Open source rooted SugarCRM has released Sugar 6.3 to upgrade the Community Edition version of its product. The latest platform enhancements include support for deeper integration with third-party applications, faster feedback for real-time collaboration, and tighter administrative control for a "360-degree view" of all activities and projects.
The company says that since 2004, there have been more than 10 million downloads of Sugar and its related projects. With Sugar 6 it is aiming to extend this open CRM platform to its community developers and customers. The new mass update control allows administrators to arrange either role-based or policy-based access, granting a "complete view" of activities for better project management.
"Being open and flexible is in SugarCRM's heritage; we provide a free and open source platform that developers can use to build their own applications," said John Mertic, community manager at SugarCRM. "Sugar Logic now has the ability to import data, create formulas, rename modules, and manage mass updates to all modules for greater transparency."
This latest version of Sugar 6 can now integrate data from even more sources. Sugar 6.3 has an enhanced Import Wizard and the ability to import Google contacts. Users can also do more inline editing thanks to the improved quick edit feature in ListViews, subpanels, and reports. Users can also import and archive external emails into Sugar 6.3.
The new platform allows SugarCRM's open development process to gather continual feedback from customers and users, resulting (theoretically) in higher quality products designed to meet real-world needs. For example, through the company's Open+ Developer program, Sugar 6.2.4 had a record 10% of the bug fixes that came directly from community contributions, and there have been nearly 100 accepted code contributions this year.
