Exporting or reporting on Comment Log field

Colleagues, let me pose a question in this context:

Do you consider the comment log an evil tool for users - an unstructured, notepad-like chronological mess that caters to lazy habits? A space where users are allowed to skip logging calls, scheduling meetings, managing tasks, or enriching profiles while nurturing leads and developing customers - just dropping comments instead?

In such setups, it seems there may be no CRM data model at all - just a contact card with sociographic fields and a vague commitment to dump everything into its comment log.

So, if users are permitted to comment on a record instead of engaging with a structured CRM data model, what value can reporting on that messy comment log actually bring?

Thanks,

Hello Dmytro Chupylka 

I understand your objection, but I'd like to offer a different perspective.

The success of CRM systems hinges on user adoption. From my experience, I know that users prefer solutions with the lowest possible threshold. We use the comment log, for example, by discussing opportunities with the Focus Drawer during pipeline meetings, giving us a quick overview of current activities and the status of sales opportunities. It also allows us to make spontaneous, transparent, visible notes. If desired, the comment log can be evaluated and summarised using AI. 

Cheers,
Steffen

Hi Steffen

Thank you for sharing thoughts.

As a user myself, I fully understand what a convenient interface means -one that requires minimal effort - and I know how much users value such capabilities.
I'm confident that we're absolutely aligned in our thinking here.

That said, offering a convenient notepad-like interface clearly requires that someone -or something like automation - processes the provided information into what we actually call a Sugar CRM system.
It needs to break down comments into notes, tasks, and generate the necessary business-model objects in the system to trigger the appropriate CRM and integration processes, support dashlets, and enable standard reporting.

For example, we agree with "lazy" users on a list of “keywords” that act as commands, and we configure logic hooks to detect these commands in the notepad-like description (or it could be a comment log, description field, or any free-text input form), so that the system can automatically generate the required objects based on the text.
Ideally, in the future this could be handled by an agent directly within the CRM, but for now we’re experimenting with prompts to reduce AI hallucinations.
For “lazy” users, notepad-like descriptions could be parsed into objects based on logic configured in LogicBuilder (no coding required).

At the same time, in my view, simply leaving information in a comment log without any processing is guaranteed to plant a time bomb that will go off when someone tries to find key insights in a report or dashlet - or during an investigation into why a critical process specified to trigger didnt start at the very moment that important information was received - and buried in the log.

Hi Steffen

Thank you for sharing thoughts.

As a user myself, I fully understand what a convenient interface means -one that requires minimal effort - and I know how much users value such capabilities.
I'm confident that we're absolutely aligned in our thinking here.

That said, offering a convenient notepad-like interface clearly requires that someone -or something like automation - processes the provided information into what we actually call a Sugar CRM system.
It needs to break down comments into notes, tasks, and generate the necessary business-model objects in the system to trigger the appropriate CRM and integration processes, support dashlets, and enable standard reporting.

For example, we agree with "lazy" users on a list of “keywords” that act as commands, and we configure logic hooks to detect these commands in the notepad-like description (or it could be a comment log, description field, or any free-text input form), so that the system can automatically generate the required objects based on the text.
Ideally, in the future this could be handled by an agent directly within the CRM, but for now we’re experimenting with prompts to reduce AI hallucinations.
For “lazy” users, notepad-like descriptions could be parsed into objects based on logic configured in LogicBuilder (no coding required).

At the same time, in my view, simply leaving information in a comment log without any processing is guaranteed to plant a time bomb that will go off when someone tries to find key insights in a report or dashlet - or during an investigation into why a critical process specified to trigger didnt start at the very moment that important information was received - and buried in the log.

Hi - i work for a large Charity/Trust, as such we have to respond to FOI subject access requests. We've done this by doc merging all records against a given contact. However, the comment field can't do this. 

We've also found that users can seriously misuse the comments log, copying email trails into it and circumnavigating the creation of other records that are automated, monitored and reportable.. But the ability for users to use the comments log for other user notifications is great and thats something that was intuitive for users and would be difficult for us to back out of.