Sugar consists of modules, each of which represents a specific functional aspect of CRM such as Accounts, Activities, Leads, and Opportunities. For example, the Accounts module enables you to create and manage customer accounts, and the Activities module enables you to create and manage activities related to accounts, opportunities, etc. These modules are designed to help you manage customer accounts through each step of their lifecycle, starting with generating and qualifying leads to customer support and resolving reported bugs. Because many of these steps are interrelated, each module displays related information. For example, when you view the details of a particular account, the system also displays the related contacts, activities, opportunities, and bugs. You can not only view and edit this information but also create new information.
As an administrator, you have the power to implement access control for these modules. You can customize the look and feel of Sugar across your organization. You can even create new modules if needed. You can also create multiple forums as platforms of discussion on various topics amongst your users and customers.
The Portal module allows administrators and users to link external web sites and web applications into the Sugar user interface, enabling Sugar to become a unified information interface for its users.
Sugar is built on established open-source technologies and widely supported industry standards, including the PHP development environment, the MySQL relational database, the Apache or IIS web servers, and the Linux or Windows Server operating systems. The system supports both the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) platforms.
Sugar provides a connector to LinkedIn. enable users to view data from external data sources from within a Sugar record. Additional connectors to other data sources can be obtained and installed using Module Loader.
Sugar Feed enables users to be informed as soon as a user creates a new contact, lead, opportunity, or case. Users can add a My Sugar Feed dashlet on their Home page so that when a user performs any of these actions, a message displays in the dashlet on their Home page. System Administrators can enable this functionality for users.
Sugar provides a My Portal dashlet that presents product information and news about SugarCRM on your Home page. You can add additional My Portal dashlets to view information from external web sites and applications directly within your Sugar instance.
