Dear Partners,

This is the official notice of our upcoming UI redesign coming with the January 2023 release (12.3) of Sugar Sell, Serve, and Market and to on-premises in April 2023.

Project Aurora, named after the Northern lights, is our newest initiative.

As part of the January 2023 release (v 12.3) Sugar will deliver UI changes including a new side navigation.
Shortly after UI changes are also being rolled out in Sugar Market to align the user experience across the platform.
Project Aurora is focused on all GTM aspects, planning for the experience and enablement of customers and prospects, new logo sales and customer support, partners, and all Sugar Staff. This page will be updated on a regular basis to keep you updated on the plans and status.

The newly redesigned UI will move the current “Mega Menu” over to a new, modern left-hand navigation bar that will use intuitive icons and will also preserve the sub-menu structure so that our users can maintain their existing mental model of how to navigate the platform. The development of the modern UI provides meaningful benefits to both existing and prospective customers. 

Benefits to Customers and Prospects 

1. Addressing customer feedback 
2. Research-based UI improvements that will increase platform adoption and productivity 
3. Matching UI structure across the platform 
4. Stronger first impression of the Sugar platform 
5. Experience an interface that more closely resembles other modern UIs 

Potential Impact on Customizations 

Most customers will have no issues when their upgrade to 12.3 occurs.
However, we’ve found approximately 168 customers in the cloud with customized headers and footers that will be impacted by this change and will need to update their customizations as part of the upgrade process. In anticipation of this change, we have an internal team dedicated to enabling a smooth transition to our new, modern UI. For customers that need to update their customizations, this may result in them working with your organization's services teams. 

The Aurora Demo Instance is Here!

With the out-of-the-box thinking from our Engineering team you can experience the redesigned UI now in the Aurora Demo Instance. This is a special purpose instance that was created with the singular goal of allowing people to experience the redesigned UI. It has data and roles from “Demo Builder” that has been upgraded to a 12.2 base and then had the 12.3 navigation applied to it. For more details on how to access the environment here.

How to Prepare 

• The list of customers with customizations impacted will be communicated to the Sugar Sales team and partners shortly so you can proactively reach out to the customers as we get closer to the release date.  
• Your technical team responsible for managing customer upgrades and making code fixes is invited to join us for an important Developer Office Hours on October 5 at 10 AM EDT / 7 AM PDT / 4 PM CEST, where we will review the changes in significant technical detail and answer questions. If you cannot join live, please register to receive the recording.  
• Watch this space in PartnerClub for more information and updates.
• Familiarize yourself with the new functionality once the Aurora demo environment is available. This is a great opportunity to lead with our upcoming roadmap with customers and prospects. 
• Save the date for our Partner Enablement Session to be hosted mid-October on October 18 for AMERS/EMEA or October 19 for APAC.  

• Questions? Please contact partner-advisory@sugarcrm.com.  
  
  
  Your Channel Team