History is more than notes..

[dpuryear]

The History feature in SugarOS is rather basic and limited. I should be able to create a History for:

* Note
* Task
* Call
* Meeting

SugarOS seems to assume that you will SCHEDULE a Task, Call, or Meeting, but that's not the case. If I'm running through Leads, I don't schedule a call. I just run through my leads and call. Now, let's say I called but got vmail. Right now I'm creating a Note like so:

called, vmail, no message

What I *should* be able to do is:

History->Call->Fill in call notes, status, etc.

That lets you have structured history, you can SEARCH on this stuff (e.g., perhaps a Last Touched report), etc.

Having just free-form Notes text is not the same and it seems like you losing potential here.

Thoughts?

[dpuryear]

By the way, this isn't just about Leads. What if a Contact *calls me* randomly? Right now I have to create a note like so:

subj: called me about xyz
xyz

Great. But, again, we have almost useless data in our database now if I want to look at the big picture. It would be better to record this as:

History->Call:
Dir: Inbound
Subj: called me about xyz
xyz...

[susiewilliams]

Hi there,

You bring up some interesting, and valid points. I do have to ask though- are you a sales rep (or someone who uses the system on a daily basis) or are you an IT person (charged with designing/maintaining/generating reports for the system)?

Most if not all of the sales reps I've ever worked with want to have the maximum ease-of-use when using the system; in other words, the fewest clicks, the simplest path, to get things done. Most aren't concerned with searching or reporting after the fact; they are focused on only those actions that will close that next deal. Putting the relevant information in the easiest "bucket" (in this case, notes) to solely capture a few pieces of what was said and only if it was important to the progress of the deal, is what's key for them. I can't think of more than a few reps who would take the time to analyze and sort past data. It's the managers and ops people, the folks charged with "optimizing the sales process", who care about that kind of reportability.

I know I'm generalizing, but these are my observations. I would love to hear that your company has CRM users who truly dig that deep into the historical data!

[dpuryear]

I am the boss. I am also primary on sales. We have partnerships with some key industry players, and so we both develop our own leads and work leads that our partners provide to us. So, I have a very good understanding of both WORKING leads and REPORTING on performance. I have to, or we don't make payroll.

As far as "ease", I'm not saying to drop Notes. I'm simply saying that it should be one of the options:

History as:
* Note
* Call
* Meeting

I've brought this up in a few postings, and I'll keep hammering it. Unstructured data, from free-form fields, is just not the way to go unless you just want to punt. A "Note" is punting. And that's VALID in many situations, but you are still punting on getting good and usable data into a database. Free form information is only good at the record/lead/contact/account level. It is not good for any type of organizational use, reporting, performance metrics, or even Large Scale Follow-ups.

Imagine if I have 100 leads that my team worked this week.

Right now, how in the world can my team say "Okay, let's follow-up with anyone that we called but didn't answer." They can't. They can only say "Okay, let's go through all of our In Process leads and do something Lead by Lead."

So this isn't just a Management Reporting issue. This is a Sales Cycle issue. No?

Anyway, I like SugarOS and we will continue to use it. And I'll continue to find ways to make it work better for me.

Hi there,

You bring up some interesting, and valid points. I do have to ask though- are you a sales rep (or someone who uses the system on a daily basis) or are you an IT person (charged with designing/maintaining/generating reports for the system)?

Most if not all of the sales reps I've ever worked with want to have the maximum ease-of-use when using the system; in other words, the fewest clicks, the simplest path, to get things done. Most aren't concerned with searching or reporting after the fact; they are focused on only those actions that will close that next deal. Putting the relevant information in the easiest "bucket" (in this case, notes) to solely capture a few pieces of what was said and only if it was important to the progress of the deal, is what's key for them. I can't think of more than a few reps who would take the time to analyze and sort past data. It's the managers and ops people, the folks charged with "optimizing the sales process", who care about that kind of reportability.

I know I'm generalizing, but these are my observations. I would love to hear that your company has CRM users who truly dig that deep into the historical data!

[dpuryear]

Oops. I did want to say that you can make this work in other ways. For example, I have a Target List named "Wardial". If someone calls a lead and you don't reach them, then they go into the Wardial list.

So the issue is solvable with other tools.

But, still, do you see my point?

[cipherpunk]

I am daily CRM user, on the sales team. I agree that SugarCRM should be able to search notes and history. This is a feature implemented in many other open source CRM applications, including XRMS. My company uses SugarCRM, and a prior company used XRMS. In XRMS, you can search notes, and you can filter by whether the event is completed, uncompleted, and by the type of event such as call to, call from, email.

Here is a typical scenario. Week 15 & 16. I call prospects and leave messages or reach the contact by phone. For the customers that I reach or those that call me back, the follow-up takes me through week 18. Then in week 19, I want to go back and pick-over the prospects that I called that did not call me back. With XRMS, you can search the notes that I entered for this date range, and then say "I called you four weeks ago on Day 1, Week 15, and left a message for you, and am sorry that I could not reach you. Is this a convenient time to talk?" This also works for following-up on leads being pursued by employees that recently left the company. I can look up a former employees telephone contacts for a particular date range, and then say "I see that Ted, from my company, called on XXXX. I was hoping to follow-up with you." SugarCRM seems to lack the ability to pull up this information.

Another scenario is I call customers, about a product. During the conversation, I ask questions about which products the customer is using. Customer 1 has an Oracle and Websphere site license. Customer 55 uses DB2 on RH. Customer 110 uses Aqualogic. Six months later, I want to contact all the customers who have Oracle concerning a new offering focused to Oracle users. With XRMS, this is very easy. You type the search term "Oracle", and any note with "Oracle" appears. Now I have an inventory of our customers who also have Oracle, so that I can target those customers. With SugarCRM, you cannot find these customers. In my use of SugarCRM, the information appears to be lost and unretrievable.

Not having the ability to search history notes, which is implemented in other open source CRMs such as XRMS, seems to me, a daily salesperson, an extreme limitation to SugarCRM, especially in light of the search and history functions offered by other CRMs, including XRMS.

[JVWay]

Hm, maybe it's because I have the enterprise version but I can search and report on any text in any field in Sugar. So if this is a limitation of CE then sorry for the intrusion. But Sugar can do this.

[Skeeve]

History as:
* Note
* Call
* Meeting

I'm just someone who is developing extensions modifications for a customer and I just started with this. I also never really used Sugar just clicked a bit through it. So excuse me if my question sound stupid to experienced users. Could it be a solution to add a dropdown to notes that just list the options you mentioned? And maybe a second field that gives you options like "missed", "voicemail", "inbound"…

[mccon1]

Hm, maybe it's because I have the enterprise version but I can search and report on any text in any field in Sugar. So if this is a limitation of CE then sorry for the intrusion. But Sugar can do this.

I am using Sugar Professional 5.1.

First I create a Contact. Then within that Contact, I click "Create a Note or Attachment." Next I enter "called customer. Discussed customer's use of DB2." Next I enter 10,000 other notes under 3,000 other Contacts. How do I go back and search to find "DB2" within the notes?

If you are able to run a search, I would appreciate you identifying where and how to run a search of a Note.

[enigma]

I think we could just go about the existing structure of history for now if you have a reporting module similar to ZuckerReports or JasperReports. You could associate a tabular list based on SQL queries which will automate extraction of particular data wherever table it may come from.