SugarCRM is enhancing the mobile capabilities of its popular open-source customer relationship management application and making it easier for sales teams to use the software to collaborate.
The enhancements are part of the SugarCRM 5.5 beta the company released Thursday to the SugarCRM community. The final version is expected sometime in a few weeks or possibly a month, depending on the feedback users provide.
The software's new Mobile Studio Editor toolset lets developers customize SugarCRM for mobile devices, providing prebuilt views, fields and layouts for the application modules designated for mobile use, according to the company. A business, for example, could tailor the system to provide field support agents with a streamlined view of the application's customer support module.
The new "dynamic teams" capability lets users add multiple individuals to a CRM record for collaborating on large-scale projects. With that feature, according to SugarCRM, a sales manager could assign an executive, a customer advocate, professional services workers and others to an account rather than just an individual sales representative.
Other new features, including an enhanced Web services framework, make it easier to integrate data from outside sources -- e-commerce systems such as Amazon's Flexible Payment Services, for example -- with SugarCRM. The beta application also offers improved password-management capabilities for both users and security administrators.
The beta release is available at www.sugarforge.org. SugarCRM is also developing release 6.0 of its application, which is slated to debut around the end of the year or early in 2010, said Martin Schneider, product marketing director.
The new release shows that SugarCRM's development work continues uninterrupted despite the sudden resignation of founding CEO John Roberts on May 7. Board member Larry Augustin is serving as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent replacement for Roberts.
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