Sugar Mobile App Administration Best Practices - July 2025

During the July Social Club, we took a closer look at the Sugar mobile app and how to set up users for success. Whether you're out in the field, prepping for a meeting, or just trying to simplify your on-the-go workflows, you can leverage voice-to-text note-taking, quick mapping, and call logging to get the most out of the mobile experience. Mobile usage continues to grow, especially for field teams who need fast, relevant access to CRM data. Erik Tavenner joined as our subject matter expert, walking us through both admin and user perspectives on the mobile app and sharing best practices, tips, and configuration options.

 Start With the Why: What Should Mobile Do?

One of the first takeaways from Erik's walkthrough was the importance of clearly defining the intended use of mobile. While the mobile app supports a wide range of features, it's important to focus on the right use cases. It's less about replicating every desktop feature and more about enabling quick, effective interactions, such as checking info before a meeting, logging a call, or finding nearby accounts.

Common mobile use cases include:

• Reviewing recent activity or account details before a meeting
• Logging a call right after it happens using voice-to-text
  
  
• Navigating to customer locations using the built-in “Tap to Map” with your preferred navigation app (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, etc.)
• Use Sugar Maps to optimize your day and find nearby accounts to visit when meetings end early

Erik emphasized starting with bite-sized, realistic use cases and expanding from there, supporting field teams without overwhelming them. For instance, following up after a meeting with a quick voice-to-text note helps keep data fresh without slowing anyone down.

 Mobile Admin & Customization Tips

Admins have a lot of flexibility in configuring the mobile app, all without needing a mobile developer or to build a custom app. Most changes can be made using familiar tools in Studio. Erik encouraged focusing on simplicity and scalability, keeping layouts clean and tailoring access around what's most relevant.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Use Role-Based Views to streamline what appears on mobile, reducing clutter and simplifying the experience
• Start small by enabling only key modules, then expand based on feedback or need
• Remove modules entirely from the mobile view if they're not needed
  
• While mobile and desktop dashboards can't be separated, duplicating and labeling dashboards for mobile can guide users toward the right views

Attendees also asked about mobile permissions and whether it's possible to prevent users from creating records in the mobile app. While there's no "mobile-only" option today, using permissions and proper layout configuration can help manage complexity and reduce user error. 

 Other Tips & Things to Know

As always, the group brought great questions and shared a few real-world challenges. Here are some additional tips and insights from our conversation:

• Caller ID and push notifications are supported and can be enabled in your app settings. You may need to check your device settings to enable them.
  
• Sugar AI summaries (accounts, cases, opportunities) are currently only available in the desktop version of Sugar (for customers with the Intelligence Service add-on). Mobile support is planned but not yet available.
• If you're encountering Sales team members who are not entering contacts in Sugar, try working with them to export Outlook contacts into a PST file, cleaning it to remove personal contacts, and then importing that into Sugar.
• Some mapping features require the Sugar Maps add-on or Sugar Premier, so check your license to see if you have it included.
• Custom JS controllers will not carry over to mobile and will need to be recreated. The Sugar Mobile SDK can also be used for more advanced use cases.

 Looking Ahead

Thanks to everyone who joined, and a big shout-out to Erik for walking us through so many helpful mobile best practices and real-world use cases!

Our next Social Club will be held on August 14th, Using Opportunities and Revenue Line Items. Have an idea or request? Drop it in the Social Club group or send me a message.

Finally, this has been mentioned as "coming soon" in the last few Social Club sessions, but attendees will now receive SugarClub points for joining these sessions! (These have also been applied retroactively since this was announced in April)

Hope to see you next time!