Administrators

Welcome to Sugar Enterprise!

Strong relationships are at the core of every organization's success, and Sugar brings ease and order to the creation, maintenance, and support of your important relationships. We recommend taking the time to read this page and explore our Getting Started knowledge base articles to thoroughly familiarize yourself with Sugar basics. The sections below cover the following topics:

• Who's Who at SugarCRM
• Introduction to CRM
• Sugar License Types
• Core Administrator Features
• Sugar's Basic Terminology and Concepts
• Sugar's Basic User Interface
• Getting Up and Running
• Learning Resources
• Additional Software

Who's Who at SugarCRM

Sugar is so pleased to be able to serve you as a customer. As our customer, you may work with several groups, each of which helps with a different aspect of your Sugar experience.

Visit the Contacting SugarCRM page to find additional information on how to get in touch with us and who to contact for your specific needs. The following list describes some of your points of contact in more detail:

• Partner: If you purchased Sugar from one of our partners, the partner will be your main contact point for support, renewals, and other inquiries.
• Sales: If you are purchasing Sugar directly from SugarCRM, Sugar's sales group will work out the details of your purchase. Any questions or issues with your free trial or other inquiries prior to purchase will be handled by your sales team member.
• Customer Success Manager: If you purchased Sugar directly from SugarCRM and are now a Sugar customer, your customer success manager will field general questions and be your contact point when it comes time to renew your subscription. Your Customer Success Manager will introduce themselves via email after your purchase is complete.
• Sugar Support: If you purchased Sugar directly from SugarCRM and are now a Sugar customer, bring your Sugar application questions and issues to the Sugar Support team. If your instance is hosted on Sugar's cloud environment, Sugar Support also serves as your contact point for requests such as upgrades and sandbox refreshes. Please refer to the Working With Sugar Support article for support policies, contact methods, SLA information, and more.

Introduction to CRM

Understanding CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will help you get the most out of your Sugar subscription. Sugar will become your one-stop shop to manage and maintain all customer information and interactions, correspondences, transactional history, and much more! Please refer to our Introduction to CRM article for a run-through of the basic principles and goals of CRM.

Sugar License Types

Sugar is purchased with a set number of user seats for each SugarCRM product: Sugar Serve, Sugar Sell, and the legacy offering of Sugar Enterprise. Sugar users, including administrators, are then assigned to one or more products via the License Type field on the user record. The license type(s) you are assigned determines what functionality you can access in Sugar. If you are assigned to multiple license types such as Sugar Sell and Sugar Serve, then you will be able to access the combined functionality of both selected products. For more information on license types in Sugar and the functionality available for each license type, please refer to the User Management documentation. 

Core Administrator Features

Sugar consists of interrelated records in modules such as Accounts, Contacts, Cases, Meetings, Emails, etc. and wraps your data in an intuitive user interface that helps make sense of these different elements of your business. Whatever your organization's focus - sales, marketing, support, or other ventures - Sugar's flexible modules bend to align with your business's models and practices. Manage your relationships from inception to fruition and beyond with Sugar's built-in modules and relationships as well as your custom modules and configurations available to Sugar administrators.

• User, Password, Team, and Role management to manipulate user access
• SugarIdentity for user management if your instance is SugarIdentity-enabled
• Email management to configure incoming and outgoing system email accounts and behaviors
• System management to control functional aspects and system-wide preferences within Sugar
• Module Builder to create new, custom modules as needed to fully match your organization's processes
• Studio to add and modify fields, relationships, and layouts for tailoring existing modules to your organization's needs

Sugar's Basic Terminology and Concepts

As you get started using Sugar, it is helpful to understand some key terminology that is used when referring to different areas of the application. The following list explains some common elements and concepts of Sugar to help familiarize you with the application. For more information about other basic elements of Sugar, please refer to the interactive image below. 

