Roadmap Features - Most Anticipated?

Hello Everyone!

As we are coming to the end of our current release cycle we are reviewing the existing roadmap (click here https://suitecrm.com/community/roadmap) and want to extend a mic to the community to help us get a sense of what you feel are the most anticipated goals and features of future releases are.
We have created an initial shortlist of the features from the roadmap that was gathered from the community, partners and clients. We want to hear what is most important to you as a user of the software whether you are a regular user, administrator or a developer.

If there are any features that are not listed in the polls please comment below but also consider that your feature raised does have the community in mind and not a specific use case. The poll only allows a single vote, so feel free to comment if you wish to list multiple features (shortlist or not) that should be considered in order of importance.

This feedback helps us to get a better understanding of the communityā€™s priorities. We use Trello for the suggestion box but occasionally we need to have a bit of a discussion to provide all types of users a platform to voice what would make SuiteCRM exciting in the future releases for them.

So without further ado, below is the shortlist (of no particular order) of those features with a very high level description of the functionality. Vote on the feature that you wish to see in the future releases and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[size=5][color=#ff0044]Features:[/color][/size]
[color=#ff00bb]- AOR (Reports) Improvements[/color]
We feel that Reports should be easier to use. We propose to simplify the UI, introduce a wizard for users, and more areas to report from.
[color=#ff00bb]

  • AOR Matrix Reporting[/color]
    Ability to create Matrix Reports

[color=#ff00bb]- Bug Resolving[/color]
This isnā€™t really a feature but an area that we wish to know the importance of how it affects your day to day business. We have already improved our testing in 7.10 and refined our security processes so that more high priority bugs are being tackled but we want to invest more resources into tackling bigger areas and which modules are a priority.

[color=#ff00bb]- Authentication Improvements[/color]
In a world becoming more security conscious we want to introduce a number of authentication measures to allow provide SuiteCRM administrators the tools how to secure their instances. This feature includes: 2 Factor Authentication; Fail2Ban; Advanced Password Management; support for SAML2.

[color=#ff00bb]- Notifications/Reminders Improvements[/color]
We want to improve performance and add ā€˜Close Allā€™ Reminders functionality, make it language compatibility and add reminder functionality to Tasks and completed status to notifications.
[color=#ff00bb]

  • SuiteP Editor[/color]
    An adjusted SuiteP theme that will reduce the overall padding of on screen elements providing more elements to the screen real estate i.e. more rows visible on list view within the screen viewport.

[color=#ff00bb]- Internal and External Webchat[/color]
Integrate internal chat, record chat rooms and external customer service support.

[color=#ff00bb]- Survey Management[/color]
Create, Send out Survey forms via Campaigns and record feedback directly into SuiteCRM.

[color=#ff00bb]- Visit Reports[/color]
A new module that allows businesses to record visit reports on their customers.

[color=#ff00bb]- Group Views[/color]
The ability to display different studio layouts for different groups and record types on modules.
[color=#ff00bb]

  • User Management Improvements[/color]
    Import Users including Security Groups

[color=#ff00bb]- Broadcast Teams[/color]
Inviting Groups of Users to Emails & Meetings etc

THE SUITE P EDITOR AND THEMES GENERALLY ā€¦

Provide as much theme customization capability as possible to system admins ā€¦ colours, font sizes, padding/spacing, etc.

This will forever get SA out from trying to please everyone!

Rethink the concept of ā€œthemeā€. Themes merely become specific configurations of colours, padding, etc., that should be savable as individual text files, which are then selectable when a user logs in. This will permit selection of a ā€œthemeā€ optimized for the device being used ā€¦ desktop, pad, smartphone, etc.

REPORTS

Allow report outputs to be selectable as: PDF, text file and CSV and under specified filenames.

Wishful thinking ā€¦ calculated fields. :slight_smile:

Bug Resolving - so so important. Closely followed by proper email client/integration.

