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6.5 Testing in process

Chris Convis — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:06:52 GMT

We are currently working on Sugar 6.5 capabilities with Process Manager. An expected release date will be out soon.

Real Estate and SugarCRM Workflow

Bill — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:53:33 GMT

SierraCRM is about to purchase it's new headquarters. The building is an 1860's Victorian in Grass Valley. While moving through the process of finding the right new home and securing financing for the building, we had an opportunity to understand in ins and outs of the Real Estate and Mortgage Broker industries. CRM and especially automated workflow is perfectly suited for both of these industries. As an example, when we first showed interest in properties, we submitted our info at the Real Estate website. The Realtor was forwarded an email from this website. The Realtor then called us. If the Realtor had been using SugarCRM with a web-to-lead form, our info would have auto created a lead and Process Manager could have then be setup to auto send a welcome email. Then PM could have scheduled a call. One day later, a second email could be sent to remind the us, the buyer, to begin the process to apply for a loan and get pre-qualified.

Once an offer is made on the house and we began the process to secure financing, the Mortgage Broker, using SugarCRM and Process Manager, would be able to setup a staged workflow that would accomplish such items as:

Order Appraisal

Order Docs

Lock a Loan at a given Rate

Emails and Calls would be scheduled and sent to us, the Realtor, the Lender, etc.

Are you a Realtor or Mortgage Broker who could take advantage of powerful process management in your CRM? If so, share your ideas with us on how you would setup time based workflow for the purpose of purchasing properties.

SierraCRM at SugarCON

Chris Convis — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 04:39:27 GMT

Come and visit us at SugarCON, San Francisco, this April 23-25

Discounted Tickets to Sugar-Con

Chris Convis — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:10:50 GMT

You only have a few days left to take advantage of this. We will be attending this years SugarCon in San Francisco as a Silver Sponsor so if you are there, swing by and you may get a special offer. Also we are offering discounts through the end of March, right now the applicable code is:

· Sierra CRM-Mar (10% discount expires Mar 30)

Process Manager Pro now works on SugarCRM 6.4.1

SierraCRM BLOG — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:41:11 GMT

SierraCRM just updated the shopping cart at www.shop.sierracrm.com to reflect the update of Process Manager Pro v1.0 now works with SugarCRM CE 6.4.1. MySQL.

SugarCon Discount March

SierraCRM BLOG — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:09:02 GMT

We will be attending this years SugarCon in San Francisco as a Silver Sponsor so if you are there, swing by and you may get a special offer. Also we are offering discounts through the end of March, right now the applicable code is:

· Sierra CRM-Mar (10% discount expires Mar 30)

Last day of Feb Discount

Chris Convis — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:24:06 GMT

You only have one more day to take advantage of the SugarCon - February discount, use this code:

Sierra CRM-Feb

15% discount

Turning Interactions into Profits YouTube video

SierraCRM BLOG — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:44:11 GMT

Check out this Webcast on Process Manager - YouTube Video !

SugarCon Discounts

Chris Convis — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:12:19 GMT

· Sierra CRM-Feb (15% discount expires Feb 29)

Routing with a Process

Chris Convis — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:25:43 GMT

Process Manager Pro does not support the combination of Workflow and Routing in one process. This means that routing rules in Process Manager can not have stages assigned to them.

Routing Precedence

Chris Convis — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:40:25 GMT

If multiple routing rules can be operated against one object, the rule that takes precedence is the one that routes most recently. If you were to create a rule that assigns created opportunities to Employee A, and you also have a rule that assigns modified opportunities to Employee Z, Employee Z will own that object after modification.

PM Pro v2

Bill — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:15:13 GMT

We are kicking off 2012 with a new version of Process Manager Pro - PM Pro v2. PM Pro is powerful workflow for SugarCRM. All new features and a refined interface. PM Pro v1, released in August of this year was a huge hit for SierraCRM. We picked up many of new customers with this release and upgraded quite a few of our older Process Manager product.

As many of you know, there is no Workflow in SugarCRM CE and the Workflow in SugarCRM Pro is limited in its' functionality. When we released Process Manager Pro this past summer, we took all three of our products and merged them into one. Now that we have had a chance to have all these new customers use PM Pro - there is a long list of feature requests. Expect new features such as filter fields that check related modules, cleaner user interface, online help, better email support such as entering a fixed from address.

We expect to kick off the project in early 2012 and have beta ready for testing at the end of Q1.

Let us know if you are a current user of Process Manager and have a feature request. Now is the time to get these to SierraCRM for inclusion into PM Pro v2.

