Case Management Question

**Xeriph** · 2009-03-06, 04:23 PM

Hello all,

Please forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered somewhere else in this forum.

I am new to SugarCRM, and have a question about the case system, and its features. I am currently using 5.2.0a Community Edition. What I would like to accomplish is to be able to create a case, assign it to a user, let them log in and accept it, complete the work, add notes in the resolution field, and then close the case.

The problem I am seeing, is that when I give them access (defined a role of technician, with access enabled, owner edit, owner list, and owner view), they are able to edit everything in the case, including who it is assigned to. My issue with this is (looking ahead here), let's say an employee does not want to accept this work assignment. In the current config that I have, he could just go in and assign it to another user, effectively removing himself from the job.

My question is....Is there a way to set it up so that I (as an administrator) can assign a case to a tech, he gets the email (which currently works), he logs in accepts the job, and can add a resolution and close the case without being able to edit who it is assigned to, the description, or any other fields?

Thanks in advance, and my apologies for my lack of knowledge.,
Chris

**eggsurplus** · 2009-03-06, 04:52 PM

No offense, but if you have people who unassign themselves from cases you probably have larger issues.

Field level access is available though in Pro which will let you do what you need here, I believe.For CE, I am getting close to completing a beta version of SecuritySuite 2.0 that will allow you to customize layouts by teams which is another way of accomplishing what you need. With that you'd only make available a limited number of fields on the edit view for the techs such as a resolution field.

**Angel** · 2009-03-06, 04:53 PM

Community Edition does not provide that level of granularity in its security model out of the box. Pro/Enterprise would allow you to control who can edit specific fields on a record and would likely allow you to do what you want.

Give the above, the only real way to accomplish this in CE is through some customization work.

**Xeriph** · 2009-03-06, 05:05 PM

Thanks guys. This was kind of dropped in my lap, with a brand new business, and I'm just trying to look ahead for growth. And I agree, techs reassigning themselves is a bigger issue, but I would rather plan for the worst, and not let the customer suffer. I will look into getting pro or enterprise.

Thanks again,
Chris

**blinkie** · 2009-03-28, 06:49 PM

Originally Posted by Xeriph

I am new to SugarCRM, and have a question about the case system, and its features. I am currently using 5.2.0a Community Edition. What I would like to accomplish is to be able to create a case, assign it to a user, let them log in and accept it, complete the work, add notes in the resolution field, and then close the case.

Case management is extremely weak in CE. It doesn't look like Pro or Enterprise add much more value in this area. The context of this argument is when you compare say OTRS (to stay within open source) with Sugar. Sugar cannot even adeptly handle a simple reply to an email that opened a case. You can either create an email (which switches you to the email module and then opens a blank email form), or you can try replying to the original email, which, unfortunately want to reply to the case management system instead of to the sender.

Also, you need to know that CE doesn't support Teams. And none of the add-on Team-like modules support cases or email folders. This is important because it means that when you elect to automatically create cases, they will get assigned to ANY user in the system. Not what is usually desired. Typically, you assign different types of cases to different groups of resources. E.g.: Billing Team gets all of the cases that are opened via the billing@domain.com address, Support Team gets all of the cases that are opened via support@domain.com, etc. CE can't do that.

You should know these limitations before you get too deep into a deployment.

**eggsurplus** · 2009-03-28, 07:32 PM

blinkie,

Not sure on the first paragraph, but is untrue what you say about the CE add-on teams not supporting cases. With SecuritySuite this is not a problem. You can make sure that cases for your accounts or contacts are only visible by you or the appropriate team. For example, if you have a federal contract which stipulates that only certain people can see cases for account ABC you'd create a team for those people and assign it to account ABC. Whenever a case is created for that account (or any record for that matter) that team will automatically be associated to that case and if you set up your roles correctly in Sugar then only that team can see that case. Workflow-wise you could have a process in place for your staff where they would have a case dashlet set up to see new cases that are being submitted from that account and then take it off the "bulletin board" as appropriate.

This would still work with the email functionality that you desire. You could send an email to billing@domain.com and when the case gets associated to that account then the case would only be viewable by the billing team (if it is set up appropriately).

Hope that helps clear it up.

**roblaus** · 2009-03-30, 02:27 AM

I'd be glad if you had a solution but I think nobody has. Problem is not the assigned case but the email that leads to it. Anybody can grab a folder and thus see and reply to emails. And as far as I can see it there is no proper (auto) assignment of a case depending on the email address.