Today's "Comments" from our sales group.

[jjwdesign]

Sugar CRM Appliance Server
Sugar CRM 5.0.0a
Apache/2.0.59(rPath)
PHP4.3.11
(Attempted to use PHP5.2.0, but problems occurred)

As a Web Developer / Programmer / Administration Person / Manager and even as Marketing Specialist, I get hit from all directions with all kinds of problems. This upgrade to Sugar CRM 5.0 has created a blast of issues from our sales group. One person is even threatening to quit. While some of these comments/issues are because of "change", (sales people hate change) others are fair to point out. In summary, many of these issues only become apparent when you start to "rely and use" the system --- not just support it. In other words, many of these issues fall back to usability.

1.) Lead Conversions: A sales person noticed that a Lead with Notes can lose the notes when converted... But, not really. In actuality, the notes are associated to the Account when the conversion is done. What about a choice between the contact or account? This is more of an upgrade request.

2.) Convert a Target: I've noticed that the emails address(es) are getting dropped when converting a target to a lead. I believe this is probably a bug.

3.) Email Signatures: Where did the email signatures go? How do we add or change the existing use signatures?

4.) Email Signature Position: When forwarding/replying to an email the signature gets placed below the content of the previous email. Sales would like a choice, or in this particular case --- sales feels that the signature and the cursor should be at the top of the Body.

5.) Small Text in the Email - Too Small: The outgoing emails, "Create Email", seem to use a very small default text for the body section. Sales believes this should be bigger by default and shouldn't have to be adjusted with every email.

6.) Email Templates: Where did the email templates go? We used to use several snippets of marketing blurbs to include in our sales emails. This was to reduce redundant work. How can we use the email templates?

7.) Email System is Locking-Up Computers: With some of the older computers that we have sales using, it has created lock-ups. This situation usually happens when someone is using the email module/section and then tries to click on a different module; leaving the email section. This was seen on a MS Windows XP machine with MS IEv7 and 1GB of RAM.

8.) Email System Viewer (3 Column View): Some sales people are complaining that their email body view doesn't show properly; even when scrolling. Others have seen lines of text that disappear.

9.) Multiple "To:" Selections for Emails: Several of our sales people are seeing multiple To: selections for their emails. In the drop down list, there are typically two "blank" selections followed by one or two name/email sections. Is there a way to select a default To: email, so this doesn't have to be selected each and every time? Any idea where these blank selections are being generated from?

10.) Spell Checker: Our sales people have difficulty when spelling. We are sorry to see the FCK Editor go, along with the spelling icon. Does anyone know of any replacement spelling solution?

11.) Account History: A sales person noticed that the History is not displaying all of the history in the "View Summary" popup. From what I can see, it's only displaying the first "email", the rest of the emails are not being displayed in the "View Summary" view. The Notes are being displayed. More research is needed on this item.

12.) Send Emails Display: This one is relatively funny. The Sent Emails display shows the "From:" field, but not the "To:" field. It's almost obvious who sent it (maybe not the account). Who it was sent "To:" should be a field for the display.

Well, that's all for today (actually, it's not). As you can see, most of these are about usability and ease of use. This email is not meant to alarm people about v5.0, but to make the Sugar CRM team aware that there are numerous usability issues that need to get resolved before this version will be considered friendly and usable.

Thank you,
Jeff Walters

[andydreisch]

Hi jjwdesign, this is great feedback. I'll copy this thread to the Feature Request area as well.

Andy

[laquangthong]

With all the problems that you mention, would it possible to roll back the SugarCRM installation to 4.5.1 ?

[baigeman]

10) Spell Checker

I use Mozilla Firefox and it has a great built in real time spell checker. Underlines words in red as you type and you can add and modify dictionaries. Unfortunately this does not help with bad grammar.

perhaps there is something similar that can be installed for IE?

[cbierwerth]

We just upgraded to 5.0 and are having problems. Some of the problems are a result of having to customize Sugar for functionality that is STANDARD on many other CRM programs. The other issues relate to functionality defects. This program (professional version) is one of the most time consuming to use. I have used 5-6 other CRM packages, and this one takes the cake in slowing down productivity in sales. You have to understand that if Sales is hampered by a tool (like Sugar), it results in lower revenues, and diminished efficiency. If Sales does not sell, they don't get paid. Sales has to sell so you get a paycheck as well.

The email integration is really bad: slow, buggy and too much work to associate an Account, Contact or Opportunity to. You should be able to do all three with out having to go back and manually add the other 'Related to's'.

The call status field - There should be multiple labels for a 'closed' status. I need to be able to see when I actually spoke to someone, not when I completed a call. You should have values like, Completed - Left message, Completed - no contact, Completed - Busy. So you can go directly to the last conversation, review it and call the person. The way it is now, I have to pick individual calls and hope it is the right one for what I am looking for, or scroll through the Summary View to read the notes.

