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.

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.

In this post, we explore the changes users should expect in the SugarCRM Version 10.2 (Q4 2020) Update.

SugarCRM’s Version 10.2 update applies to Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve Users. If you are hosted with Sugar, you either have already or will receive this update within the next weeks.

Note: SugarCRM Version 10.2 is only available for SugarCloud (Sugar-hosted SaaS) deployments. If you are hosted on-site or with us, you will be receiving your next major release in Summer 2021.

SugarCRM Version 10.2 Release Notes

Let’s take a look at the new features added to Sugar (we will highlight if any of these features have been added to the Sugar Sell, Serve, Sugar Enterprise and/or Sugar Professional edition).

Coterminous Add-Ons for Revenue Line Items

Note: Sugar Sell only.

In case you are selling license subscription based services, this will be an interesting one for you.

Quite often we see the need to make adjustments to subscription based services, e.g. adding further licenses for the remainder of the service period, without affecting the service end date.

With Sugar you can now add products and services to an existing Purchased Line Item record (representing a service the customer already bought) to support coterminous add-ons.

Additionally, if the add-on service is renewable, Sugar will automatically update your renewal opportunity and revenue line item related to the original purchase.

Note that the Purchase Line Item has to be marked as a ‘Service‘ for the Add-On option to be made available.

Do Purchases and Purchased Line Items sound new to you? Check the Sugar 10.1 Release Notes for further details on these two new modules.

Either add a new line item to an existing Opportunity or create a new Opportunity. In either case, the Service End Date and Duration will be automatically calculated, leaving the Start Date for you to choose. 

If you mark the Revenue Line Item as ‘Renewable’, once closed won, the add-on will be automatically added to your existing (or new) renewal Opportunity.

Flexible service duration

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Enterprise features only.

Now that a service duration can be set on product level, you can specify if the service duration is locked or if users can modify the default service duration on line items.

Multiple Quotes from one RLI

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Enterprise feature only.

Dashboard Enhancements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve and (some) Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional features only.

Resizable Dashlets

Dashlets can now be resized independently of other dashlets by clicking and dragging their lower corners.

Unlimited Dashboards

Dashboards can now include an unlimited number of dashlets.

Active Subscriptions Dashlet (Sugar Sell and Serve only!)

The Active Subscriptions dashlet is now available for all record view dashboards where the module has a relationship to Accounts.

Knowledge Base Search Dashlet (Sugar Sell and Serve only!)

This dashlet can be added to any type of Dashboard. It provides the user with all Knowledge Base Articles displayed in a tree structure dashlet. Expand the tree structure to access a KB Article which will open in a new browser tab.

Interactions Dashlet (Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve and Sugar Enterprise only!)

What a great addition to SugarCRM’s set of default dashlets!

The Interactions Dashlet can be added to the Accounts, Contacts, Leads and Opportunities Record View layout. It provides you an overview of all activities – with the most recent activities listed at the top. This includes calls, meetings, emails and notes.

Click on an activity to reveal further details.

This dashlet is also available on the Account Detail and Opportunity Detail drawers of the Renewals Console.

User Interface Improvements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional features.

Audit Log for Activities

Much missed, but finally back! Audit Logs for Calls, Meetings and Tasks can be enabled again. Any field that you want to include in the audit trail, simply tick the ‘Audit’ checkbox in Administration > Studio.

Service-focused Enhancements

Note: Sugar Serve only.

SugarLive Contact Center Tool

Important: An Amazon Connect (similar to a chat bot) instance is required to use this feature.

This omni-channel tool uses Amazon Connect to allow customer service agents to communicate in real-time with clients while updating relevant customer data. Here are the key features:

• SugarLive is available in the footer and pops up automatically when a call or chat is routed to you
• When you accept an incoming call or chat, the full view opens including a panel allowing you to search for, view, and update records relevant to the customer or case
• A call or message record is created for each completed conversation to track the communication.

‘Request To Close’ Case button in portal

A new button has been added to portal case records that allows customers to easily communicate that it is safe to close their case.