• Deployment Model
  • SugarCloud deployment: Refers to Sugar instances that are hosted on our servers using SugarCRM's Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
  • On-Site deployment: Refers to Sugar instances that are hosted on the customer's own server or that of their partner. 
• Admin page: The Admin page allows Sugar administrators to perform various administrative functions such as configuring the system settings, configuring system email settings, customizing the Sugar instance, creating and managing teams/roles, etc. 
• Roles: Roles control a user's access to modules in Sugar as well as enforce restrictions for selected fields within those modules. You must be a System Administrator user in order to create and manage roles in Sugar.   
• Teams: Teams control record visibility and determine which records a user can access in Sugar. Only users belonging to the team(s) selected in the record's Teams field will have access to view the record.  
• Modules: The Sugar application consists of a number of different modules such as Accounts, Contacts, Call, Meetings, Emails, each of which contains individual records.  
  • Sidecar modules: Refers to the Sidecar user interface that was introduced in Sugar 7. The majority of the modules in Sugar use the Sidecar user interface. 
  • Legacy modules: Refers to the Legacy user interface that carried over from Sugar 6. Very few modules use the Legacy user interface.  
• Records: The individual records (e.g. ABC Company) contained within each module (e.g. Accounts) in Sugar.  
• Navigation bar: The navigation bar spans across the top of your Sugar screen and allows you to access the various modules (e.g. Accounts, Contacts), access your Home page and user profile, perform a global search, etc.
• List View: A module's list view displays all records within the particular module to which you have access in Sugar. 
• Record View: A module's record view displays thorough information regarding the record such as name, email address, phone number, etc.
• Subpanels: Subpanels appear beneath a record's fields and contain related records from various modules (e.g. Contacts, Meetings).
• Intelligence Pane: The intelligence pane lives to the right of list views and record views and displays valuable record information via dashlets and previews. 
• Dashboards: Dashboards contain a set of configured dashlets. Dashboards are available on the Home page, intelligence panes, and console views.  
• Dashlets: Dashlets are dashboard widgets that allow users to get a quick view of various records, activities, reports, etc. 

Sugar's Basic User Interface

For more details on the basic elements of Sugar, please refer to the User Interface documentation in the Application Guide.

Getting Up and Running

Before your users can begin working in Sugar, the instance will need to be installed and configured for your organization. Then, you will need to create user accounts along with any necessary teams and roles. Most admins will then want to customize Sugar's functionality to suit their business processes. Finally, you can import or migrate any existing customer data that you have into Sugar.

Installing Sugar

Your approach to getting Sugar installed will depend on where your instance is hosted. Sugar offers cloud hosting on our SugarCloud servers. If you are working with a partner, they may be hosting your instance instead. Finally, you have the option of hosting your instance yourself as an on-site deployment, which could mean you are hosting it on your own network server or on another cloud server of your choice.

• SugarCloud: If SugarCRM is hosting your instance in the SugarCloud environment, installation and upgrades are handled automatically as described in the SugarCloud Policy Guide. You should receive an email from orders@sugarcrm.com with a subject similar to "SugarCRM Inc.: Order # 52000 notification". If you did not receive a Welcome email with a link to your SugarCloud instance and administrator login credentials, please send an email to orders@sugarcrm.com to have a copy forwarded. 
• Partner Hosted: If a SugarCRM partner is hosting your instance, they will handle all installation and upgrades. You will work directly with the partner to gain access to your instance after purchase.
• On-Site Hosted: If you are hosting Sugar on-site, you will need to prepare your hosting environment, download the installation files, and install Sugar to your servers. These processes are detailed in the Installation and Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading Sugar

For the majority of customers hosted on SugarCloud, upgrades are scheduled automatically. For on-site customers, you should plan on upgrading at least once per year. The frequency and method of software updates that you can expect for your Sugar instance will depend on your deployment model. For more information on what this means for you, refer to the article Understanding Sugar's Release Cadence.

Configuring Sugar's Settings

Upon first logging in as the primary administrator, you will step through an admin wizard as well as your personal user's wizard. You can also revisit these settings later in the application itself.