Summary View - this is not sorting properly, the dates are all over the place and in the past Campaign emails have a date that is not even related to the campaign, 12/31/1999.

It takes too many mouse clicks to get tasks done.

In Account History, you should be able to see the Contact name and the Opportunity, Case, Quotes (or-whatever) that the individual task is related to. I have been told that this will really slow things down, since it has to query data from various modules - find a way to make it do that! It is DOG slow as it is. Fix it.

In Contact History, I don't need to know that the activity went to that contact - I already KNOW that, I am in that Contact record. I want to be able to see what the individual activities are Related to - Opportunity, Case, Quotes or whatever.

You have to look at everything, cases, opportunities, quotes or what ever under each Account record to get a clear picture of what has happened over time. You should be able to see ALL of that from the Account in the History file. It takes too much time and is too confusing to research all those subheadings before making a call.

You can get the email to do a spell check for Mozilla, but you have to install the Google tool bar.

The email from CRM should allow the individual to place an invisible html tag to record if the Contact read the email and record the number of hits. This should be done without having to make the email a return receipt. Campaigns does it, Email should too. It allows the sales person to be able to determine the interest level of the Contact. He knows to focus on those Contacts that are reading his emails and forwarding them.

In the Activity list View - the dates don't sort properly. In calls that are scheduled, for instance - it should sort from the current/past date and descend to future dates. The Ascending and Descending radio button do not work properly.

List View - If you have multiple pages of the list view you only have three selections 1 page forward/Back First and Last. You should have the opportunity to choose a specific page, not have to wait for it to load one page, then move to the next, wait for that to load and so on.

Activity List View - if you click on the Contact in the activity list view - I get an error message. I have to click on the Account, or the Activity to get to the Contact. Find a way to minimize the mouse clicks!

In a list, if you select a whole group of activities (more than one page) to Mass Update, it does not work properly. I get this error.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 16 bytes) in /usr/SugarPro/include/database/MysqliManager.php on line 341

I could go on and on. It would be nice if you had someone who actually uses this tool to improve the functionality. It appears that the majority of posts are from IT people, not from the people who have to suffer with it daily. Sales should be a driving factor in the functionality, they are the ones who fund your business, and your clients businesses.

[Gasparrini]

With all the problems that you mention, would it possible to roll back the SugarCRM installation to 4.5.1 ?

I can't find nothing at the moment, to rollback the database.
I was looking the structure and I think that the worst problem to roll back is that some fields change the type (like date to datetime). I think that I need 1 week to make a program to change the database in a condition to be used with 4.5.1 version. I don't have time at this moment.
I'm thinking in restore a backup from 1 week ago, and continue with the 4.5.1 version, until these issues was solved.

[laquangthong]

I can't find nothing at the moment, to rollback the database.
I was looking the structure and I think that the worst problem to roll back is that some fields change the type (like date to datetime). I think that I need 1 week to make a program to change the database in a condition to be used with 4.5.1 version. I don't have time at this moment.
I'm thinking in restore a backup from 1 week ago, and continue with the 4.5.1 version, until these issues was solved.

I haven't done this before, but perhaps you can try restore an backup copy, then export / import newly created contact / account ... from the 5.0 to 4.5.1

[zava]

Some of the issues described above seem related to what I described in my post
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29989
especially the ones related with erratic connection of calls and activities to contacts/accounts.

It appears that the internals of the database carry separate fields for "related to" and "contact" links, but when editing/closing calls, only a single "related to" dialog field is displayed.
It is not clear into which internal database entry this field feeds, but it is quite clear that in some cases it feeds into "related to" and in other cases it feeds into "contact".
It may be that the field fed into depends on how you reached the "edit "dialog (whether from the "contact" or the "account" dialogs).
This is very well apparent if you display "activities": in that listing, both fields are separately displayed and often carry different and conflicting values.
As a result, some calls end up in the Account's history list, others may end up in any of the related accounts, and some apparently disappear from history altogethere, only to reappear as "unassigned" in Activities.

By the way, it is very uncomfortable that the "activities" tab cannot be searched by "account", but only by single contacts: one may well want to see all activities for a whole account, displaying all activities for all related contacts,

I also saw the misordering of activities in the history list, according to dates that are not the ones when the activity was actually performed.

I just played with Sugar for a few days, to decide whether I could use it as a replacement for my old ACT: it looks very nice and impressive, but these things do hinder productivity a lot, and if this is what emerged from just a couple of days fiddling, what would I find if I really put it to work?
I am afraid I'll have to decline, although I really liked most of it on a first impression.
OK, it's free (At least Community), but this is no substitute for being usable.
Shame, because it looks a great project.