New module: Messages

The Messages module has been added to track online interactions such as instant messaging or social media.

SugarLive uses it to record the details and chat transcript of chats with customers.

Message records are also included in the Case and Contact Interactions dashlets.

SugarBPM Enhancements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve and Sugar Enterprise features only.

New ‘is one of’ operator

Where previously it has been tricky to evaluate the condition of a multi-select field by only using ‘is’ and ‘is not’ operators (with more than 5 multi-select values, the value combinations already feel endless…), we now have a new operator: ‘is one of‘.

We did wonder why no ‘is not one of’ operator was added, however you can simply replicate this condition by using the ‘NOT’ operator, similarly to this example:

Relate fields in field evaluations

So far field evaluations could only be completed on the target module and related modules via a two-way relationship. You will now be able to use Relate type fields in Process Definition field evaluations so they can be used as a criteria in conditions.

Send message to all teams on the record

A new option has been added to the recipient list when using the Send Message and End events: ‘All teams assigned to the record‘. This option will dynamically add all teams on the target record to the recipient list.

Studio Enhancements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional features.

New field type: AutoIncrement

An auto-increment field type allows admins to add a unique numerical ID to module records. This field cannot be edited by end users as the value is auto-generated on record creation.

Unfortunately, there is no option to add a prefix to your numerical ID (customer numbers starting with non-numeric characters, e.g. ‘SUG-10001’) nor to use AutoIncrement type fields in other field calculations (such as a concatenate formula in a Textfield), however we will sit tight as we suspect this to be added in a future release!

Make a field conditionally required

Requested by many, we can now mark a field conditionally required (e.g. if an Account record is of Type ‘Customer’, make the Service Level field required).

The formula logic to use is the same as setting a field dependency via a formula.

Note that you can still set a field to be required without specifying a ‘Required if’ condition. Simply set the checkbox for ‘Required Field’. If the formula field is left blank, the field will be set as required in any case.

Sugar Logic changes

Following formula functions have been added or updated:

• str_replace() : This new formula lets you replace portions of text within a string
• year() : This new formula lets you return the year value from a date field
• isInList() : This updated formula now lets you pass a multi-select field as a second parameter.

Admin Enhancements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional features.

OAuth2 for Google Mail and Exchange Online

Sugar now supports OAuth2 connections to Google Mail and Exchange Online when configuring the system outbound email, system inbound email and user email accounts in Sugar.

Microsoft connector

Administrators can now configure the Microsoft connector via Admin > Connectors to allow Sugar to connect to the Microsoft API Services via OAuth2 to send outbound emails as well as receive inbound emails.

SugarIdentity Enhancements

Note: SugarIdentity-enabled instances only.

Want to know more about SugarIdentity? Please read our post on introducing SugarIdentity to you.

Change Password capability for users

A feature that will make user management much simpler going forward. The previously existing Sugar feature of changing your users password in the Sugar application has now been re-introduced for SugarIdentity-enabled instances. The Change Password option is now available in the profile dropdown menu.

Update existing user records via import

Same with the change password feature, a previously used function from the Sugar application has been re-introduced for SugarIdentity-enabled instances: User record updates via import.

If you are familiar with the import wizard, you will very quickly see that this is Sugars standard import wizard which guides you through the various import steps.

SugarCloud Settings link

The SugarCloud Settings link is now available on the Admin page for administrators to easily access the SugarCloud Settings console.

Conclusion on SugarCRM Version 10.2

Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you require any further information on SugarCRM Version 10.2 and we will be more than happy to help you!

Want to know what was released in Sugar 10.1 this autumn? Check out our previous blog post here:

SugarCRM Version 10.1 (Q3 2020) Update – Release Notes

New to SugarCRM?

Click here to Sign up for FREE!

The post SugarCRM Version 10.2 (Q4 2020) Update – Release Notes appeared first on Sugabyte.

The post SugarCRM Mobile Version 24.0 is now Live! appeared first on Sugabyte.

In this post, we explore the changes users should expect in the SugarCRM Version 10.1 (Q3 2020) Update.

