Feature questions as I debate converting to Sugar

[dstrickler]

I am thinking of ocnverting my CRM to Sugar, and I need some tips from those already "there".

It looks like a major feature only available in the Pro version (ie non-OS version) is Reporting. The graphs looks great in the OS version, but I need real "textual" reports for meetings. Is this possible with the OS version without a bunch of add-ons? While we have PHP/Linux talent in-house, they are all busy, and I don't want to pull them out to become Sugar Tweakers.

I am also very interested in the Support/Case functions. Can anyone give me feedback on the v4.0 option of getting email from an account like support@ and allowing mutiple Support Reps handle the inquries without a lot of cut/paste? I'd like an easy way of converting an email msg into History for a Case. Looks like it has this, but I am unsure.

Lastly, I'd like to see a bunch of "how we accomplished this business task" in Sugar. I have read the docs, installed the OS code, and started to play around with it, but for me to see if its going to work in our environment, its going to take a lot of work.

I will be calling into the Sugar people on Monday (tomorrow) for some advice, but I'd rather hear it from the Community to get a non-biased answer.

Thanks,

Dave

[longreach]

No - if you want reporting without applying third-party add-ons, then Pro or Enterprise is likely what you need. I assume that is why you are calling Sugar - as there is little point in calling them up to talk about OS - as they make nothing from it.

[niche]

I set up a GROUP INBOX for "support@mycompany.com" and have tested it and it works great, but we haven't put it into production yet since support cases for our company are (for the time being) few and far between.

But the capability there so far seems good.
Any emails coming into our SUPPORT queue can be converted to CASES and I've set up an auto-reply template the minute someone emails support@mycompany.com to let the user know that their inquiry has been logged and we'll reply shortly.

Then, as soon as I go to the group inbox and view the message, click on the CREATE CASE link, it assigns a new case #, and creates a reply email for me. Once I put in the reply and click send, the case # is in the subject of the email. The cool thing is that my outgoing reply and the users responses back and forth are all then logged under their CONTACT history and it also appears in the CASE history.

Seems to be pretty good, but I'm a newbie at support workflow, so there may be points I'm missing, but it is a HUGE LEAP from where our company is now.

Areas for improvement:
1. I really would like to be able to change the starting # for the auto-generated CASE #'s.
Sending out a support email with CASE #3 sounds amateur!

2. I only have 1 GROUP INBOX which collects email for both my inbound email queues (info@ and support@).
I really wish that these appeared as separate queues but they all get lumped together.
I may have not configured this correctly, so apologies to SugarPeople if I've falsely accused them!

Cheers!