My productivity and day to day usage of suitecrm is massively hindered first and foremost by bugs, and to me It feels like almost every single module is hindered by bugs. As a non-developer it can take quote a while before determining if the problem is being caused by a bug or functionality/design issues . It seems like i enjoy spending about 2% customising and 98% struggling with bugs. I am really looking forward and hoping for 7.10 release in time for xmas :slight_smile:

Full email integration to imap server etc would also be a massive help - i just cant see any use for the current email module? Its so limited that its just an extra chore to use. Its easier to manage email in any other email client and just use suitecrm to send outgoing notifications or reports. Managing incoming mails between email account and suitecrm is missing?

Not complaining though, great progress has been made and i appreciate the hard work everyone has put in.

EMAIL is the most important element in CRMs. Until this side is not improved, other fancy changes like responsive theming or Label Fix releases would not make much difference IMHO. There are a lot of Open Source Email clients which can become part of this like RoundCube or iRedMail . Looking at the forums, there have been many users suggesting several times to address the core and outstanding issues before jumping into more new things which unfortunately didnā€™t went well ( new emails module) .

As a suitecrm community member i would second this thought of laying a solid base and building on top of that. This would make the common user stick to the software while giving much space to develop new features once critical bugs have been busted.

I would argue that a correctly-spaced theme (for the login device being used) or label fixes are hardly ā€œfancy changesā€. Email is an important feature of SuiteCRM, but many installations of the software donā€™t actually use it. Overall usability is much more significant.

I would agree, re: bug fixes ā€¦ make the existing features rock-solid, before adding anything new.

Itā€™s a little beyond my level of understanding, but the original design of Suite (and Sugar) CRM was apparently based on a ā€œMVCā€ (Model View Controller) architecture, which simplified and streamlined the development of new modules and features. I donā€™t know how (or even, if) this integrates with the proposed ā€œRESTā€ architecture of 8.0, but whatever creates a solid development base for SuiteCRM is vital.

[sorry for English]
As our company is growing on German marketā€¦ 3 things are important for every daily use of CRM

Emails

  • immediately need to fix
  • big mistake as we did upgrad on version 7.9 because it is one big mess with which we are fighting :frowning: and frustrating all employees in company and our clients

Group views

  • all employees canā€™t see everything, without group views we canā€™t grow up
  • weā€™re using SuiteSecurity and with SuiteCRM is as night mare when you upgrade one or otherā€¦ but we feel as standing in front of wall with gun close our headā€¦

Bugs fixing

  • how is it possible that many issues are fixed for months or years and still people donā€™t merge them ??? we have them implemented and workingā€¦ but start upgrade and see how your nightmare beginā€¦ youā€™re checking git and comparing the filesā€¦ new one and old one ā€¦ and after you want to kill yourself

Other things canā€™t matter for now for usā€¦
Sometimes when stop emails or groups workingā€¦ canā€™t sleepā€¦ we are in trap of our system

Company with 10+ employees canā€™t work without emails and group viewā€¦ :unsure: :unsure: :unsure: :unsure: :unsure:
If you are alone or few users in systemā€¦ you can play with " bobbles" but if you want to make real business ā€¦ you need this 3 things :slight_smile: as salt .)

Hey everyone,

If you have been using a CRM system for everything including email, you would expect any crm offering today to have at the least a competent email function which is as capable as any of the other core functions.

I have been using a complete CRM system (GoldMine) for over 25 years.

I now wish to work with a web-enabled application.

I was recently told the SuiteCRM (7.8.7 email module is excellent; fool am I! I didnā€™t check it out first. It is basic to say the least and from what I see in the forums it is very slow to use, with unacceptable performance.

I checked the upgrade list for 7.9.7 and it says enhanced email features or something like that. I did the upgrade and now the email centre function of 7.8.7 is nowhere to be seen.

Taking a hack at the comment, ā€œa lot of users do not use the email function, because they connect to Outlook and the likeā€; this action means the writer does not understand the key importance of the 360 degree view of everything that is attached to the CRM.

If a user can choose which emails, reminders and the like to attach to a client or contact; then the integrity of the CRM is at risk.

After all the key role of the CRM is for any client account detail being accessible to all those who are part of the team serving the client.

