Messages

Overview

Sugar's Messages module consists of messages, which often represent historical records of instant messaging chats that took place between two people. Every time a customer service agent or sales representative talks to a customer in SugarLive, Sugar creates a new message record containing the chat transcript. The Related To flex-relate field is typically set to the module and record to which the message's contents are relevant. Contact, lead, or user records can also be related using the Guests panel, which will cause the message to be displayed in the Messages subpanel when viewing the record.

This documentation covers information and actions specific to the Messages module. For instructions concerning views and actions that are common across most Sugar modules, such as creating, editing, and deleting messages, please refer to the Working With Sugar Modules section of this page.

Please note that you will only be able to see message records as allowed by your license type, team membership, assigned roles, and user access type. For more information, please refer to the referenced documentation in the Administration Guide.

SugarLive and Messages

SugarLive automatically creates message records for chats that take place in SugarLive between customer service agents or sales representatives and their customers. The Conversation field is populated with the chat transcript and the Start Date and End Date fields are set to the start and end times of the chat. The message is assigned to the user and the Direction and Channel Type fields are set to "Inbound" and "Chat" respectively. While the message is in progress, its status is set to "In Progress", and once finished, the status is changed to "Completed".

The Related To flex relate field and the Guests panel are populated with the records linked to the chat session, which could be automatically selected by SugarLive or manually selected by the user. See the SugarLive page for details on linking records to messages.

If you wish to update any of the values on the message record after you have closed the SugarLive session, you can do so by opening it in the Messages module and editing it as normal.

Message Guests

The following guests are automatically added to a message's guest list:

Users may add additional guests (e.g., contacts, leads, users) to messages via the Guests panel in the message's record view.

Adding via the Guests Panel

Use the following steps to add attendees via the Guests panel:

1. Navigate to the Messages module and create a new record or edit an existing record.
2. Scroll to the Guests panel and click on the Add (+) button located on the far right.
   
3. To add a guest, type in the name of the lead, contact, or user via the search bar that appears or select "Search for more..." to search the Contacts list view. To remove a guest, click the Remove (-) button to the right of the guest's row.
   Note: The user in the "Assigned to" field on the message record cannot be removed from a message. To remove the assigned user from the guest list, re-assign the message to a different user first. 
   
4. Click "Save"

Adding via Create a Guest

Use the following steps to create a new contact and add them as a message guest:

1. Navigate to the Messages module and create a new record or edit an existing record.
2. Scroll to the Guests panel, click on the Add (+) button, and then click on "Search for more..." to expand the Contacts list view.
   
3. At the top of the list view, click the Create button and fill out the appropriate fields to create a new contact. Once completed, save the new contact record and Sugar will automatically add the contact to the guest list for the message.
4. Confirm the remaining fields and guests are configured appropriately and then save the message.

Message Fields

The Messages module contains a number of stock fields that come out-of-the-box with Sugar. For information on using and editing various field types, refer to the User Interface documentation. The definitions below are suggested meanings for the fields, but the fields can be leveraged differently to best meet your organization's needs. Administrators or users with developer-level role access have the ability to alter, add, or remove fields via Admin > Studio. For more information on configuring fields, please refer to the Studio documentation in the Administration Guide.

Working With Sugar Modules

While the Messages module has some features that only apply to messages it also uses the Sidecar user interface that most Sugar modules are based on. The following sections detail menus, views, and actions common to Sidecar modules and contain links to additional information within the page or links to the User Interface documentation.

Message Menus

The Messages module contains various options and functionality that are available via menus in the module tab, list view, and record view. The following sections present each menu and its options with links to more information about each option in the User Interface documentation.

Module Tab Menus

Click the Messages module tab in the navigation bar to access the Messages list view. You may also click the three-dots menu in the Messages module tab to display the Actions, Recently Viewed, and Favorites menus. The Actions menu allows you to perform important operations within the module. The Recently Viewed menu displays the list of messages you most recently viewed. The Favorites menu displays the list of messages you most recently marked as favorites.

The module tab's Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

For more information on module tab menus including reasons a module may not be included in the menu, see the User Interface documentation.

List View Menus

The Messages list view displays all message records and allows for searching and filtering to locate specific messages. You can view the basic details of each record within the field columns of the list view or click a message's subject to open the record view. To access a module's list view, simply click the module's tab in the navigation bar.

List View Mass Actions Menu

The Mass Actions menu to the right of the checkbox option in the list header allows you to perform mass actions on all currently selected records. You can use the checkbox on each record's row to select individual message records or click the checkbox in the list header to select all records displayed in the current set of list view results.

The Mass Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

List View Record Actions Menu

The Record Actions menu to the far right of each record's row allows you to perform actions on the individual message directly from the list view.

The list view's Record Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

Record View Actions Menu

The Messages record view displays a single message in full detail including its fields, subpanels of related records (if applicable), and activity stream. To access a message's record view, simply click a hyperlinked message subject from anywhere within Sugar. The record view's Actions menu appears on the top right of the page and allows you to perform various operations on the current record.

The Actions menu allows you to perform the following operations:

Common Views and Actions

In the table below, the left column contains links to the User Interface page covering topics that are applicable to all Sidecar modules. The right column has links to sections of the current page that cover topics specific to messages.