SugarCRM’s Version 10.1 update applies to Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve Users. If you are hosted with Sugar, you either have already or will receive this update within the next weeks.

Note: SugarCRM Version 10.1 is only available for SugarCloud (Sugar-hosted SaaS) deployments. If you are hosted on-site or with us, you will be receiving your next major release in Summer 2021.

SugarCRM Version 10.1 Release Notes

Let’s take a look at the new features added to Sugar (we will highlight if any of these features have been added to the Sugar Sell, Serve, Sugar Enterprise and/or Sugar Professional edition).

Purchases and Purchased Line Items

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve feature only.

The new Purchases module shows each good or service a customer has bought whilst the Purchased Line Items module captures each time it was bought, providing a historically accurate record of sales and customer worth while supporting post-sale operations.

Purchases and purchased line items are automatically generated for “Closed Won” opportunities with revenue line items, if the line items “Generate Purchase” dropdown equals “Yes” (default value).

You can access the Purchases and Purchased Line Items module via the menu bar or via an Accounts Purchases subpanel.

The Active Subscriptions dashlet is now based on purchases and purchased line items.

Manage Revenue Line Items at Opportunity Level

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Enterprise feature only.

Requested by many customers, the expected close date, sales stage, and service start date can now be set at the opportunity level and pushed to all open related revenue line items, saving you repetitive revenue line item data entry.

A couple of extra bonuses for sales management: You can now calculate discount amounts based on values or percentages (e.g. 10%) and also enter negative values (credit) in revenue and quoted line items (this feature is also available with Sugar Professional).

Workforce Management

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve feature only.

Console Management

Note: Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve feature only.

In a bid to condense the User Interface layout, the Renewals Console and Service Console (available on your Dashboard) were previously introduced.

To optimise these consoles, admins or dashboard owners are now able to further modify the console module tab view.

• You can re-arrange the position of each dashlet
• You can edit the dashlets
• You can remove dashlets via the settings cog in the top right corner of each dashlet
• You can click on the pencil icon in the top left corner of the dashlet view and add new dashlets

You will also be able to modify the consoles module tab List View by amending/adding/removing new columns. Check this video on how to make these changes:

Fur further details on how to configure the consoles, please check the detailed documentation on this for Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve.

Record View Dashlet

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve and Sugar Enterprise feature only.

You should already be familiar with the Record View dashlet.

Comment Log

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional feature.

Users now have the option to be notified via email when they are mentioned in a comment log entry by enabling the ‘Email on Mention‘ checkbox in their profile.

Admin users can configure the comment log email notification template via Emails > View Email Templates.

Configurable System Email Templates

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional feature.

Additional system email templates are now available for configuration by admin users via Emails > View Email Templates:

• Assignment Notification Emails
• Call Notifications Emails
• Meeting Notifications Emails
• Scheduled Report Emails

Refresh Button

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve and Sugar Enterprise feature only.

The Refresh button has been added to the list views of all SugarBPM modules to allow users to quickly refresh the list view results without having to reload the browser.

The same applies to the Cases, Tasks, Leads and Opportunities tile view to allow users to quickly reapply filters after making changes to the displayed records without having to reload the browser.

Record View Enhancements

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional feature.

Auto-focus cursor on first field in record view

When creating or editing records in Sidecar modules, the cursor is now automatically focused on the first field (e.g. Subject) in the record view layout.

Clickable hyperlinks in text area fields

Hyperlinks in text area fields are now clickable and will open the link in a new tab.

SugarIdentity

Note: Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional features where SugarIdentity is enabled.

SugarIdentity now supports duplicating and deleting records in the Employees module.

Conclusion on SugarCRM Version 10.1

Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you require any further information on SugarCRM Version 10.1 and we will be more than happy to help you!

Want to know what was released in Sugar 10.0 this summer? Check out our previous blog post here:

SugarCRM Version 10 (Q2 2020) Update – User Interface Review

New to SugarCRM?

Click here to Sign up for FREE!

The post SugarCRM Version 10.1 (Q3 2020) Update – Release Notes appeared first on Sugabyte.