Next, refer to our First Settings to Configure article for an explanation of the settings you should address prior to opening the instance up to additional users. Once you have set up the basic settings described in the article, you can start customizing Sugar to suit your organization's existing business model and processes.

Creating Users, Teams, and Roles

Once your instance has been configured to match your business processes, you can start deciding how to configure your teams, roles, and end-user accounts. Each user will belong to one or more teams and should also be assigned a role. Teams, roles, and user types collectively determine which modules a user can access, which records within those modules a user can access, and how the user can interact with the records. As an example, everyone in the Eastern US office will be on the East team, but each user on the East team may have a different role to let them work with only the relevant parts (e.g. cases, opportunities) of Sugar. Try building a chart that lists the potential teams and roles for your organization and mapping the user accounts out before creating them in Sugar. Please refer to the Roles vs. Teams article and User Management page to learn more.

After planning, creating, and configuring the teams and roles, create accounts for your users with the Type field set to "Regular Users". Note that users created as type "System Administrator User" will not be restricted by teams and roles. For more information, please refer to the User Management, Team Management, and Role Management documentation.

Customizing Sugar

One of the most valuable aspects of Sugar is the ease with which you can customize your instance to match your business processes. Sugar includes a built-in suite of administration tools to customize the application and, if you still need more, a developer can also make code-level customizations. The following sections explain how to get started customizing your instance.

Making a Plan

The most important step in customizing and configuring Sugar is to prepare a thoughtful plan before modifying your instance. You will first need to fully understand your organization's processes as well as Sugar's out-of-the-box modules, relationships, and functionality. You will then need to create a mapping between the two and learn about the tools and capabilities available in Sugar for tailoring the application to fully bridge any gaps. As you flesh out your plan, we recommend testing the changes in a sandbox instance to isolate these modifications from your production instance until the approach is fully hatched and tested.

Understanding the Tools

Sugar administrators have a variety of tools available in the application that allow you to modify Sugar to suit your organization's needs without having to develop code-level changes. Each of these tools is explained in detail in the Administration Guide.

Making Code-Level Customizations

If you need to change Sugar's behavior beyond the capabilities of the powerful in-app customization tools, a developer at one of Sugar's many partner organizations can make code-level changes to your instance. If you already have a relationship with a Sugar partner, you can work with them to develop your customization. If not, please refer to the Partner Page to find a reselling partner to help with your development needs. 

Note: For an introduction to building Sugar customizations, please choose "Developer" as your user type on this page.

Importing or Migrating Data

Finally, you will need to get any existing CRM data or contact information from your previous systems, spreadsheets, or Rolodexes (yikes!) into Sugar. Your approach here will depend on what, if any, system you used prior to purchasing Sugar as well as your comfort level with different technologies. Refer to the Migrating Data From a Previous CRM System article for more information.

Learning Resources

SugarCRM provides the following resources to help you succeed:

• Documentation: Sugar's Documentation explains how to use the main application, mobile solutions, plug-ins, and connectors. Just select your version of Sugar on the Documentation page to see all of the documentation relevant to your instance. Sugar's main application is primarily documented in the following guides:
  • Application Guide: Covers end-user functionality.
  • Administration Guide: Covers Sugar administration.
  • Installation and Upgrade Guide: Covers the requirements and process of installing or upgrading an on-site Sugar instance.
• Online Knowledge Base: Sugar's Knowledge Base is a collection of articles that go above and beyond the topics covered in our documentation to explain complex use cases and help you troubleshoot potential problems or questions. Navigate through the hierarchy of topics from the Knowledge Base page or search the support site using the search bar at the top of any page.
• SugarClub Community: Visit SugarClub to collaborate with other users, Sugar partners, and Sugar employees to answer questions and solve problems. You can ask a question of your own, share ideas on how to improve Sugar, search previous discussions, stay up-to-date on new releases, and more.
• Training & Certification: SugarClub offers a variety of training options to help end-users, administrators, and developers. You can find self-paced videos or e-courses, live training and webinars, personalized training, and pursue Sugar certification.

Additional Software