Are you using the email client in Sugar 5?

[clint]

Hello all -

We are 1.5 years and three point releases into the new Ajax-based email client we first introduced in Sugar 5.0. As we're looking at our future roadmap, we are interested to hear whether you are using the email client and what you would like to see us do with it next.

Clint

[andopes]

Hi Clint

Good discussion here!
The SugarCRM Email Client is a promissory tool but unfortunately a bit slow, and because of that I do not use it as an email client.
It contains some awesome features like "Import to Sugar" and "Quick Create". Our support guys use these features to create cases from incoming emails.
I know it had being improved across the releases and it will be revamped in further releases but one of the critical issues is just its performance!
A pretty possible relevant feedback: the performance issue is related to process a single email, it really takes so long!!!

Best regards

[ruchida]

The Sugar's email has a very good concept and could be a killer application, but it's too immature and buggy to use.

People can not be tolerant with its quality because emails are the interface between customers and a company, that is a core portion of CRM.

They are familiar with high-quality and highly functional free emails like Gmail, Yahoo, etc., and there are tons of cheap web emails around the world that work perfect.

Sugar needs to put resources to catch up with their techniques and quality. If you don't afford to do it, please give up implementing web emails in Sugar and think different.

[genius786]

Hi,

A great discussion started. Few future may also be missed in email client. But not bad at all.


Best regards,

[roblaus]

We do use it but only if we can't avoid it (which is rare). I believe that it is conceptually wrong and badly done. Here are a few questions / statements that we collected.

Font size editor unreadable
Editor writes outside window
Not enough space for message itself
Window settings not remembered
Adding/deleting columns
Column width
Folders collaps without reason
Concept of group folders unclear
Why multiple inboxes (my inbox)
Other IMAP folders not visible
Selection of sender/SMTP strange and not logical
Group folders not assignablle to particular persons/teams
Attachments need 5 clicks
Attachments loaded twice (=slow) from local machine to server, from server to relay
Import function unclear to most people
Create e.g. contact - email address missing!!
Adcdressbook is useless (this IS a CRM system)
Mails from cases lack receiver

I could go on for some time.
And please - do not try to explain to me why and how. I know the answers and workarounds. But the customers don't.

BTW: We really would like to use it because I believe that email is an indispensable and probably the most important part of a CRM system (together with a working calendar...)

[malcolmh]

Hi,

Principally the email client has some great ideas (email templates, automatic assigning of email to records, automatic case records), but the implementation has major issues and simple features missing.
A lot of our customers use the email client only to create standard emails using the email templates. As a replacement for a classic email client too slow and cumbersome.
Performance
---------------
- Slow to start, especially for "just" writing one email.
- One customer with 160000 sent email cases wait 2 - 3 minutes, all sent emails are loaded, even though the user only wants to compose an email.

Email Editor
-------------
- Editor keeps losing it font settings when composing.
- No real email preview which shows the template variables expanded to verify what exactly is in the email to the customer
- Doesn't create true HTML code, causing emails to appear differently in different email clinets. REAL ISSUE here.
- Define a default email address for multiple email addresses. Mutliple Email addresses mandatory
- Assign and add a default email signature
- Adding an email template to an existing email reply deletes the reply body. Important for support departments.

Inbound Emails
-----------------
- An option or intelligent option to be able to assign inbound emails automatically to records if desired.
- Assign case emails automatically to contacts and accounts

Autoreply in Bounced & Case Mailboxes
------------------------------------------------

-- Get the autoreply options working

[Angel]

I should preface my comments by stating that I am one of those folks that is not fully enamored with the concept of web mail in the first place (and that when I get on a topic, I have a hard time stopping...LOL).

I am all for the idea of a central location for one's e-mail which one can access almost universally, but the user experience is less than desired in my opinion.

GMail finally won me over for two reasons -- and after quite some time of me trying to use it and like it:

My reasons..

a. The accompanying BlackBerry app
b. Its speed and simplicity

Translating that to my experience with the Sugar client, I don't see either of those benefits for myself, but I would stress that it is a necessary component for a CRM package so we are between a rock and a hard place.

My criticism wouldn't go as far as Ruchida, but I am not that far behind him. The formatting issues and the like don't really bother me. Those seem almost universal across many e-mail packages, so I don't expect the Sugar e-mail client to be free of formatting issues either.

Where I do see a serious problem is in usability and general maintenance. The improvements in the 5.x client seem to have come at a cost of a high level of complexity, making it nearly impossible for the average user to troubleshoot common issues, which in turn leads to a perception that the application is "buggy."

I take a lot of pride in my troubleshooting skills but when someone calls me up for help with the e-mail client, I sometimes feel like I am walking into a minefield being led by a blind man. The level of complexity provides few resources for troubleshooting, even something as simple as verbose error messages.

Here is a good example of something I witnessed recently:

User wants to access IMAP account using SSL connection. All settings are correct, "Test Settings" button results indicate that it passed tests successfully. If you then clicked Save and checked the Inbox to view the server's inbox, no e-mail showed up.

