Sugar releases new features and enhancements aggressively through the quarterly releases, Sugar 10.0 the annual release for on premise customers is generally available now and is released as Sugar Q2 2020 Release in April 2020.
In addition to the enhancements/features of Sugar 9.1 ( Summer 19 Release) , Sugar 9.2 (Fall 19 Release) and Sugar 9.3 (Winter 20 Release) the Latest release of Sugar, known as Sugar 10.0, has several awesome product enhancements. The Sugar 10 release is available for On Premise customers of both SugarCRM Enterprise Edition and SugarCRM Professional Edition. This blog discusses mostly the Sugar Enterprise Edition updates.
SugarCRM’s New Enhancements in Sugar 10.0 are:
- Microsoft Edge Browser Support
- New Tiles View for Leads, Opportunities, Cases and Tasks
- New Dashlets and Dashboards
- Comprehensive Enhancement of Cases Module
- Improvised Record View Features – Customer Experience (CX) Improvements
- Product Catalog Module Enhancements to configure renewable services
- Overall Module wise feature improvements
- Sugar BPM Enhancements
- Enhanced Admin Section Features
Microsoft Edge Browser Support
Microsoft is moving closely towards the open source Chromium project with Microsoft Edge Browser. The Sugar 10 version supports Edge Browser. All the end users who like using Microsoft Technologies can use Sugar on the Edge Browser.
The View Introduction for Leads, Opportunities, Cases and Tasks Modules
As Technology evolved, companies made customer experience as a design philosophy in application development. Tiles Views / Grid Views started giving a visually appealing look for List View representation of data. Sugar quickly facilitated Tile Views for the users who like visual representation of data rather than list views.
Tiles View displays records as tiles in an interactive, drag-and-drop interface. As we know that Tiles view settings are available for Leads, Opportunities, Cases and Tasks modules. Lead conversion process can also be initiated from the Tiles view in Leads module. The below image depicts the Tile view for Leads module.
Some of the main features in Tiles View settings in Sugar 10.0 are as below:
- A filter applied to the tile view will automatically apply to the module’s list view and vice versa.
- Custom fields can also be added to Tile Options Header and Tile Options Body fields to be displayed in the Tile view.
- Field Validation rules for records are now enforced when moving tiles from one column to another in Tile view.
New Dashlets and Dashboards
In Sugar 10.0 the user has the ability to create a max of 50 Dashboards on Home module Tab. This is one of the major advantages as until Sugar 9.x we have the ability to create only 20 Dashboards on the Home module tab.
Shared Filters for List View Dashlets
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.
There are 3 types of Dashlets available in Sugar 10.0 as mentioned below:
Record View Dashlet
This dashlet is available for record views that shows a tabbed view of different records related to the current one you are viewing. The Record View dashlet is available on all Sidecar modules except the following: Quotes, Calls, Meetings, Opportunities, Revenue Line Items, Emails, and Forecasts in Sugar Enterprise.
Interactions Dashlet
An Interaction dashlet is available for record views to see a list of calls, emails, meetings, and notes related to the record as well as to create new interactions. This view is something very similar to the Historical Summary bug available on the Intelligent Pane.
Comment Log Dashlet
The Comment Log dashlet is available for record views for viewing the Comment Log of a record and users can also add new comments. This is one of the most useful fields for customer support teams to keep noting the case related communication on the main case module. But this field is available for any module.
Support Automation Improvements – Cases module
A couple of changes have been made in the Cases module in this Spring release.
Cases Module Improvements
- Users have the ability to create Cases from any page in Sugar through Quick Create menu.
- A new Date Field called Resolved Date field has been added which is used to capture the Date and time each case is resolved and it is automatically cleared(made empty) if the case is reopened.
- An additional option called “Portal” has been added to Source field for dropdown list for Cases and as well as in Bugs module.
Improvised Record View Features – User Experience ( UX ) Enhancements
Sugar 10.0 comes with enhancements in the Record View to improve usability / User Experience.
Field Label Placement Change in Sugar UI
A new feature called Field name Placement has been added to the user profile setting. As all of us are aware that the field label is displayed on top of the field value until Sugar 9.x , but in Sugar 10.0 by default for all the users the field label in record views appears to the left side of the fields. This will significantly bring the height of the Record View and make the record view much more compact than the Sugar 9 version.
This setting is not global and each individual user can make their settings as per their desire by going to User profile settings and making changes to Field Label Placement.
We have two options in Sugar 10.0 for Field Label Placement
- Beside Field Value – By selecting this option the field label appears on the left side of the fields. The below image shows how the record view looks if we select the Beside Field Value as an option for Field label Placement.