A CRM is protection for the business owner to keep all the detail on business dealing with the client.

That means a quality integrated email function, which can read an email from the activity listview and display it in a normal, response time.

My take on the email priority, is put a decent email module together as a number one priority, or tell us it is never going to happen and bolt a 3rd p[arty email application that saves the email record into the database and does not rely on local machine resources or bandwidth.

Are you listening?

Bernard Bailey

@bernardgbailey ā€¦ Goldmine already is web-enabled.

@paullm, yes GoldMine is web enabled through a cloud enablement function, but it is not LAMP, XAMPP web-based which Sugar is; and consequently it costs a lot more to implement over the web.

What I really expect someday is that devs can think outside the box and look into some other solutions like Yalla https://www.yallahq.com
Please just test it online to find out that a CRM can be made simpler!

Now back to the earthā€¦ and by preference order for the next version:
1- Bug Resolving (I prefer to ask for Bug FIX merge! as in the actual 200 FIX waiting for a merge
https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A"Fix+Proposed"
I know people prefer to develop new features hopiong that the previous errors will fade awayā€¦ but its never like that

2- AOR (Reports) Improvements
Trueā€¦ if we feed data to a CRM it should be easier to get data from it!

3- SuiteP Editor
Just to end to a endless controversy among users.
Iā€™m not thinking on a true template system but to have some easy settings for colors and spaces!

4- Email
even if Iā€™m not using it but I canā€™t believe on the constant issues around mail system. Probably its necessary to think differently on using it, not fixing the actual system.

2 Likes

as indicated in many post above ā€¦ make the existing features rock-solid, before adding anything new.
It is hard to defend an open source solution to management when we have to say to user "this is a known problem, get over itā€¦ " making our choice an open target for other crm salesperson knocking on their door.

I think this should be the priority. As I wonder on the numerous times I saw ā€œturn off error reporting in phpā€¦ā€ is this really normal? are we hiding important issues doing so?

Followed by an email client that fits todays tasks; everything rely on email nowā€¦

Hi Ashley!

Happy to see there are a lot of work to do!

I think we should improve:

regards!

Jose

[size=6]Bug Resolving [/size]

Hi guys!

Thanks so much for your feedback! Iā€™m glad to say that we are also aligned with the results of your votes and working towards 7.10 to provide these higher voted ā€˜featuresā€™ with stability being the priority (Emails specifically).

1 Like

Group Views (ā€œdisplay different studio layouts for different groups and record typesā€) is definitely something we need.

So much weā€™re customizing SuiteCRM ourselves in order to allow functional analysts to configure Edit and Detail views in order to make read-only or editable fields based on security groups and roles.

We would desperately like to see better/functioning email integrationā€¦!!!

The number of awkward conversations I have to have with our clients using SuiteCRM when they ask about the possibility of email integration are increasing.

When talking to potential/new clients I have to skirt around the subject of email integration entirely as with many potential/new clients the conversation about using SuiteCRM would end straight away if they new there wasnā€™t reliable email integration available now.

Most CRM purchasers/users expect email integration for at least Outlook and Gmail as a given now a days.

Please can we make this a priority guys?

Thanks.

Fixing Emails is already a clear priority, itā€™s being very actively worked on. This is to make sure existing functionality works as expected, and initial configuration is easier.

A different thing, and probably one worth getting more input from users in a few weeks, after 7.10 is released, is exactly which functionality is still missing - which specific aspects of this ā€œintegrationā€ you mention are more critical?

Not wanting to sound like an endless loop, but the user interface/theme configuration:

  1. Theme configurations that are editable and savable by System Admins. This includes both font weight (contrast) and padding (spacing).
  2. Theme configurations that are selectable by the user AT TIME OF LOGIN.

Having the above feature will:

  1. Enable users to choose the best-possible theme (spacing, etc.) for the device they are using ā€¦
    laptop, cellphone, tablet, etc. ā€¦ when they log in.
  2. Forever get Sales Agility out from under having to please everyone, regarding themes!