In this post, we explore the changes users can expect in the SugarCRM Version 10 (Q2 2020) Update.

Sugars Version 10 update applies to Sugar Professional, Sugar Enterprise, Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve Users. If you are hosted with Sugar you will receive this update within the next week, if you are hosted on-site or with a partner you will be receiving this update shortly too.

Due to the large volume of SugarCRM Support tickets from our customers regarding the new layout (and how to fix a few things) we’ve created this short video explaining the new User Interface changes and how to configure them.

There is one particular change to Sugars UI you may want to revert from.

Watch our video below to find out how or follow the step by step instructions in this post.

SugarCRM Version 10 User Interface Changes

Let’s take a look at the Record View in Sugar which is where you will notice the biggest changes to the User Interface.

Side by side Field Name Placement

What we see now is the field label and value displayed side by side whereas, in previous versions of Sugar, field names were displayed above the field.

This is Sugar’s attempt to consolidate the view and make it easier for you to read and display a certain number of fields on your layout.

One downside to the side by side field name view is any field names that exceed the character limit will be cut short to fit on the row. This means field names may not be displayed correctly on your current layout.

How to Change Field Name Placement in SugarCRM

Step 1

Navigate to your User Profile in Sugar at the top right of your screen.

Once in ‘Edit’ mode select the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Step 3

Select your desired field name placement to change how field names are displayed in your layout.

Step 4

Navigate to a record in Sugar and you will notice field names are now positioned ‘Above Field Value’.

New Pill View for Empty Field Values

Filler Field Alignment

In a bid to condense the User Interface layout. Sugar has introduced a new feature that automatically realigns ‘Filler Fields’ on your layout. This is to help users create a more condensed layout at Record View.

If you were previously using filler fields to structure rows in your layout, you’ll want to know how to restructure your layout for the alignment you require.

(Example of ‘Filler Fields’ displayed in the new UI – (Left) Design View / (Right) Record View)

To change the layout and expand a field to cover the entire row, head to ‘Studio’ to edit the ‘Record View Layout’.

Now, the ‘Website’ field is displayed on its own row and the ‘Account Name’ and ‘Business Centre’ fields are displayed on a separate row below.

Preview View Layout

Another handy update to the UI in Sugar’s Version 10 release is the ability to edit the ‘Preview View’ layout.

In previous Sugar versions, the Preview View displayed the same layout as the Record View. Users can now edit the Preview View to display a different layout.

To make changes to the Preview View layout in Sugar, open ‘Studio’, choose the module you want to edit, select ‘Layouts’ and ‘Preview View’ from the Layouts dropdown.

Now you can change the display in the preview by rearranging fields to create your desired layout.

Tile View added to the Leads Module

The final change to Sugars UI in Version 10 is the addition of the Tile View in the Leads module. The Tile View allows you to ‘drag and drop’ records as they progress through stages. For example, progressing a Lead Record from a status of ‘New Lead’ > ‘Assigned to User’.

To amend the Tile View click on your User Profile, go to ‘Admin’ and select ‘Tile View Settings’

This is where you can select which modules have Tile View enabled, make changes to the Table Header, hide field values, amend the Operation Header and select how rows are displayed on the view.

SugarCRM Version 10 Update Concluding Thoughts

We hope you found this post useful. In this version update, there are some great additions to Sugar’s User Interface that make navigating through Sugar and configuring your layouts to support your daily tasks even easier. Follow the steps in our video or instructions in this post to make changes to your layout.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you require any further information and we will be more than happy to help you!

For the full list of updates included in Sugar’s Version 10 (Q2 2020) Release, read our post below!

SugarCRM Version 10.0.0 (Q2 2020) Release Notes

New to SugarCRM?

Click here to Sign up for FREE!

The post SugarCRM Version 10 (Q2 2020) Update – User Interface Review appeared first on Sugabyte.

