Sugar Usage

[Martindale]

I'm the IT Manager for a small service company. We service several markets, with multiple engineers per market. Dispatch currently uses Exchange and Outlook to schedule service calls and dispatch engineers, manage contacts and bookings. Each market is set up with a shared calendar, each of which might have multiple engineers. Contacts are also managed via a shared folder. Contacts and calendars for the dispatch are not stored in any one user's Exchange profile, instead are in Public Folders.

Typically, a new customer calls in, we create a new appointment on the appropriate shared calendar, inserting their information into the subject line of the appointment. We then do double-entry of data into the shared contacts folder, to set up their information. All shared calendars are viewable in one window, by selecting the multiple calendars at once, and this is generally the overhead view used to gather a brief overview of how the day is doing, which markets are busy, which are not. Appointments generally have a few possible statuses, in this case we use labels: Scheduled, Dispatched, and Closed.

We've been looking in to SugarCRM to replace this environment, but we're not entirely sure how the process would work. From my understanding, business customers get "Accounts", with "Contacts" associated with them. Home customers would simply get a Contact. As far as I can tell, each of our Engineers will be getting their own calendar, and scheduling "Meetings" will now be handled on a per-engineer basis. The "Shared" calendar view seems like it will fit our needs, but the process seems roundabout as compared to our current setup.

What would be the general process involved in replicating our current dispatch system with one involving Sugar?

[andydreisch]

Hi Martindale, to ease into the process you may want to consider using the Sugar Plug-in for MS Outlook, part of the Sugar Network bundle of Support credits, plug-ins and Sugar U learning credits.

In this way it's possible to more smoothly migrate to the CRM benefits of your business while still maintaining the familiar scheduling functions in Outlook. Later, as you become more familiar with Sugar you may choose to go 100% with Sugar scheduling.

The Plug-in also can create Contacts, etc., so it might be a terrific overall solution. There's a 30-day trial you can use to play with it.

Otherwise, you're right: an individual has his/her own calendar, and the shared calendar is simply a view of multiple individuals' calendars. While we provide free-busy status for individuals that you see at scheduling time, you have to individually select those individuals rather than having a composite view. In your use case, this could be a cumbersome process. Hence, the Plug-in just may work nicely since you'll be using the mechanism you're comfortable with now, yet still assigning items to individuals.

And gone are the double-entry days!!!

Thoughts?

Andy