13.3 Sell Improvements: Brand-New Views for Users and Admins!

With the release of Sugar Sell 13.3, SugarCRM is addressing several user challenges and introducing features that enhance usability, streamline workflows, and boost productivity. In this article, we'll explore these new capabilities from a user perspective, highlighting real-world use cases and how they can benefit CRM admins and end-users.

*Please note that these features are also available in Sugar Serve.

Usability & UI Refreshes for Users & Admins

A Reconfigured & Refreshed Users Module

A fully reconfigured user management interface brings a breath of fresh air for admins looking to quickly and easily locate important information. Administrators can easily locate records, perform tasks, and navigate efficiently with improved filtering, search capabilities, pagination, and other user-friendly features.

New Users List View

In addition, administrators can quickly make changes without navigating to the user's Record View. This update also significantly reduces the learning curve for new admins.

User Profile: A Fresh Look and Feel

A Modern Interface

Your user profile may not be something you access every day in Sugar, but it is the first thing new Sugar users see, and it's where you and your admin can find user access settings and other relevant information when needed.

With a fresh look and feel, the User Profile has become more aesthetically appealing and easier to use. Users, especially new ones, will find it easier to customize their instances and control their settings. The consistent tabs between edit and view modes eliminate confusion, while architectural improvements provide a more organized and efficient experience.

Previous Experience New Experience

Access Tab Updates

Have you ever wished you could better view and digest the information in your User Profile? Previously, users often lost context when scrolling through the Access tab due to missing headers. This made it challenging to understand the data being displayed.

The introduction of frozen headers in the Access tab helps users retain context while scrolling. This small but crucial update improves the user experience, helping users better access their data.

User Management Access Tab

Layout Options Improvement

Another improvement to the User Profile is better module management. Managing modules in the Sidebar Navigation had a drag-and-drop feature that was not especially intuitive.

The new, enhanced layout options simplify module management by reusing controls from the Sales Console. Now, users can easily hide or display modules, which makes configuring the navigation more intuitive. This change benefits both experienced CRM users and newcomers.

User Management Advanced Tab

Enhanced Password Management

Enhanced Password ManagementAnother area of improvement is password management. With the introduction of the "Change Password" option under the Profile actions menu, users now have greater control over their passwords. This update aligns non-SugarIdentity-enabled instances with SugarIdentity-enabled ones, ensuring a more secure password management experience.

Time-Saving Report & Filter Improvements

Drill Down into Focus Drawers from a Report

Great news for users that spend a lot of time in Reports Viewer – report charts are now equipped with the Focus Drawer, so you can inspect your data without losing the context of the report. While this capability has been available in other views previously, we're happy to bring it to reports in 13.3!

Users can now seamlessly dive into the data from a report, analyze it, and return to the original report. This enhancement simplifies data analysis and improves the user experience.

Time Slicers for Enhanced Forecasting & Analytics

This update is specific to Enhanced Forecasting, which is available only in Sell Premier and requires configuration. Please speak to your Sugar partner or account representative to learn more.  

Previously, Enhanced Forecasting reports could not use date fields as slicers and therefore required multiple reports to analyze different timeframes. We wanted to simplify that.

Recently added Time Slicers allow users to filter the timeframe in a report during runtime. This eliminates the need for multiple reports and streamlines the analysis process. Users can now analyze data with the desired time context effortlessly.

More Filtering Options in List Views & Reports

Sugar Sell 13.3 expands the available filters in List Views, including the commonly- requested "Contains" filter for various field types. This enhancement makes data retrieval and analysis more efficient.

Additionally, a new "Is Anything" report filter enables users to filter by specific criteria or exclude criteria within the same report. For example, you can have a runtime filter for Expected Close Date before January 1, 2024, on your report and effortlessly switch to Expected Close Date "Is Anything" to exclude the filter and see results with any expected close date. Both new filters streamline searching for information and allow users to switch between filtered results easily.

Usability Improvements for Sales & Service Consoles

Inline Editing in Sales and Service Consoles

In the Sales Console and Service Console, users previously lacked the ability to edit information directly inside the console. With new inline editing, users can now update information directly within multiline list views, improving efficiency and reducing the need to open individual records. This enhancement benefits customer support agents, sales teams, and other users by accelerating data entry and updates.

Primary and Secondary Sorting for Console Users

 Sales ConsoleAnd now, another win for end users! Previously, non-admin users were unable to set primary and secondary sorting for console multiline list views, limiting their control over data organization.

With 13.3, we're empowering non-admin users by enabling primary and secondary sorting in the Sales and Service Consoles. This enhancement provides all users with greater control over data views, enhancing their ability to tailor data displays to their specific needs.

More Context in Timeline

 Account TimelineSpeaking of additional data views, the Timeline dashlet will now display the name of the user who created the record and the date of creation. This feature provides immediate visibility into the timeline's origin, making it easier to track the progression of sales or service processes.

Enhanced Predictive Field Tracking

 Opportunity Timeline with PredictFinally, in the latest update, a feature has been introduced to the Lead and Opportunity Timelines to enable the tracking of Prediction field changes. This innovation addresses the previous challenge where sales agents manually tracked changes in predictive fields, hindering effective decision-making.

Now, with enhanced visibility and the ability to monitor the evolution of prediction fields over time, sales professionals can access crucial information, identify trends, and make informed decisions. This significant advancement in sales management technology marks a new era of data-driven strategies, empowering sales teams with the tools for improved planning and strategic course correction.

Conclusion

Sugar Sell 13.3 addresses user challenges across the CRM, making it more user-friendly, efficient, and configurable. From modernizing interfaces to enhancing reporting and data management, these updates empower administrators and end-users to maximize their CRM experience.

*ChatGPT originally wrote this article. It has been edited and added to by Katie Moss.  

  • Hi, Damien. Thank you so much for your feedback. I have passed it on to our product management team. We appreciate your input! 

  • I'm happy to see the user page finaly migrated to sidecar. What we would really need, though, is to consolidate the "classic" Sugar user page with the SugarIdentity user page. I hope to see that in the future. 

  • Hi Ramya -- I'm the Product Manager for SugarIdentity and worked with the team that handled the migration of Users to sidecar.

    Technically speaking, all Sell and Serve instances should have SugarIdentity enabled as part of being in our hosted environment, as certain parts of the product require IDM to function correctly. If your instance does not, you can create a Support case to work with our team to enable it for you.

    Our testing found that this checkbox (which is confusingly named!), along with the checkbox to require LDAP configuration, were not migrated over in the 13.3 UI redesign -- the majority of our testing was done with IDM enabled, since that is the expected configuration for this version. This will be fixed in 14.0.

    The underlying database value is still set even though the checkbox is not available in the UI, so any existing users should still be required to use external authentication if they were configured that way before. If this needs to be addressed before SugarIdentity can be enabled, please work with our Support team to set the database value directly as a temporary measure until either the instance can be converted to use Identity or has been upgraded to 14.0.

  • Thanks Alex. But I am not seeing the SugarIdentity link under the Admin -> SugarCloud in 13.3. Do I need to enable SugarIdentity in 13.3 Sugar Sell?

  •  Our product management team is looking into how this will be handled in the upcoming 14.0 release. As 13.3 is a Cloud-only release, customers should have SugarIdentity enabled, which means external authentication configuration is handled there, not in the Users module within the CRM. I hope this helps and myself or a member of the Product Management team will follow up once we have more information.