- Above Field Value – By selecting this option the field label appears on the top of the fields as like in Sugar 9. The below image shows how it looks if we select Above Field Value for field label placement settings.
With the above changes, the record view has been redesigned to give users more information without scrolling through the page.
Empty field pills and ability to view long record names
Record view is now more compact with empty fields represented by a single empty field pill instead of a field name and a blank value.
When we are hovering a truncated record name it will display the full text of the field as a tooltip from this version.
Sugar Record Editing via Subpanel Preview
From Sugar 10.0 Users have the ability to edit a record’s fields when previewing the record from a related-records sub panel. Currently you can edit the list view records from the Preview Panel. But now it is added to even the sub panel records. This will significantly reduce the number of clicks a user has to take to edit related information.
Sales Force Automation Feature Enhancements
Sugar 10 comes with enhanced features for supporting sales force automation. Now Sugar supports out of the box subscription based products and services configuration.
Product Catalog Module is now a User Module
The product catalog module is now available to all users as Out of the Box functionality. Administrators can restrict access to the Product Catalog module through roles and ACLs just like other standard stock modules
View audit log button is now available on Product Catalog’s record view like other standard Sugar modules. All records will be assigned with the global team automatically upon upgrade in the Product Catalog module.
Enhancements to configure Renewable Products and Services
Services 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.
Some of the service-related fields that are added now are:
- Service (checkbox)
- Service Start Date and End Date
- Service Duration
- Renewable (checkbox), and
- Date of Next Renewal
These new fields have been included in Accounts, Opportunities, Product Catalog, Revenue Line Items and Quoted Line Item modules.
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.
Overall Module wise Significant Improvements
The SugarCRM team has put a lot of thought and made some significant improvements diligently for Sugar 10.0 in terms of module feature enhancements. These enhancements make the system user experience easy and friendly.
Adding revenue line items on lead conversion
Users has the ability to add the revenue line items to a new opportunity when converting a lead.
Negative Currency amounts for revenue line items
In Sugar 10.0 release users have the ability to add negative amounts to Likely field which can be used for price adjustments.
Additional modules visibility access for Regular users
From Sugar 10.0 modules like Product Category, Product Catalog, Product Types and Manufacturers will be globally visible for regular users along with admin users. Administrators can restrict user access to these modules via standard team and role restrictions.
Email filters
From this release we can filter the list view in Email using the From, To, Cc, Bcc, and Direction fields.
Reporting on Target Lists
The Target Lists module is available to use in reports from Sugar 10.0 release.
Exporting Users Reports
Regular users can now export reports that target the Users module.
Portal Help Link
A Help link to the portal user documentation has been added to the portal user menu.
Comment Log Features
URLs in Comment Log entries are now clickable and will open the link in a new tab. Users can be tagged and tagged users receive a notification in Sugar and also have the ability to insert a link to a Sugar record in the form of a clickable pill in Comment Log entries.
SugarBPM Enhancements
SugarCRM Team keeps on adding values to the existing features in every release. In this release Sugar 10.0 some changes have also been incorporated in SugarBPM in terms of Process Sequencing and Portal Name in Email Templates
From Sugar 10.0 it is possible to assign a sequence of ordering for processes to be triggered. This can be done by using the Run Order field for the process running at same time with the same target module. Based on Run Order field value the process definitions executes the job in an order.
The Portal Name field on the Contacts module is now available in the Fields Selector tool when designing process email templates.
The Emails module is also available as a target module when creating process definitions in SugarBPM.
Enhanced Admin Section Features
In Sugar 10.0 few additional enhancements has been added in terms of layouts, schedulers and Rest API’s as depicted in the below section.
Activity Stream Purger scheduler
New scheduler named “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.
Ability for Editing preview layouts
In addition to Record View, List View and Popup View the Administrators can now have the ability to edit the Preview View layout in Studio.
Module Loader Rest API Changes
Some of the End points have been deprecated in Sugar 10.0 from Sugar 9.3 and Nine new Rest API endpoints have been added for performing actions in Module Loader including uploading, installing and enabling Packages.
Related Fields Denormalization
In Sugar 10.0 release we can optimize the Database structure for faster sorting and data load of relate-type field values on list view pages.
Start TLS for LDAP
From Sugar 10.0 release it also supports Start TLS encryption for LDAP.
Please watch this video to know more about SugarCRM Q2 2020 Release Highlights:
Conclusion
SugarCRM Team consistently adds new enhancements to products and makes the end user life easier. To enhance your Business growth by using existing features of this release let us welcome Sugar 10.0 to experience new Sugar. Bhea is a leading partner of SugarCRM and contact us for any implementation and support requirements of CRM / SugarCRM.