On a hunch, I checked if SSL was enabled on PHP. It wasn't. Enabling it fixed the problem, although there was no indication anywhere withing Sugar or the log file to the fact that SSL wasn't enabled.

Days later, I am still puzzled as to why the "Test Settings" button didn't yield an error message.

Another example...

Assume the following....in the process of working within the E-mail client, the user's session timed out. If one attempts to add a new folder, it fails silently. No indication that the session expired, no redirect to login. Just goes back to the default e-mail view sans the new folder. You can repeat the process all day and folder won't reappear. If you click to another module you'll finally be redirected to login page.

Here is another fun one....try making about 150 folders with several nested items.

While we are on that topic, I have a hard time understanding why the name of the folder has to be unique. The database references the ID value of the corresponding record, which obviously is unique. Why does the name have to be unique? Doesn't make sense to me.

BTW, how long did it take you to make all those folders? Related to that, when one opens an e-mail setup with a lot of folders, it can take a couple of seconds for it to display the folders. Depending on the load on the server, it may take long enough for the user to think it didn't work. We need a more visible indicator that work is still in progress.

Now that you have all those folders, you'll notice that you can't navigate through the tree via the keyboard all that well. For example, if you want to navigate to the folder named "X-Rays" by typing an "X", it doesn't do anything.

Now try dragging one folder into another.

Also see Bug 31951 which I just logged and affects the ability to use e-mail altogether and is also another example of a problem where no errors are returned.

It would be nice if the API was a lot more friendly in regards to Emails. For one, one can't write to the "to_addrs", "from_addr" and other address fields in emails_text via the API, although other fields in that table can be manipulated.

I am told the reason for this is that is because their use has been deprecated within Sugar. However, if one retrieves an e-mail within Sugar then examines the emails_text table, those fields are indeed used. Thus, the deprecation explanation doesn't seem to be valid.

On that note, it would be nice to be able to add folders via the API.

Lastly, I've noticed on more than a handful of occasions that if one manipulates the tree and interacts with the client for a while, with idle periods in between actions, often times some of the javascript will cause the browser to lock up.

Sorry for the long winded nature of my message...like I said, I have a hard time stopping sometimes. Rest assured my criticism is all with good intentions.

[jbarzuna]

Hello,

I have often heard that many Sugar users do not use Sugar as an Email client, I would have to say that I do not have a clear understanding on how they exactly use their Sugar, in my mind a good CRM in today's world must have a powerful email client, a large number of communications with customers will occur through the email system and having to use a third party program to handle such an important link is unthinkable for me.
Yes we are currently using Sugar as an email client, and yes we definitely feel that it needs a lot of work to reach the minimum level that one would expect of an email client in today's world.

In a previous Poll I commented:

Since I started testing SugarCRM several months ago I have seen several comments on how Email is not important for CRM, I just do not get it, I must be missing something, 20 years ago you could do without email and just use a fax machine or telephone with a cardex and filing cabinet, in today's world Email supersedes all other communication methods by far as the prevailing method of communicating with contacts, a CRM without a strong Email module seems to be like a car without wheels in today's world, the whole idea of a good CRM is to consolidate all known information known about a customer/contact/prospect/target, to have it available for display at the fingertip when interacting with the customers. So if I had to comment on what is missing in Sugar's email module I would recommend the following:

1. Provide a means of generating a black list, I will probably get a lot of comments on using a spam filter in the mail server, yet, many filters do not seem to catch all undesired emails, specially if you can not call them spammers, just emails which you do not want imported into your main database, for example, I had an employee subscribe to an e zine which we no longer want to receive, if I had a way to kill the email as it is checked in the server then I would not have to search and delete them daily by hand. I attempted to create a dummy contact called Spam and entered all email addresses that I considered undesirable to be able to group them all together and hopefully be able to erase them in bulk, however, I found that while I was able to group the emails I could not do a mass erase
2. Ability to mass erase the emails associated with one lead/contact
3. Ability to edit the Subject of received emails, often we get emails with exactly the same subject, probably computer generated, that pertain to different issues or customers, the only way to make sense of this emails when looking at them under a the sender's window would be to be able to change the subject to make the subject more informative
4. Group Email boxes might contain the forwards of several employees. When reading group email boxes there should be a column that indicates who the intended recipient is, when you first open the Email Tab such column displays, however, the column is not sortable and thus a person will not be able to group all the emails that pertain to a particular user, further the column disappears
5. There should be an email size column so that we can figure out the size of an email before we attempt to import it.
6. When you receive the email from one person and you want to search all emails by the same recipient, same subject, etc there should be a way by which you place your pointer on one selected record and after doing the sort the pointer remains in the same record with all other records meeting with the similar values of the selected row before or after, in the current version, if I find a record for say customer XX and want to sort the column so that I might find all emails in the inbox related to this customer I would do the sort and the page would display the first record according to the sort order, say customer AA to reach customer's XX record I would have to page all the way down to the page where XX's record got sorted in
7. There should be a way to program event's handling, for example, if I wanted to tell the program to read my emails and link all emails from email xxx@domain.com to a particular project, case, etc I should be able to write a script that does that
8. Displaying the relationships of an email is rather awkward, you have to open the email to actually view the relationships
9. Search tools are really short of expectations
10. Column width of email screen should be sticky, I use a 20inch screen on my desk, every time I open Sugar I get the email columns squeezed as though I was reading them on my phone and have to re size to get the appropriate width for my monitor
11. Auto checking for emails should not require the user to be logged in, the computer should carry the email auto checking as often as indicated by the user weather he is logged or not, thus when he gets back to the computer the emails are already updated
12. Fix Bugs, some are really annoying, for example if you try to import several emails at a time and check the delete mails from server the program will delete messages not read while displaying an indication that the email has been previously imported, while it seems to be the case that after each email is read it is automatically deleted, thus the indexation in the server is lost, other CRM's that I have used in the past read all emails before doing the deletion thus avoiding this problem
13. When emailing a contact that has several email addresses on file there should be a way to select which one and even more than one of them
14. Search by subject, body, from, etc
15. Reports (being able to print a list of emails in the in box)
16. File in history, after an email has been processed we should have a way to mark it down as a history email that no longer displays in the main email dialog, yet remain there for future reference in the contact's tab

