Implementing your procedures - Your feedback needed!

[k123]

I am considering a concept that needs your feedback! Switch on your thinking caps...

A forum for discussing how to achieve business work flows and goals using Sugar

Example 1
Support staff want:
Customer problems to be logged
A record of responses and actions
If customer problems are product faults - a record of the bug
A record of the resolution - stored somewhere

Implementation:
A CRM could:
Emails synced as a Case
Case history and activities
Convert the case into a bug
Record the method to solve the problem in a Knowledge Base

Example 2
Support staff want:
A record of all Products and versions (i.e. for software)
A record of what customers have what products
The ability to bulk email release notes to customers with a specific product

Implementation:
You tell me (I haven't researched this one enough yet)

Relates to:
However these tend to but very specific functions
Learning Sessions (http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/university/signup?tmpl=) however user initiated discussion
Business Discussion forum - sounds appropriate but does not achieve this
User centered design Use Cases - however a slightly higher abstraction

Barriers:
Currently this idea is half baked (maybe I should've researched this more...)
Requires a lot of momentum & time (most forum threads get no responses!)
To much wishful thinking?

What forum members would contribute:
Ways to achieve/implement the desired business process in SugarCRM
Insights on how their business deals with this task (e.g. what is practical, what's not worth the effort)

[egork]

Example 1 is already implemented at least in the ENT version.
Products for example 2 are already present in the ENT version, but their relationship to accounts is obviously 1-1, which is not what you want.

[k123]

My post was overkill...


Example 1 is implemented except the knowledge base is only customer facing - apparently, i haven't actually found the knowledge base in any of the demos. It is quite a mystery.

Cheers

[susiewilliams]

Knowledgebase is part of the Sugar Professional product set. This page has a description of it.

[k123]

Haha yes that page is the source of my confusion! Someone should remove that link to the demo - the knowledge base is not part of the demo. Or better yet install the Knowledge Base module for the demo.

My understanding is that the knowledge base is part of the customer support portal which is a separate product but I really don't know...

[julian]

Hello k123,

I spoke to our sysadmin who manages the demo environment-- he says the Knowledge Base module should be added to the Enterprise demo within a few days.

Thanks for pointing this out!