SugarCRM/SuiteCRM developers and administrators love working with this versatile software! The software’s wide usage, source code availability and upgrades place SugarCRM professionals in high demand and present many opportunities to customize the software. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to our professional niche. Too often, updates and fixes are hard to execute, especially when multiple modifications are involved. Server side changes involving PHP tend slow the server down and rarely achieve the UI design goals.
There are many adverse scenarios where SugarCRM redesign is simply impossible to accomplish on the back end. Mediocre Google App integration, stalling updates, issues with security fixes and poorly designed UI are just some of the problems. What a nightmare! Fortunately, we offer a great front-end solution to these problems – Yathit Chrome Extension. This Chrome extension makes updates easy, UI design more responsive and it does not involve server manipulations. In this article, we will discuss Yathit advantages in detail.
As the modern businesses continue to demand better technology and hyper customization, SugarCRM users desire an ability to customize user interface and redesign it to fit their business needs. At this time, most of the SugarCRM development and upgrades are happening on the client side. On one hand, it makes the developers’ job much easier as a professional with advanced HTML/CSS and Javascript skills can make necessary UI changes as the software supports CSS style sheets. In addition, Ajax UI can be successfully utilized to redesign the UI.
However, the design changes become more difficult when the user interface is being supported by back-end PHP. Very often, it becomes difficult to make major design changes, as PHP’s purpose is mostly workflow processes and logic. Resulting PHP changes may not fit the server’s capacity and frequently result in substandard UI design as well as server slowdown (these variances are prevalent in Sugar 5.x era). In addition, color scheme changes and changes in header or Sugar Sidebar become problematic. Even Ajax UI may not be a good solution in every case - especially for design changes in Sugar 6.5, where the amended UI often underperforms in search queries and email management. As you can see, it is nearly impossible to get an exact look and feel for your UI, when server modifications are involved.
Many developers are also having issues with deployment of custom modules. In some cases, the issues related to the deployment are limited to error messages. In other cases, more serious deployment tool problems occur and require specific development changes, such as clearing out caches, editing upgrade history tables and more complex database manipulations.
A Chrome browser extension Yathit can be a good front-end solution to the SugarCRM UI re-design problems we just discussed. The extension can be easily integrated and customized to fit the business requirements. The core of Yathit browser enables a fast response query, which makes writing of a custom back-end PHP code unnecessary.
Yathit powers a highly effective lead management system by searching emails for relevant information through the company’s Gmail. Other important features include:
- Quick record creation and retrieval.
- Contextual info: recognizes the contact and provides status of the relationship
- Email template: mail merges with Sugar email
- Sync contact/calendar: automatically synchronizes Google calendar with Sugar records. There are existing solution for synchronizing contacts and calendar, such as an RT Gsync add on.
- Email tracking: shows when a customer opened an email. Again, there are existing solutions to track and improve email experience, but Yathit is much easier and safer to install
- Social insight: automatically provides fresh intel for leads and contacts
Yathit extension offers an effective solution to the design problems experienced by SugarCRM developers and admins. Its simplicity and effectiveness will help the admins save hours of installation time and thousands of dollars for their companies. Besides the obvious savings and helping the admins to avoid frustration, this extension provides automated sales tools and customer management solutions. Yathit will help you keep clients engaged and make your firm’s relationship with them more profitable.