 6 months from the activities table.
• Sugar now supports TLS encryption for LDAP single sign-on.

Sugar Serve Users

• The Service Console dashboard provides a powerful work environment for customer service agents by incorporating SLAs and region-specific business hours, insightful dashlets, and cohesive case research and action experience.
  • The Overview tab contains 9 pre-configured dashlets to help users plan their current work, keep track of their backlog, and check in on their throughput as well as the teams responsibilities.
  • The Cases tab is a detail-rich list of agents cases prioritised by follow-up date which draws their attention to overdue and approaching SLA commitments while providing one-click access to investigate more or take action.
  • Clicking each case opens a drawer containing 4 dashlets which combine to provide a single place to gather deeply related information, log progress and communicate with customers.
• Sugar Serve includes stock process definitions that automate complex SLAs by routing cases, prioritising work and updating follow-up dates using your organisations multi-region business centres and their business hours.
• Sugar Serve includes stock process definitions that automatically send email notifications to customers, support representatives and managers to inform them of case updates, case assignment and missed SLA’s.
• The new Business Centres module is available for designating distinct time zones, operating hours, and holidays for different business centres in your organisation. For distributed organisations, accounts and cases can be assigned to their relevant business centre and each cases business centre assignment is leveraged by SugarBPM to calculate accurate follow-up dates.
• Fifteen new customer-service focused stock reports are available in the Reports module.
• The new Interactions dashlet is available on record view to see a history of past calls, emails, meetings and notes related to the record as well as to create new interactions.
• The new Comment Log Dashlet is available on record view for viewing the Comment Log of a record and adding new entries.
• The new Record View dashlet is available on record view with configurable tabs to display embedded record and list views of records related to the one being viewed.
• This release also includes additional fixes to address issues in previous releases of Sugar, detailed in the Ultimate, Enterprise and Professional Release Notes.

Sugar Sell Users

• The new Business Centres module is available for designating distinct timezones, operating hours and holidays for different business centres in your organisation. For distributed organisations Accounts can be assigned their relevant business centre.
• The new Interactions dashlet is available on record view to see a history of past calls, emails, meetings and notes related to the record as well as to create new interactions.
• The new Comment Log dashlet is available on record view for viewing the Comment Log of a record and adding new entries.
• The new Record View dashlet is available on record view with configurable tabs to display embedded record and list views of records related to the one you are viewing.This release also includes additional fixes to address issues in previous releases of Sugar, detailed in the Ultimate, Enterprise and Professional Release Notes.

Please visit the Supported Platforms page for a complete list of supported browsers and other platform information.

Additional Documentation & Release Notes

Please review Sugars release notes for the new versions using the following links and the Knowledge Base article “What to Expect When Upgrading to 9.1” to learn more about the new features available, as well as the additional fixes to address issues identified in prior releases:

• Ultimate 9.1 Release Notes
• Enterprise 9.1 Release Notes
• Professional 9.1 Release Notes

The post Sugar Summer ’19 Is Live appeared first on Sugabyte.

This release introduces the Comment Log field to SugarCRM Mobile. This field is available to be added to the Mobile DetailView of most modules and is displayed by default on the Cases module. This release also addresses issues identified in prior releases of SugarCRM Mobile.

More details about this update may be found through the following release notes:
SugarCRM Mobile for Android Release Notes 9.0
SugarCRM Mobile for iOS Release Notes 9.0

SugarCRM Mobile 9.0 is compatible with Sugar 9.0 and above. Please review the Mobile Supported Platforms page for more information about device compatibility.

All existing installations of SugarCRM Mobile will be upgraded through the phone or tablets’ native upgrade functionality. Alternatively, upgrades can be performed by searching for “SugarCRM Mobile” in the application store for your device or using the following links:
Google Play Store
Apple App Store

The post SugarCRM Mobile 9.0 is now Live appeared first on Sugabyte.

SugarCRM considers data security and the protection of your private information their highest priority. This latest release includes important security updates. As part of SugarCRM’s ongoing security review process, they have recently detected security vulnerabilities and, to minimize potential risks, those issues have been investigated and addressed in this updated release.

For more information regarding this specific advisory, please refer to the following Security Advisory announcement:

• Security Advisory sugarcrm-sa-2019-018: An unauthenticated user may trigger specific actions to inject or corrupt data in the Hint application.

The 5.1.2 version of Hint release also includes updates to support Sugars upcoming Summer ’19 (9.1) release. More information about this release can be found in Hint 5.1.2 Release Notes.

If you are hosted in the SugarCloud, no action is required as this vulnerability has been patched in the cloud environment. If you have additional questions related to how your instance has been affected, please open a case with SugarCRM’s support team. Installation and upgrade documentation for customers hosted on-site (outside of the SugarCloud environment), as well as usage documentation for Hint can be found at the following links:

• Hint user Guide
• Hint Installation Guide

NOTE: On-site customers must first uninstall existing Hint versions before upgrading to Hint 5.x.x. However, upgrading from 5.0.x to 5.1.2 does NOT require an uninstall. 

Hint is supported for use on Sugar versions 8.0 and above. Please review the Supported Platforms for Hint before installing.

The post Hint 5.1.2 is Live appeared first on Sugabyte.