This release addresses issues identified in prior releases. Please review the 10.0.0 release notes using the following links to learn more about the variety of fixes included in this release:

Customers who are upgrading to 10.0.0 (Q2 2020) from 9.3 (Winter ’20) should refer to the following sections:

• Feature Enhancements When Upgrading From 9.3 (Winter ’20)
• Fixed Issues When Upgrading From 9.3 (Winter ’20)
• Developer Notes for Upgrading From 9.3 (Winter ’20)
• Known Issues
• Upgrade Paths

For information about this release’s changes to existing functionality, please refer to the What to Expect When Upgrading to 10.0 article.

If you require any further information regarding upgrading to Version 10.0.0 please click the link below to get in contact with us!

Request Upgrade Assistance

The post SugarCRM Version 10.0.0 (Q2 2020) Release Notes appeared first on Sugabyte.

Until now, SugarCRM have stuck to season-based naming of their quarterly product releases (winter, Spring, Summer and Fall).

Why the change?

Sugar have successfully grown into a global offering with customers in 6 continents, 26 languages and 120 countries leveraging Sugar products. Sugars release naming style must adhere to Sugar users worldwide. In order to offer clarity to customers worldwide, Sugar have adopted a new release naming convention moving forward and scrapped their former seasonal naming style all-together.

Product release naming change

Beginning with Sugars upcoming quarterly release due early next week. Customers will notice a new naming convention based on calendar quarters. For example, the release due next week will be named the Sugar Q2 2020 (10.0) Release (Instead of ‘The Sugar Spring ’20 Release’)

In line with Sugars new naming scheme, the next four releases our customers can expect will be named as follows:

• Sugar Q2 2020 (10.0) Release – April 2020
• Sugar Q3 2020 (10.1) Release – July 2020
• Sugar Q4 2020 (10.2) Release – Oct 2020
• Sugar Q1 2021 (10.3) Release – Jan 2021

Has anything else changed?

Other than the change of naming convention. Sugar have kept their release methodology the same as usual. This means customers can still expect the same level of regular innovation and product releases from Sugar. The only change is the name of the product release. All other aspects of Sugars future releases will remain unchanged.

SugarCloud users will still receive their normal quarterly releases and users leveraging on-premise instances of Sugar will still receive their usual annual releases. Nothing will change in terms of feature enhancements or the timeline of Sugars Roadmap of scheduled releases.

Concluding thoughts

We hope this has delivered some clarity to Sugars somewhat long awaited release naming change. This change will make it easier for customers worldwide to track and stay informed on new product releases. Users specifically in the southern hemisphere no longer need to translate seasons around the world to stay up to date with Sugars future product releases.

Keep an eye out for our post on Sugars Q2 2020 (10.0) Release due next week, where we bring you up to speed on all the new features, fixes and enhancements included in the latest version of SugarCRM. 

If you have any questions regarding your version of SugarCRM or anything else for that matter, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us and we will more than happy to help!

Contact Us

The post SugarCRM’s Release Naming Change: Explained appeared first on Sugabyte.

There are a number of distinct differences between how B2B and B2C organisations should manage their Marketing initiatives: In this post we cover how best to manage your B2B Social Media Marketing strategy.

One of the main challenges B2B Marketers face in successfully implementing a valuable Social Media Marketing strategy – is organising, analysing and reporting on a large quantity of content across multiple social channels – while proving accurate data to support Social Media Marketing ROI.

For example, creating and organising a high volume of content for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram can become very confusing and time consuming for B2B Marketers with each social channel requiring content in a different format, different character allowance and different creative requirements just to name a few key differences.

For example, the standard image size for Instagram posts is (1080pxX1080px) where the standard image size for LinkedIn posts is (1,200×1,200px). To add further confusion, the caption limit on Instagram posts is 2,200 characters whereas the character limit on LinkedIn posts is 700 characters.

When you scale this up and attempt to produce multiple pieces of content that adhere to the very many differences across Social Media Channels – this is where things become difficult to manage.

This is just one of many examples of the challengers B2B Marketers face in producing and maintaining a successful Social Media Marketing strategy.

Without the right tools it can be equally as difficult to analyse engagement, content reach and interaction with a view to provide senior staff with evidence supporting Social Media Marketing ROI.