--Bill

Webinar in Collaboration with SugarCRM

Chris Convis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:46:17 GMT

SierraCRM has recently joined SugarCRM in presenting the Process Manager Pro workflow module for SugarCRM. The video can be viewed here: Webinar

What is workflow and why is it important in CRM

SierraCRM BLOG — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:07:43 GMT

Workflow is basically the best business practices in your organization. You have a business flow in one or more departments that you do everyday that may or may not impact another department in your company. Write-up a matrix of these practices and see how they work together and how information flows through your company. Now take a look at your current Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and review it to see if the processes you have setup are working for you or do you still find yourself creating tasks for yourself? Then look at the technology of the CRM and see if you have a full solution to your workflow, or if you can add tools to your CRM to give you time managed workflow, thus automating a number of the best of business practices you have in your company. SugarCRM Pro offers some basic workflow, and we believe that with Process Manager, you can take this to the next level.

SierraCRM in Europe

Chris Convis — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:26:10 GMT

Sierra's CTO is currently finishing up a tour of customer visits throughout parts of Europe. Visited countries include United Kingdom, Austria, and Germany

Upgrade Pricing

Chris Convis — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:18:54 GMT

Sugar Users,

If you are a previous customer of SierraCRM and hold a prior copy of Process Manager, you can upgrade to the new Suite version for $249.

Routing in the new PM Pro

Bill — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:27:25 GMT

Hello SugarCRM and SierraCRM customers,
We have been getting asked about the new routing feature in Process Manager Pro. For this first release of PM Pro, routing only works on the create or modification of an object. You could setup a process to run 'At This Time' in which you get leads or contacts and then call the Process Task - Modify Field - and set the id = the id of the new user. However, notification would not happen.

We are adding this as a feature for PM Pro v2.

Thanks
SierraCRM, Inc.
http://www.sierracrm.com

Observations from customers of PM Pro

Bill — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:25:14 GMT

Hello SugarCRM users and SierraCRM Customers,
As many of you know, SierraCRM released a new product in August that was a blend of all three of our products into one. This new product will eventually become the only product we sell for workflow for SugarCRM. Plans are to discontinue selling Routing Manager, Marketing Manager and the original Process Manager. With that said here are some support issues we have dealt with since we released the product in early August:

Modify Field as a Process Task: A new feature of PM Pro was the ability to modify a field in an object on the create or modification of that object. Some of our customers reported to us that the drop down list that holds the object fields was not filling. We had found that these customers were trying to create a stand alone Process Task, and not actually going through the Create Process -> Create Process Stage - > Create Process Stage Task. The newly created Process Stage Task has to be related back to the Process via the Stage to know what the object that triggered the process is.
Populating emails with object data: As many of you know, when creating an email template in SugarCRM, you are only allowed to get Lead/Contact/Account/User data to fill the email template. Process Manager uses Sugar Email templates when sending emails. We added a new feature in PM Pro to allow any data from the object that triggered the process to be inserted into the email template. For example, if you wanted opportunity data to go out in the email then all you need to do is to put $opportunities_fieldname and PM would go and get this field and put in the outgoing email
Routing Issues: on our initial release of PM Pro, we had an issue in which on object modify where the process is to route the object, the object would not get routed. This was an error on our part and an updated file was sent to all existing customers
Sending Emails on Calls: We have a customer who has asked us to add the ability to send an email to the object related to a new Call. For example, if you created a Call and related to an Account - have Process Manager get the related Account email and use that as the to address and send the email to this Account
Related Filter Fields - we have customers asking if we can add the ability to filter processes on related objects. As many of you know, we allow up to five filter fields to be included in a process. These filter fields can be either and/or. What some customers are asking for is to include the ability to get a related object to the object that triggered the process and also add filter fields for the related object.

As we receive more customer support calls and emails, we will add to this blog.

Regards,
Bill Convis
CTO SierraCRM, Inc.

Process Manager Pro Routing and SugarCRM Pro

Bill — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:56:53 GMT

Hello SugarCRM Community,
We just found an issue with SugarCRMPro and our new product Process Manage Pro when setting up a process to route/assign leads. SugarCRM Pro includes teams and we are not correctly setting the team_id when updating the assigned_user_id. Working on the patch and will get the update out to our customers shortly.

Thanks,
Support
SierraCRM, Inc.

Run Process Manager 'At This Time:' - Queries

Chris Convis — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:39:48 GMT

As mentioned below, this new version of Process Manager is now a product in which Marketing Manager and Routing Manager have been integrated. Also, the Start Process Trigger has been updated to include 'Run At This Time' which is what enables the scheduled work-flow, taken from Marketing Manager. With this feature, you have the option to run a query against the objects in Sugar, and then apply the process to those objects. Process Manager now comes with 10 pre-loaded processes, some of which have these queries.

If you need new queries built, we suggest using these as framework for your custom queries, or you can have us build them.

Thank You.