Today I would add:

1. There does not seem to be a way to resend an email, if something happens and a customer asks for a resend and resend all of an email the only choice seems to forward
2. Reply to all adds the recipient's email to the To column, this should not be the way, rarely one would want to reply to one self
3. Performance is definitely an issue, the program feels sluggish, another program I used before would allow you to define a number of preread lines like in temporary memory, usually with the first 20 to 40 lines of an email you know what it is about
4. Ability to use drag and drop for attachments
5. HTML editor does not maintain a nice format, everything is lumped together making it nearly unreadable, further, it would be nice that if you select some text on the WYSIWYG screen and switch to HTML that the same text would be selected
6. Email lists, currently I use the subscriptions to work around
7. When you want to cc, bcc, forward an email to an account rather than a contact you can not use a select or a search dialog
8. Occasionally we get emails that the system would not allow to make a reply, it would interpret the original sender's address as not correct. I have a feeling that this has to do with emails that are read with quotations quoting the sender's name
9. When an email fails to leave the computer the program just seems to be still, it does not display a warning or error message
10. If you have been composing an email for a while and the system logs you off the system does not provide any warning the screen still seems active until you attempt to send the email, then you realize that you have been logged off and the log on screen appears, except that you no longer have that email you worked on for over an hour, the system should ask you to log on in a separate tab so that you do not loose your work, in my case I have grown used to select and copy all my emails before I press the send button just in case, but there should be a fail safe in this
11. In the contact history tab of archived emails I have always have a hard time trying to determine if an email was inbound or outbound
12. In the contact history tab of archived emails I have always been unable to determine the delivery date of an email. If I read an email today and the email dates for several days the modified date is reset in the opening process and the modified date shows as today and I no longer know the date of arrival of the document
13. Printing occasionally cuts off right margin
14. Inserting images seems to require to post the image to a public website
15. Hability to automatically import emails from contacts already in database
16. If you are creating an email and accidentally click on another menuitem such as contacts, the program will not provide any warning to let you know that you are about to loose your in progress work in the email that you are composing
17. Possibility to prepare an email and schedule it for a particular date and time
18. Emails with a tag XML does not show completely, it seems to be cut after this tag
19. Replying to an email in several screens only allows reply and not reply all
20. To column in my sent emails is not sortable

Further, I would suggest improvements on having a method to do direct telephone dialing that in the process registers inbound and outbound calls as a matter of registry for management and user to more easily remember sequence of events towards a sale

Hope this is helpful in the development of future versions, there is a lot of work to be done on this email client to meet expectations and attempting to separate CRM from Email just means that a lot of emails will not be available in the CRM for consultation just because the human being is full of difficulties to accomplish this in a consistent manner and if not an integral part a large number of communications will be lost in a limbo

Best Regards,

José

[aebischer]

Hello all -

We are 1.5 years and three point releases into the new Ajax-based email client we first introduced in Sugar 5.0. As we're looking at our future roadmap, we are interested to hear whether you are using the email client and what you would like to see us do with it next.

Clint

Hello Clint, I am really getting inot the Sugar CRM, the e-mail is still a bit weak. I am surprised that there is no spell checker available. would be a great add on. Thank and keep up the great work.
Hans C Aebischer

[datawayEg]

We use it primarily for the Quick Create function to create cases from inbound emails.

A case created using the email module Quick Create function has the contact and account information auto-associated, whereas creating a case through the Outlook plugin does not.

One annoying missing feature in Quick Create is "Save and Reply-to-All", rather than currently just "Save and Reply"