To ensure your Social Media Marketing strategy is managed successfully, B2B Marketers must be empowered with the necessary tools to save time and automate the process as much as possible.

(Image: Oktopost Social Media Content Calendar) 

This means being able to easily manage posts across multiple Social Media Channels, manage Social Media Calendars, quickly analyse insights and automatically be presented with notifications as and when they arrive – no matter the volume of content being produced and published.

What is Oktopost?

This is where Oktopost comes in – One of the many high level features of Sugar Market specifically designed to empower B2B Marketers is Oktopost – The only Social Media management platform architected for B2B organisations.

Oktopost is pre-built into Sugar Market meaning users can leverage this fantastic tool straight out the box. The level of integration between Oktopost and Sugar Market is seamless and massively advantageous for Sugar Market users.

With Oktopost, users are able to effectively organise and manage their Social Media and Employee Advocacy strategies all within one tool.

In essence, Oktopost makes it easier than ever to execute an effective Social Media Marketing strategy allowing Marketers to focus on analysing data and providing sales with the most qualified leads possible as opposed to spending time manually posting content and searching for insights.

Below we have listed some of the main features of Oktopost.

Oktopost Social Media Management Key Benefits

• Organise and manage Social Content
• Simplify Analysis
• Track keywords, pages and mentions in real time
• Easily discover Industry trends and dicsussions
• Measure everything from clicks to conversions
• Report on Social Media Campaign performance with ease
• Plan and schedule content across social channels from one central location
• Discover and share content with Oktopost’s built in content curation engine
• Streamline every mention, comment and DM in one place for timely responses

Oktopost Employee Advocacy Management

Employee Advocacy is another great Oktopost feature Sugar Market users can leverage out of the box.

Leveraging Employee Advocacy means allowing your workforce to get involved with social sharing and content curation. A strong and well orchestrated Employee Advocacy strategy can be massively advantageous in creating targeted content aimed directly at your organisations target customers.

For example, involving employees from different departments who harness unique sets of skills or knowledge around your products or services (technical support engineers contributing more technical content) and (sales staff contributing to more sales promotional content) – allows for a far more tailored approach to the content your organisation publishes, ultimately providing your customers with a more tailored customer experience in-line with your business as a whole.

Employee Advocacy also promotes ‘brand pride’ and motivates your workforce to collaborate on topics specific to your industry, key customers and organisation.

The great thing about Employee Advocacy is, it can be quantified against your overall Marketing objectives to prove its effectiveness and further support Social Media Marketing ROI.

Below we have listed some of the key features of Employee Advocacy in Oktopost

• Empower employees with simplified sharing across social channels
• Position employees as thought leaders by sharing content relevant to their specific audience
• Motivate employees with easy to view performance metrics
• Quantify the contribution of employee advocacy to your overall B2B Marketing objectives
• Integrate your advocacy data with Marketing Automation, CRM and Facebook retargeting initiatives

Sugar Market & Oktopost Integration

Oktopost is the only platform in the world that automatically syncs social click data to Sugar Market and assigns it to Lead Records.

This means, when a Lead engages and reacts to any of your Social Media content – Sugar Market will be populated with their Social Media ‘footprint’ automatically. Providing information on where they have been and what content they engaged with. This provides B2B Marketers with far better insights into how customers interact with your content – at scale, and far better opportunities to identify qualified leads!

With these high level insights, Marketers are empowered more than ever to accelerate sales-qualified Leads and deliver only the most likely to convert Leads to Sales – further boosting collaboration between departments and providing management with clear proof of Social Media Marketing ROI.

Key Benefits of Sugar Market and Oktopost Integration

• Automatically sync lead’s social activities to Sugar Market
• Accelerate sales qualified leads
• Easily identify new leads
• Improve customer care
• Create meaningful interactions based on how customers engage with your content
• Better understand Social Media Marketing ROI

Concluding Thoughts

We hope you have a better understanding of how best to manage your Social Media Marketing strategy and how this can be achieved with Oktopost and Sugar Market.

If your organisation is facing any challenges around Social Media Management or Marketing Automation schedule your Sugar Market demo for a closer look at the new standard of B2B Marketing Automation!

Schedule your Sugar Market Demo

The post Social Media Management for B2B Marketers – Sugar Market & Oktopost appeared first on Sugabyte.

In this post we cover SugarCRM’s new Renewals Console and the new Renewals Management features in Sugar Sell.

• Sugar CRM’s new Renewals Console
• New Feature – Duration Based Products
• New Feature – Automated Renewals Management
• New Feature – Active Subscriptions Dashlet

Who is this post for?

This post is for organisations selling subscription based or renewable products/services – with a focus on automating and streamlining the renewals process.

It is far more cost effective to hold on to current customers than it is to convert and win deals with new customers. Better Managing and streamlining the renewals process is vital in ensuring customers with renewable contracts stay with your organisation year in, year out – giving your organisation great advantage over the competitors in your space.

• Users new to Sugar Sells new Renewals Management features
• Organisations keen to streamline the Renewals process
• Organisations keen to automate the Renewals process
• Organisations selling subscription based products/services
• Organisations providing renewable products/services
• Organisations providing Duration based services

NEW RENEWALS CONSOLE

The first notable renewals related feature from Sugars 9.3 Winter’ 20 release is SugarCRM’s New Renewals Console.

The Renewals Console can be accessed by clicking the Cube icon’s down arrow and selecting “Renewals Console” from the menu.

SugarCRM’s New Renewals Console provides users with a clear overview of all renewable contracts and opportunities. Streamlining the renewals process and displaying all vital information in one place, in turn – making it is easier than ever to manage and sell renewable based products and services.

The console is delivered as a homepage Dashboard Working Environment within Sugar Sell. There are a number of powerful features within the console that empower staff in easily managing and closing opportunities in the renewals pipeline.

For example, the addition of several new dashlets to help with Renewals Management and shortcuts that display vital subscription information at the touch of a button.

Feature Overview

• The Overview tab contains several dashlets that help users plan their current work.
• The Accounts tab displays the user’s accounts with those having a pending renewal at the top of the list, sorted by the date of the next renewal.
• The Opportunities tab displays the user’s open opportunities sorted by the expected close date with overdue opportunities shown first.
• Clicking on records in the console opens a drawer where you can review subscriptions and related records and activities, log progress, and communicate with customers.
• The console can be configured to modify its dashlets and, for the Accounts and Opportunities tabs, change each list’s filter and sort order.

ACCOUNT DETAILS DRAWER

Clicking an account’s row in the Renewals Console opens a drawer that aggregates information about the account, its related records, past interactions, and active subscriptions.

The Account Details drawer contains four new dashlets:

• The Account Record Dashlet
• Comment Log Dashlet
• Active Subscriptions Dashlet
• Account Interactions Dashlet

You can quickly choose which Account’s details you would like to display by selecting a different row from the list displayed on the left hand side of the console.

When you have completed your tasks, simple click the X icon at the top left of the drawer or press (esc) on your keyboard to navigate away from the drop down drawer.

ACCOUNT RECORD DASHLET

By default the Account Record View dashlet is the first dashlet option within the Account Details drawer. The dashlet is configured to display the account you are currently viewing as well as additional tabs containing related records.

The Account Record dashlet is a trimmed down alternative to an account’s detailed record view. Important subpanels display content via additional tabs, making it easier to navigate through important renewal opportunity information.

Clicking an individual field or selecting ‘edit’ mode – will allow you to edit the account record directly in the dashlet.

Once you are finished editing, click Save to preserve your changes!

COMMENT LOG DASHLET

The Comment Log dashlet displays entries from the account’s Comment Log Field in chronological order – with the most recent entry on top. 

Users can quickly create new entries by entering text into the open text box and adding a new comment.

ACTIVE SUBSCRIPTIONS DASHLET

The Active Subscriptions Dashlet displays a simple bar chart visualisation for time elapsed and time remaining on subscription services related to your Accounts ‘closed won’ service opportunities.

Simply hover your mouse over a bar to view important details such as expiration date and subscription ‘Start’ and ‘End Date’.

• The Active Subscriptions dashlet can be added to the Account record view dashboard and shows a list of all of the current account’s revenue line items which are in a “Closed Won” status, marked as “Service”, have a start date in the past, and have an end date in the future.
• Support for negative “Likely” values, which can be used for credits or price adjustments, has been added to the Revenue Line Items module.
• Enhancements for Interactions dashlet
  • Users can now click anywhere within an interaction’s row to expand or collapse the rows in the Interactions dashlet. 
  • The Interactions dashlet is no longer filtered and now displays all (i.e. scheduled, held, canceled) calls and meetings related to the record being viewed.

DURATION BASED PRODUCTS

Sugar Sell Users can now add duration based products and services to the products catalogue.

This means users can add products with defined start and end dates i.e. ‘Annual Service Contracts’ to Opportunities and Quotes, as well as defining whether a product/service is or is not renewable.

Duration based products extend the functionality of Renewals Management in Sugar Sell massively and are a key element in the Renewals Automation process.

This feature typically requires heavy customisation to be achieved with other CRM’s – the fact that Sugar have built this in to Sugar Sell as a standard out of the box offering is a huge advantage for organisations keen to automate the renewals process and create Customers For Life!

Feature Overview

• Service products, subscriptions, and other duration-based products can now be added to the product catalog and added one-off as revenue line items and quoted line items.
• Several new service-related fields have been added to the Accounts, Opportunities, Revenue Line Items, Quoted Line Items, and Product Catalog modules including Service (checkbox), Service Start/End Date, Service Duration, Renewable (checkbox), and Date of Next Renewal.
• New quote and invoice templates containing service-related fields have been added to PDF Manager for the Quotes module. The templates are named “Quote (with services)” and “Invoice (with services)” and can be accessed from a Quote record’s Actions items.

AUTOMATED RENEWALS MANAGEMENT

Automated Renewals Management allows staff to focus on delivering exceptional service and customer experience rather than spending time manually entering data into their CRM.

Not only have new dashlets & fields been added to display vital opportunity details such as ‘Date of Next Renewal’ – within Account records, for faster delivery of information.

Sugar Sell further automates the renewals process by generating renewable opportunities for you automatically.

For example – If an opportunity is recorded as ‘closed won’, and that opportunity contains products or services that have been recorded as ‘renewable’. Sugar Sell will automatically generate a new opportunity containing all relevant information and products.

Allowing your staff to focus on what they do best, rather than spending time entering lengthy renewal opportunity details!

Feature Overview

• • When a line item is identified as a renewable service and its parent opportunity moves to the “Closed Won” status, a future renewal opportunity for the next service period will automatically generate.
  • The service’s end date on revenue line items and quoted line items is automatically calculated using the line item’s start date and the duration taken from the product catalog.
  • Accounts can be configured to show a Date of Next Renewal field, which reflects the earliest expected close date from all of the account’s related, open, and renewable revenue line items. This is a reportable field that is hidden by default but can easily be added to account layouts in Studio.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The new Renewals Console and Renewals Management features recently introduced to Sugar Sell add a tonne of great benefits for organisations running renewable or duration based products/services. 

The inclusion of these features makes it easier than ever for sugarCRM customers to organise, manage and automate renewable opportunities and products. 

Many of these new features require detailed customisations to deliver with other CRM’s and are usually a bespoke request from organisations requiring such functionality.

If you are aware of the benefits of streamlining your internal Renewals Process – now is the time to start exploring these fantastic new features in your SugarCRM.

Your organisation will save tonnes of valuable time entering manual tasks and searching for information by automating and better managing the renewals process!

For any further information on how you can better manage your internal renewals process with SugarCRM, reach out and get in contact with one of our specialist consultants, our team here at Sugabyte live and breath business processes and will be more than happy to assist you in crafting the perfect Renewals Management solution for your organisation, helping you win more deals and renew more contracts!

CONTACT US!

The post SugarCRM’s New Renewals Console & Renewals Management Features appeared first on Sugabyte.